S T O N E S
What Stone Will You Let Jesus Roll Away Today?
May 10th, 2023
ADDICTION: Raw
Luke 24:2, ‘But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.’ (NKJV)
“I love the imagery of the stone that covered Jesus’ tomb rolling away when He defeated death. The reality is, we all have stones in our lives…but the good news is: Jesus Christ rolls stones away!” (Christine Caine)
It was late the night the phone finally rang. It lit up the dark room like a ghost had entered, floating in on a prayer. No matter what; any time a cold call comes in the wee hours before dawn, hearts stop beating for a fraction. Likely wondering what other heart stopped beating too. Eerily, they sat up in bed, the silhouette of her husband like a rock rising up out of bed. Her rock. ‘Hello?’ he cleared his voice, sounding like he hadn’t been freshly awakened. Momentarily, she wondered why humans do that? Three in the morning intent on hiding any trace of sleep clotted in drowsy voices. ‘Hello?’ he repeated, sounding even more lively, hitting the speaker button so she could wake up too. She had already jumped up though, throwing on a ragged sweater, her comfort clothing. ‘O my goodness,’ she cried, ‘you called! Where are you?’ ignoring her husband’s violent shaking of his head. They had talked about this a hundred and one times: don’t say anything that will scare her away. Let her come to you. Be patient. Already, she was pulling on her sweats, throwing on her boots.
‘Hey,’ came a thread from what seemed a great distance away. Her voice was pale. ‘Mommy?’ The endless plea hung in their room like a tendril of smoke from a campfire. ‘Daddy. I need you. Can you come get me?’ Like a piece of glass shattering in a thousand shards, came the weeping. ‘Where are you, baby?’ she answered, wanting instead to exclaim, she called me “Mommy!” She called me “Mommy!” It had been years since that word had tumbled from her daughter’s lips. ‘Com’on! Let’s go!’ She motioned to her husband. What was he waiting for, still encased on his side of the bed, rubbing sleepy eyes. She grabbed his hand, trying with all her small might to shuck him from his cocoon. But he held back; it infuriated her with a momma-bear type ferocity. She might bare fangs and come out swinging claws momentarily.
But when they finally did arrive, she painstakingly suddenly understood why. Tears cascaded down her cheeks and filled her nose until she choked. Messy slimy snot stuck, then dried, on her face; any other time in her life and she would have been mortified. ‘This is why,’ he whispered, ‘I hesitated. I didn’t want to see you like this.’ And his voice cracked, like ice on a frozen pond in early January. Burying his face in the steering wheel, he cried like he might have cried as a child, huge sloppy sobs; the kind that come from so deep within, they hurt. Finally, exhausted, his words spent, he barely choked, ‘I was feared she wouldn’t show up. I didn’t want to see you go through losing her all over again.’ He started up the truck and steered it to the entrance of the park they’d agreed to meet at, inching along like she might step out of the shadows suddenly.
It would be months before the phone would dare to ring again. In the middle of the night. The same ghost shimmying through the moonlight, a sliver of hope like a whisper. She’d watched the nightstand where the phone lay on its wireless charger, night after night, for weeks, sleep refusing to come ‘til dawn. She’d urged it to ring, begged it to show up for her daughter. There was a reason why they’d named her ‘Mercy’, she told herself, like a secret confession. But night after endless night, it stayed silent. Her husband too. They’d never talked about that night. When it did ring. When they did hope for just a second too long. She knew he hurt; that he played the sound of his baby girl crying, ‘Daddy! I need you,’ into the phone. ‘Can you come get me?’ on repeat, over and over. They’d never put words to it again. It made it too real, she mused.
They outwaited themselves the next time. Took their time getting dressed, pulling on shorts and hoodies, stepping into flipflops. The last time—she realized she kept comparisons like a Facebook fan—it had been frigid, and she’d been so worried her child would freeze, never once considering in all this time, she hadn’t frozen yet. The moon tarried on the road in front of them as they slowly made their way to the opposite side of the city this time. This time—and a tiny cry escaped her lips—would be different, she swore beneath her breath. She held on to her hope like a prayer; both hands folded over her lap forming a tent. It was filled with pleas.
But this time, they almost missed her. She was so tiny; they drove by and couldn’t see her shadow, a heap on the ground. The last time, they were too early. This time, they were too late. Her husband—the man who answered to ‘Daddy’ when his little girl cried out—slammed on the brakes so fast, she might have gone through the dash if she hadn’t been so tense. They fell out of the truck doors as if they’d never learned to walk.
Her pulse was so thin, it matched her, thready and tired. It was like holding onto a child as he laid their daughter on her lap, not a young adult who should have known better. ‘Hurry! Baby, hurry!’ she pleaded. ‘Maybe we can save her. Maybe this time will be it.’ She really hoped so. She didn’t know how many more times they could go through this. They were a silhouette of the couple, the family, they once had been. She no longer saw the man she married, but instead the father of an addict. When was the last time he had smiled; they had laughed? When had she last been able to take a breath her lungs felt? She felt like a rock, hard, like pumice, pockets of pain sitting on the surface. Nothing soaked in anymore. Too excruciating to feel anything at all. The intense agony she dreaded, that she would drive down the street and find their daughter dead in a gutter more real than any parent should ever have to visualize. ‘Hurry, baby, please!’ she begged. ‘Maybe we can save her this time,’ as she stroked her cheek and refused to notice the hair that came out in small clumps, wound in her fingers. Maybe, she told herself, I’ll never have to do this again. And a sob fell from her lips as she glanced at the outline of her husband’s face in the dawn’s early light. Hurry! her soul cried.
There was a reason why they’d named her ‘Mercy’. Dead things still walk out of tombs when Jesus rolls the stone aside.
“IT IS FINISHED!”
