Pss. 147:4 “He
telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.”
Middle of Nowhere
It hit me and it hit me hard when I realized I’m out in the
middle of nowhere, especially when the urgency to get back home became some
kind of fantasy trip never to be had. I suddenly felt alone, alone and
wandering like the couple in the Children of the Corn movie, where every road
that they turned down basically led to nowhere.
I remember being back in Dallas when the panic call came
that my mother had a stroke, my dad wanted me home and he’d pay for everything
just to see me back there consoling my mother. In less than 24 hours we boarded
a plane and landed at BWI airport. It took us 20 minutes to get to the airport
where we’d board a three-hour flight bound for the east coast. Easy peasy!
When the call came in that my father had passed, I wrestled
with what had to be done. I thought another easy flight plan was in store for
my near future but no, it just wasn’t meant to be. The cheapest airline tickets
ranged from $337 – $557 round trip. That is not including hotel and car rental
and of course the food we’d need to eat. We’re talking close to $2000 - $3000
trip for the three of us to get back to my hometown. That doesn’t include the
gas that we’d need to make a three-four hour trip to Omaha to catch the plane.
It’s not like people have money just lying around waiting to
help a poor soul, they have lives and needs themselves. My dilemma is my
dilemma and as it would be, it just isn’t meant for me to go back and see my
family during one of the hardest times in their lives.
When my brother looked at the google earth map he realized
something and exclaimed, “You live out in the middle of nowhere! Literally!”
Tell me something I DON’T know! I look at the map and it looks like a simple
straight line from Nebraska to Baltimore but there is more than meets the eyes
there!
We have an airport 3-4 hours away. We don’t have bus
stations or trains that could just whisk me away on a trip to Baltimore as easy
as it was when we lived in Dallas. We literally live out in the middle of
nowhere! We don’t even have a place to call to deliver food out here, that’s
how far away we are from the main town.
My only connection at this time is facebook via computer and
my phone. I don’t have one of those ‘Smart
Phones’ that everybody uses to surf the worldwide web; I don’t have the
luxury of ‘facetime’, whatever that is, and no one back home has a way to allow
me to SEE the family I long to be with at this time.
I have to sit here out in the middle of nowhere and grieve
in my own way. It’s hard but I’m muddling through, writing every day whether
it’s something to post or not to post. I clean, I rake, I do whatever my back
will allow. I know my limits.
I call my mother just to hear her voice in the morning and
at night to make sure she takes her medicine. That is what my dad did and she
tells me that sometimes if I hadn’t called, she would have surely forgotten to
take her meds. She sounded really good last night as opposed to the other
tearful three weeks; she laughed and I know I heard her smile right through the
phone. She sounded as if one-thousand pounds of stress had been lifted off her
shoulders. Yes she’s grieving but she is also accepting that this is what was
meant to be.
I walked out the back door and looked up at the billions of
stars in the sky out in the middle of nowhere and said to my father, “Dad,
she’s going to be all right.”
Just at that moment a shooting star danced across the sky. I
whispered, “You show off.”
1 Cor. 15:41 “There is one glory of the sun, and
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star
differeth from another star in glory.”
