We're driving down the old crumbly dirt road of Rehobeth Alabama, and it's hard not to get sentimental. There's really no reason to go back now. I had packed my black dress for the second time. It seemed like yesterday we were driving this same stretch for Mogee's funeral. A month and a week after, Papa Louis was buried beside her. It's hard to put into words what's in my head, the memories are only so bittersweet. The screen door to their house still screeched every time I opened it, but it's not the same.
Mom said the house would be on the market soon, and we all consented but the only thing I won't sell is the memories I have. They can't take that away. The house echoed a little from missing furniture, and missing picture frames. I heard the rumble of voices going through their stuff and talking about the "good days." I took a letter I had written Mogee, folded it in my hand and didn't take anything else. I then walked outside. The porch swing in the front provided some solitude and time to think.
When was the last time I was here? No, really here. With both Mogee and Papa Louis--like it was supposed to be. It was in the heat of August--I remembered. When your hair stuck to the back of your neck in the Alabama heat, and the lightning bugs danced in the twilight.
A week prior to that August visit. I had my first heartbreak. Nothing really can prepare you for that. All you can do is hope that the pain would ease a little, and pray you never have to go through it again. I knew Mogee would love on me and convince me with her words that everything was going to be ok, and still tell me to find God's faithfulness in this situation, and she did. I didn't cry much because I already felt drained, but when I sat on the couch she told me something I had heard many times before but it rang true even more now. "If God brings you to it, he'll bring you through it." In that old country home, Mogee meant more to me then she had in my entire life. She was loving, kind--she was hope. And from then I acknowledged this heartbreak as a part of his plan. "Lord this is yours, do what you will."
Then the first wave of peace came I have probably felt in my entire life. I was driving down the same old stretch of country road behind their house, and listening to "Worn" by Tenth Avenue North." It played through my very veins and tears streamed down my face and I was truly humbled. The words continued. "A song can rise from the ashes of a broken life, and all that's dead inside can be reborn." Hardships shape us, form us, make us. And we must learn to embrace hardships as an opportunity to glorify HIM even more. That day, on that very road--I made a decision. Was I going to let this heartbreak define me? Or refine me? Of course I chose refine. But I am helpless on my own. So Lord you refine me. Make me new.
Then senior year. I had to focus on studies and my future. It was a tough year, but filled with memories and hard work. Two weeks till graduation mom got the call. Mogee had passed away in her sleep. I didn't cry right away, because it hadn't hit me. But when it did, it did.
I spoke at her funeral. I pulled out a poem I wrote her at age 12, dusty and old. I read it first. Then I swallowed my tears and unfolded my short speech. I read it, but it wasn't enough to explain the legacy that she left behind--the impact she had on so many lives. The impact she especially had on me during that tough time in August. The blank faces I saw in the pews each had their own struggles I knew, but here I was--a living testimony of her words. God brought me through my hardship. He had refined me. He delivered me--even by using sweet people like my precious Mogee to encourage me, to provide hope. That when we face trials, it's not the end. But a beginning.
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