Answers

This has been, by far, one of the strangest weekends of my life.

Saturday morning, I woke up on a king sized mattress on the floor in Winchester. We ate pancakes and drank bad coffee. And five women took showers and got ready without quarreling for the first time since living in the Long Avenue house.

Around 11 o'clock, I took the keys, got in the car, and drove my mother to her wedding.

That is another story entirely... for another time. It's not even been a week yet. I am nowhere near digesting all the thoughts and feelings I have experienced the past few days. When I do... well, the words that come will be a milestone.

I have a different story.

I was standing in my mom's kitchen yesterday, visiting for her 43rd birthday. She came into the room with a few things in her hands. She and her new husband have been cleaning out the closets -- and the closets in the Long Avenue house are quite full of surprises and lost treasure and some trash.

She distributed a few items between us and then, in passing, handed me a Bible. "You want this," she said as she walked away.

Time stopped there in the kitchen.

I had been waiting for moments like this. When I start receiving sentimental things that no longer belong in that house...

It was a Jerusalem Bible.

I opened it. Knowing what I would find might break my heart.

And on the front page, in his familiar handwriting, I read:

"July 10, 1989
This Bible was bought in Pigeon Forge, TN. [We] were here in search of an answer from God. I will write later if we get one."

There wasn't a single thing written anywhere else in the book.

No answers?

I put the Bible away with my purse and keys and brought it home with me.

When I got home, I thumbed through the pages. Unread? Untouched?

Then it fell open to a page, somewhere close to the middle.

"Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you..."

Almost twenty years later...

I closed the book again and felt like an answer from God had finally been found.

Maybe not an answer for the two, twenty-somethings who purchased the book a few decades ago.

Today, it no longer matters what questions those two were asking.

For their daughter... who was just over a year old when they went seeking those answers...

God would leap from the page.

God would seek me out. To give me an answer.