Preface to this Day 10 post:

1. When counting the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, Sundays aren’t included. However….somewhere between Israel and home I seem to have lost a day! So this is my “make-up”. =)

2. Part of what I’m going to share has been revised from a post from last year (Day 34) but there’s an update! 

Eighteen months ago our daughter, Kelsey invited Tom and I to lunch. Since Kels doing random nice things is something we’ve come to expect as perfectly normal, we never even saw it coming.

We shared a meal on an outdoor patio on a beautiful, fall day and when we were finished, she pulled an envelope from her backpack, smiling ear to ear and proceeded to tell us this story….

For our 30th anniversary she and our son, Brett wanted to do something special for us, and one of them recalled how much it had meant to Grandma and Grandpa Warren when they went to the Holy Land, and they thought it would be great to be able to send us there too. (And I’m thinking….cool! DVD series?) But she continued to explain how for more than two years they had set money aside, had done research, created spreadsheets, had budgeted and were set to surprise us on our anniversary, October 1, 2013. But their beautiful plan was interrupted in March of that year when we nearly lost our girl in the car accident that would forever change her life.

Kelsey went on to explain that even after her accident they had talked about it and decided to revisit the plan when she was more settled than living in our dining room (before the remodel to make our home accessible.) But the following year we suddenly and tragically lost Brett, and our little family was shaken to its foundation.

In time, Kelsey picked back up “the plan” on her own, adding her own money each month to the money that she and Brett had already saved. (So, now my eyes are beginning to fill up….) It was important to her to finish what she and her brother had planned together years earlier because they had early on decided that this gift money “wasn’t theirs” – it was Mom and Dad’s Holy Land trip money. (Tom and I are both welling up now, and I’m thinking that no matter how much money was in that envelope we would add whatever it would take and make the trip just to honor their incredible thoughtfulness.)

I can still see the beaming smile on her face as Kelsey slid the envelope across the table towards me. I opened it, saw the cashier’s check inside, closed my eyes & passed it to Tom, and we both cried like babies right there on the outdoor patio of Applebees. It was an enormous amount of money for two young adults to collect for anything, let alone to send their parents on a pilgrimage to Israel.

Kelsey explained that it wasn’t a gift from her….it was from both she and her brother and something Brett was doing with her – and in that moment, there were four of us at that table….we were in grateful awe to be receiving a gift from our kids – both of them. None of us will forget that moment….when their act of selflessness brought us all together again. It was a precious gift….and a costly one….but it was given freely out of love. <3

Every moment of this amazing journey through Israel, from beginning to end, was a gift. It was a gift from our kids….and also a deeply healing gift from God. It will take more time for me to synthesize the magnitude of this experience, but I can say with certainty that God’s face has never for a moment been turned from our family. He has been in the joy, in the suffering and also in the healing.

Through these next few weeks we’ll be following Jesus as he walks squarly into his own suffering and gives everything for us. I challenge us to walk with him as closely as we can and learn the lessons that only he can teach.

Thank you so much for your companionship on the way,

Shellie ♥

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