The past few years our family has been distant, disconnected, bitter, angry.. etc etc etc. In October of last year my mom had called me crying. She asked me if God wasn't healing her because she didn't have enough faith. I felt so over whelmed for her to think she felt she could control being healed if she just believed enough. It was such a God moment. I could feel every word coming out of my mouth like it was dream. In slow motion. I felt God give me the words and knew the answer. God wasn't healing her physically but he was healing her. He was healing her and her family emotionally. That the healing going on was far more important for the generations to come than her living. That because of her illness walls were being broken down. Things were changing. She started sobbing and said that my words confirmed what she had already felt she knew. I wonder if at that moment she knew death was close?
As Thanksgiving moved closer this year there was so much reflection and feelings. It was this time last year on our usual drive to Potrero to camp with about 20 friends is when I received the call saying my mom had a week at the most to live. The last Thanksgiving I spent with my mom was at Potrero. We were going to have to turn around. Thanksgiving at Potrero was not going to be the same this year... I remember the rush of so many feelings. The calls I knew I had to make. The fact all of us were in the car together as I received the most horrible news. I felt so vulnerable to be feeling everything that I was feeling with everyone in the car. It was one of those moments I wanted to fall apart and felt I had to keep it together for the sake of everyone else. I wanted to be so far away from where I was. To run, and have it all go away.
This year as years past we packed up the trailer, the family, and made the drive to Potrero. We hung out with friends, we laughed, ate and made memories. BUT things were different this year..... We arrived in our normal spot #3 and I could visually remember standing there 1 year earlier crying in my husbands arms being so angry that that she was going to die. I had no faith that day and couldn't comprehend any good coming from any of this. As Thanksgiving day this year came, I pulled out my moms traditional turkey platter that we always had when I was a child, I placed the cranberry sauce in her dish as she always placed it. I had such joy. To be spending this Thanksgiving remembering old ones, old traditions, the things that once were. In the year since I received the worst news of my life, God held true to the revelation he had given me in that conversation that October! That morning I received a text for from my dad, he was coming up, and then my sister called she to was coming up. I haven't spent Thanksgiving with my father.. well in forever! But for the first time in years, we spent Thanksgiving as a complete family (OK- minus 1 sister but she was invited and couldn't make it) but my oldest sister and I camped and hosted, my father came, my other sister made the drive, all of our kids, we laughed, we took pictures and enjoyed each others company with out judgement or anger! I felt the greatest joy inside, to know we were better than we had been in years. We were a family!!
