The Love That Brought Us Here

14 years ago my husband's mother had to be put in a nursing home due to the diminished mental capacities brought on by Alzheimer’s. There she suffered mightily until one Friday in November when she took a turn for the worse. We all hurried to her bedside. When a cart of food and beverages was wheeled in for us we got the message loud and clear: she was in her final hours.I called our church office and told the story to the woman who picked up the phone. I did this automatically, even though our mother was not a member of our church but only an occasional visitor. Chokingly I described what her breathing was like and the way, from time to time, her eyes would open and she would look at us so pleadingly. “I know it’s Skip’s day off but I was hoping someone could help us...” I started to say.“Oh for heaven’s sake!” the kind woman interrupted me. “Let me call him right now!”Skip, this senior pastor of ours, was at the lumber yard at the time, elbow-deep in a construction project. Still, less than 30 minute later he walked through the door in workshirt and jeans. He saw right away how frightened we all looked.He asked if there was anything we would like to say to this small suffering woman so dear to us all but somehow none of us could speak, paralyzed as we were by sorrow and dread.“Well why don't we take hands and circle her bed," he said quietly, and so we did that.Then he called her by her name and said something about how the love that had brought her here was the love to which she was now returning.  I can’t give you the exact words - I still have around those moments a strange sort of amnesia - but in some few hours more she did in fact return to the love that brought her here if that is indeed what we do at life’s end.So that's what this church of ours is like that later married our daughter and our brother to their two beloved partners, a full year before same-sex marriage became legal in our state. This church says God is still speaking and so we must not place a period where God has placed a comma. Maybe you'll take a minute to watch this photo montage and ponder for yourself all the hope contained in a humble punctuation mark.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJyKHXdTnz0]