Saying Goodbye to a Perfect Morning.

Sunrise on flat
Quiet.
My tea and me and my Bible waiting for today's holiness to unfold.

The wren stops to perch on the rail, chattering her good morning. Somewhere not too far away, a woodpecker is drilling out breakfast. The humming bird makes a quick buzz by, hovering to check again on the red of my dress, just for a second, then off she goes. A chipmunk has already bounded little bounds up the deck stairs, taken a peanut from my hand, and run off to store it against the winter.

This is it. My last ritual of cottage before letting time move me forward and into all that's about to be. Time of resting and away is rested and gone. Soon I will climb into this boat and journey back to joining the journey with all the wonderful everyones of my amazingly connected life.

But right now He has given again this gift of the perfect morning. I revel in it this one, last, this-year time, feeling many things but most of them all, grateful.

I revel in the gratitude of this waking home-going day.

I am not so sure that when my entire time on this planet it done, I will leave wherever it is that I have just left my body and step through a warm haze to a place that looks suspiciously like our marina.

Jesus will be there, in t shirt and jeans and bare feet, rope in hand, smiling and waving me over to the boat. I'll get to Him, and He'll be crying and I'll be crying, and we'll be hugging, we're so glad to see each other. Then we'll pull it together and He'll invite me me to get into the boat.

The ride will be wild and freeing, the wind ridding my soul of any earthly leftovers; all the stress and sadness and the ugliness blowing hard away. We'll move through the channels and it will all smell so good and the colours will be piercingly vivid, and it will be all open space and sky and water.

Then we'll come out into that opening just after Tomahawk Island, where I can see Giant's Tomb Island, and it will be rough like it mostly is. But just for fun, Jesus will look at me and laugh. and He'll say, 'Be still!' And suddenly we'll be gliding the rest of the way across on glass.

But it won't be until that final approach into the Freddy that things will get really quiet. Deeply quiet, and building. From the roar of the full out, to the pulling back of the way you make no wake. Slowly we will make our way down and around, past the docks of the church, and into our little bay as it opens up.

My heart will feel like it always does when I do this ride the first time every year; trembling with a big joy that won't sit still, only I think this will be much, much worse.

We'll get to the dock, and pull in slowly. I'll be crying again already. Jesus will get out first, I think. He'll offer me His hand and I'll climb out to stand beside Him. With His arm around my shoulder, He'll point up to the cottage, and say, "Here Ruth Anne. Well done. This? It's yours.

"I've been getting it ready just for you."

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network