I was riding home from my mother’s funeral. It had been a trying week to say the least. Only a week prior on Easter Sunday, I was returning home from spending the day with my sister and her family. I had an urgent message on my recorder. The man on the machine identified himself as a doctor at a hospital in Springfield. The doctor went on to say that my mother had had an aneurysm and was in critical condition. My mother died on Easter.
I had already been to Springfield five times that week and once to Indiana for her funeral. I had given her eulogy. It was a very healing yet emotional time for me. On the way home, I was exhausted and felt like a little girl that needed a parent’s arms wrapped around her. I was praying, looking out the window of the vehicle into the darkness. I was looking at the sky trying to see the stars. I just wanted to see the stars as if seeing them would be proof of my Father’s existence.
It was an overcast night.
My sister-in-law was with me and needed to get home to her parents in Springfield. It was already late and we were so tired, but she had dogs that needed attention. After getting back to my hometown, we continued on to Springfield. I was determined to come back home and sleep in my own bed. It would have been another hour and fifteen-minute drive. I had to surrender the last hope of driving back because it was 2:00 a.m. when we finally arrived. Tired and broken, I retired to her brother’s bedroom assigned to me for the night. I turned out the lights and lay down to pray. I opened my eyes and I saw hundreds of tiny stars all over the ceiling and walls. I felt as if I were in a sleeping bag, in a quiet pasture, under the heavens themselves.
Her brother had pasted hundreds of little stars all over his room and my Father met me there and answered the cry of my heart that only He could have known.
Written in 1998
Uncovered 