Chapter One

It was the day I had dreaded all my life. It didn't matter that I was an alleged adult with children of my own. I just wasn't ready for my mother to die.

Standing by her bed I became a small girl again, staring at the familiar shape of my mom's still hand, weeping and wanting only to hold it, warm once more.

I did not know where the day of dread would lead. To my wonder, it opened the door to a flood of fresh grace. Riding it, I've been upended, soaked, carried far downstream ... and lifted, always lifted, by the buoyant gift of a grateful heart.

That bequest, it seems, was my mother's parting surprise.

I too had been a surprise. Mom had me at age forty-three, back in a time when middle-aged mothers weren't the norm. She had seriously spaced her children-I had siblings ten, twenty, and twenty-five years older. When I was little, my parents were my grandparents. At age ten I earnestly made my mom promise to live until she was eighty. That seemed impossibly far away, and Jesus would certainly return before then anyway.

He didn't.

But over the years, more than I realized, I learned about Him from the depth and breadth of my mother's bond. Her love was secure ... not based on who I was or what I did, but on who she was.

I thought of her today. Two birds wheeled in flight at the edge of the woods beyond our backyard. They were synchronized, wingtip to wingtip. Then one diverged and veered off sharply. I could not see where it went. The other continued alone.

Then, unexpectedly, came the tea