traces.

It was just like you always did it, mom. I dug out all the boxes we marked up last year and hauled them all upstairs. I took the four wreathes I found and lined them up on the garage floor. I put on the Christmas music just like you always did. Natalie came over to help me. We put up all the ornaments, especially your favorites. She liked the ones with the little Hershey's guy on them. You would've liked Natalie, mom. She likes Avalon and Christmas and England, just like you did. I let her pick out the wreath for the front door, and I think she picked out the same one that you would have. I got out the red candles for the dining room, even though we've never used them. I plugged in the little cottage that you'd always put on the kitchen counter in our old house. Natalie put some garland around the bench in the foyer, just like you did last year. She wouldn't stop until it was just right, just like you always were. She left after a few hours of decorating, and dad went out to do some errands, and I was alone in a makeshift home. I was left with traces of your voice singing your favorite Christmas carols. I was left with the scent of your pancakes lingering in the air. I was left with mere traces, and as I turned to go downstairs, I thought I saw you sitting on the couch, reading Marley & Me, drinking your Earl Gray tea. But I didn't take a second glance. I slowly made my way down the steps, tracing my fingers along the railing.

the process.

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes, "I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernal of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in 'the High Countries'. In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at the end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven." That is, to say that if we finish the Race and look back over our lives, we will see everything in light of the glory of Christ. All of the suffering and pain; heartbreak and tears; loss and betrayal; all will merge into the singular path that led us Home. As Jill Philips sings in her song All the Good Things, "If I could see like you do, with your perspective view...I would count all these days among all the good things you've done for me." We can barely see what's in front of our faces, much less the grand scheme of things. Who are we do argue that our struggles won't be transformed into later glory? John Newton said, "We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage." Charles Spurgeon said, "God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart." We get only glimpses of who God is, and from those glimpses we must trust, believe, and have faith. As Lewis also writes in A Grief Observed, "The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal." Let us embrace all that this life entails, clinging to the hope of His future glory.