Let's take a ride.

When I walked into the house, Rhon was sitting in her chair. I could tell she was tired but asked anyway if she’d like to take a spin and put her feet up on the dashboard. She collected her hat and her scarf and her cane and we took a ride with the top down. We drove through Old Salem, up Main, down 4th to Broad, Brookstown and back down Main. It wasn’t a long ride, but I kept thinking, “What would I want to see before I leave?” The streets? The neighborhoods? The sidewalks? This city that has cradled our secrets and our sadness and our laughter? This old city…the city that has welcomed us home every time we traveled across the ocean or north for Thanksgiving dinner. Broken streets…red…green…yellow. We didn’t say much. There really isn’t much more that needs saying. Just to be together in the warmth of an odd March sun was good.

Friends, my sense is that Rhonda’s face is turning towards the other City. You know, the city without walls…the city with a river whose streams make it glad…the holy place where the Most High dwells? The city that does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it because the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp? Her senses are shifting, her face is turning. These old haunts of home don’t seem to offer the same satisfaction or peace or rest they had even a week ago. Her full citizenship is about to be transferred to that city where on no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night..................And it’s a strange place to be beside her in a convertible with the top down on day like that. Rhonda Jean Dering about to find herself Elsewhere. No longer an alien in this land and who can see, not so far off, that Figure on the seashore preparing her dinner............And me...........with my hands on the wheel and my foot on the brake watching it all about to waken. Friends, pray grace and mercy as she says goodbye. Pray grace and mercy to let her go.
Always,
Phyl