Blessed Be Your Name

When I have news, I call my Mamaw.

This is just how it is. Some people call their moms. Some people call their sisters. Me, I call my Mamaw.

I like the fact that no matter what time of day I call, I can lean into the receiver and catch--in just a few seconds of air space--the ambiance that gives me a complete picture of what I'm missing. The hum of a fan? She's in the kitchen, flour-dusted apron tied 'round her ample front, heavy black cast iron skillets sprawling on the stove top. Stillness? She's leaned back in her salmon-colored LA-Z-Boy napping with my Papaw at her side in his own, toffee-toned chair. The rumble of a train approaching? She's on the front porch, a too-tall tumbler of iced tea at her side and her Frank's Funeral Home paper fan spread out on her lap, waiting for action.

On Wednesday, it was very hot. Hot enough to break our local record. Hot enough, apparently, for a homeschooling family down the street to test the "fry an egg on the sidewalk" notion. Hot enough, in other words, to be news.

So I picked up the phone in a quiet moment and called my Mamaw.

In the second it took for the ringing to stop and my Mamaw's voice to be heard, there was a still silence. Ah, I smiled. Nap time. I conjured images of my Mamaw tilted back with her feet in the air, her Bible open on her chest, mouth slightly agape. This is how she naps. This is how she has napped for the 28 years of my grandfather's retirement: fully, deeply, with no aspirations of anything but total rest.

"Hell-uh," she answered.

And immediately, I knew that something was not right. Because when you know someone well enough to taste the flavor of their day in the space of a simple word, you can feel such things.

I did not ask immediately what was wrong. Hear my heart here and know this: there are things too fearsome of which to speak. Things grown-ups hide from. Things you will cover over with small-talk about the weather, the babies ... anything but the silence that will invite the bad news to come.

"It's hot here. Real hot. You watched the weather station?" I rushed, slipping comfortably into the accent and speech pattern that makes my children wrinkle their noses.

"I seen it," she told me, her voice still distant. "Over a hundred. And you with no air." My grandmother suffered through thirty years of no air conditioner, and she counts it among one of life's greatest luxuries.

"Yeah. It's 90 degrees in my house right now."

"Huh."

Then, pinching my eyes closed so that I could shut out the whirling madness of the fans around me, I asked.

"What's wrong?"

"Bad news, Baby," she croaked, using the family name that has followed me into my coming middle age. I didn't have to hear the rest, but she had to tell it. Our prayers had gone unanswered. The surgery she'd endured just a few weeks before to rid her body of the cancer clutching her insiders had failed to free her. Radiation would be necessary.

"No." I didn't just think it, I said it. Because when our hearts kick against our chests and our tears want to come crashing out, we let meaningless words stand guard. "No."

"That's what the doctor said." Her voice was small and quiet, like a child explaining something they would rather not.

I had looked up the odds when the first announcement had come. Good odds. As long as the surgery makes headway, you're home free, the websites said. So I put my hope in YAHWEH first, the surgery second, and my Mamaw's fierce reputation as a fighter third.

I prayed as hard as I ever have. God, please heal her. Please, make her better. Please, let her be o.k.

And for a few short, sweet days, I listened on the other end of the phone line and felt as if the prayers of hundreds of His people had been answered. My grandmother was one of those blessed to dodge the bullet. She's fine. It worked.

Except that it didn't.

I told my Mamaw on the phone that I'm not ready to let her go. That I love her too much to imagine a world where all of the memories we share just between us two are held in my mind alone. We prayed together--a wet, choking prayer on my end that the Holy Spirit took to the throne. My grandmother's voice held firm and fast:

"Father, you know I don't want this. I was lookin' forward to a few more good years on this nice earth that you give us. But if I'm comin' home, then I'm comin' home. Your will, Jesus."

Your will, Jesus.

Shortly after my most painful miscarriage--the one in January '06-- I had a profound, awful, amazing worship experience. As my church family raised their voices to "Blessed Be Your Name," I found myself on my knees, unable to even give voice to the lyrics that so clearly spoke what was between my heart and the Lord's:

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name



I wasn't sure I could ever stand again in the presence of such a mighty, powerful, good and just God. The carpet bit my knees as I cowered and cried out to Him. Every hurt of the past month washed over me as my church family sang the words for me.

Talking to my grandmother brought me back to that place. If you've ever hurt in places words alone can not heal, then you know the place I'm talking about. The aching, raw spots that God's hands alone can reach. The place where you truly end ... and He begins.

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

The Lord gives. Oh, does He give. I hold in my arms and heart two beloved little boys given to us only through the grace and healing joy of Jesus. A good measure. Pressed down. Overflowing.

But He also takes away. And someday--maybe soon-- He will call my Mamaw to Him. She will go with great celebration: the life of a woman whose prayer warrior reputation precedes her into heaven rejoiced over. She will wait for me and for countless others that she has led to Christ with her patient, quiet witness, her tending of the sick and her visiting of the shut-in.

She will sing again. She will be free. Oh, how I long to see that day. The day when the ravages of age slip away, and I can look into her clear eyes again. A day when maybe, if heaven is what I think it is, I will taste her chicken and dumplings again and not feel guilty for all the pain her arthritis caused her as she labored, hunched over a hot stove just to see my delight in her skills.

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Man does not know the hour. But truthfully, even if I did, I would be no more ready to let my Mamaw go to a place where I can not call her when it's too hot, or a child says something cute, or I need a recipe. Maybe this is why God doesn't bother letting us in on His timing. What good would it do our selfish hearts, after all?

I'm trying, right now, to be ready. I'm praying--constantly, day and night--that His hand of healing holds fast over my Mamaw. I'm asking for twenty more years with this woman who is so much to me. But oh, I'll take whatever you have to give, Jesus. Just ... not today.

But the day will come, of course. Now, or 10 years on. It's coming. And when it does, I need to hit my knees, then find my way back to standing. Because He gives and takes away. But my heart must choose to seek my Creator's face and choose to say, "Blessed be Your name!"