Though healing had began its process in the deepest, darkest days of Winter, Spring had not quite come yet. God does work in mysterious ways. At the moment when she needed to know of God's love and mercy most, she received it. But she had no idea how necessary His strength would be in the days ahead.
After the mountaintop, one must face the valley. Two brief days later, she received a message, whose contents would be ever seared in her mind. "We are praying for your father. We hope he makes it through." What? What has happened? What could this possibly mean? Scrolling through messages she had not been able to access in her 24 hours of travel, she received word that her father was in a coma and that she needed to immediately return back to the frozen forests of the North, half a world away. Even in that moment, Father sent people to walk beside her and set her on this unexpected journey home. Hand in hand with her Heavenly Father, she went to see her earthly father for what would be the last time.
The rest was a blur. Foreign airports, restless nights. Seeing beloved faces at the airport and in the ICU entryway. Her mother holding her hand and breaking the news that they would take her father off life support in a few short hours, but offering time alone with him, though he was already in a coma. The realization he was already gone, but staying to praise and worship God in that place. Funeral arrangements. Obituaries. Eulogies. Trying to fill in a host of paperwork, in Canada and Japan. A flurry of activity.
Then silence.
In a state of numbness, life continued on. There were children to love and feed. Animals that also needed care. Life would go on, even if she could not.
Then after a bit of reprieve in the land of ice and snow among those that she so dearly loved, she headed back to another, quite different place that also had captured her heart and soul. To be caught between to worlds that she equally loved was a terrible, wonderful thing. She was the most cursed, and most blessed of all people. Cursed to never in this life have everyone she loved in one place. Blessed that no matter where on earth she went, there would always been the joy of seeing another dear face.
But one loss was soon followed by another, than another. Graduation in Japan had come and gone, and so were many of the people she had met last year. Though it had been brief, she still felt the loss. And yet an even heavier burden to bear, her Grandma soon followed after her father. The loss of her youngest child had weighed to much on her heart, and she quickly passed through the pearled gates to be at last in Father's presence. Fourteen years a widow had been hard on her at times, and while she still loved her family, she had often spoken of finally going Home.
Loss. It seemed that life would never be free from sorrow. After traversing the valleys of the previous year, she didn't think that should would have strength to face such loss, so soon. Her love-sick heart, being newly mended, didn't want to face the loss of two close family members. But she came to see that as long as she was on this earth, that as long as she loved someone, or something, there would be pain, loss and inevitably sorrow. There was no where for her to run and hide from it. She must face it.
However, sorrow didn't have to drown out the joy; it could enrich joy as long as it didn't make her bitter. And she didn't want to be become bitter again. The lessons Father had taught her about gratitude while in the Valley of the Shadow of Death should not be so easily forgotten. Though excruciating, she began to see that walking with Father down these paths, He was enabling her heart to be more thankful, more patient, more gracious and more compassionate than she had been before. He was transforming her, and the job wasn't nearly finished yet.
And with that news, the sakura began to bloom. Spring had come.
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