Reunion

But their mother was the family’s heartbeat. Always she was at the center of their good and bad times, lending perspective or a kind word or a shoulder to cry on.

She liked thinking that people in heaven had a window to earth, a way to see what they needed to pray about, but through the tearless veil of heaven’s understanding.

And though the clapping came from the family and friends that filled the church, she was sure she heard a distant clapping, too. A clapping of all the angels in heaven and earth who knew that a moment like this could only come from one source. Their loving, faithful Almighty God.

All of it was proof that God would always have the last word when it came to life-and-death situations.

But even now it wasn’t bigger than the God they’d spent a lifetime serving.

Landon . . . in the painting that is our lives, all we’ve been through together to this point is only the backdrop. Today—” she sucked in a deep breath—“this moment . . . is the first stroke, the beginning of the most beautiful picture. A picture even I can’t imagine.

Elizabeth thought about God, the Lord and Savior she’d spent a lifetime worshiping. Being a believer meant there’d be times like this; wasn’t that what she’d learned over the years? Times when nothing made sense and all she could do was dig her fingernails into her faith and hold on for dear life.

He needs the Lord, but I think right now God scares him.” Jim exhaled hard. “As if he knows God’s chasing him, and he’s determined to run until he hits a brick wall.

Somehow dying was like that. A sense of nervousness and finality and sorrow because for a season, they wouldn’t be together.

Her plan was to be so comforted by the host of blessings she’d been given that when she reached the current day she’d be able to fall asleep.

God had been faithful time and time and time again. That was the type of God the Baxters served. No, they didn’t always get the answers they wanted. But they always got the right answers, even now with her cancer.

Ashley talked to her siblings every day, and all of them were praying, praying with a kind of fervor none of them had known before. Not because they doubted God’s faithfulness in hearing their prayers and answering. But because they appreciated her so much more now, appreciated everything she’d ever done, every perfect word or loving touch. Before they might’ve taken her for granted once in a while, the way kids sometimes do with their parents. But not anymore.

Though it was the worst season in her life, something wonderful came of it. She found a relationship with Jesus.

Every time I brought a baby home from the hospital I felt that this was the reason God had given me life. So I could raise my babies and give my family a life they would always remember, a life that would teach them to do the same thing for the people they loved one day.

You see . . . God had a plan for you all along.” Elizabeth looked at the other girls. “He always has a plan for us; either to give us a hope and a future here in this world. Or—” she smiled and waited for her emotions to level out—“or in the next.

That’s what it comes down to.” Elizabeth worked the last few buttons together. She stopped to cough, but only for a moment. “He alone knows the number of our days, and until that moment, he always has a plan for us.