¿A adónde usted va?

1. A Mi Casa

Tropical Storm Ida drenches the Deep South this day. We pray they do not flood our state. We thank God the storm waters rivulet away, down streams to fill reservoirs of lakes that overflow into deep channel rivers which return the freshened waters home to the vast saltiness of the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico.

My beloved husband just returned home from an AFB by the Gulf of Mexico, the first of four work trips before Christmas. I have two bilingual pals just home from overseas trips. But this first blog of this multipart series begins with another trip home. My mom's.

My pretty, multi-lingual mom has a vast library of travelogues, after all, she's had over eight decades of active walking and touring the world. A Filipina nurse in the Japanese occupation my mother also survived a choppy, double oceanic voyage to New Jersey to further her education and help fill America's nursing shortage. My mother moved to study in the Midwest where she met her husband and birthed three of six girls. Four decades ago, she endured her eldest girl's whining on the train to the coast, to the city she'd build a house that is still home today.

Mommy never learned to drive a car, even after Daddy went home to heaven. Family helped her get around town. She loves to ride the bus and take five-mile walks. Until 2008 you could find her weekdays carting bag loads home with a whistle to scare would be thieves. Her bus stops were only a block up or down from our hilltop street.

It was too easy for her to attend Sunday mass, the bus stop maybe a hundred feet from the church doors. This past Sunday would not be different except for that wide elastic wrap she wound around her knee. "My leg felt funny when I got up," she told me on the phone.

On the way out from church that funny leg wanted to collapse. At first Mommy did what she did to her whining child. She scolded it to behave. Then she did what she always does for her kids. She prayed.

"Lord, please help me get home," she pled that morning.

It doesn't take a crisis for my mom to turn to Notre Padre, Deo Sanctus. Her life experiences (even hard ones), her prayerful healthy habits, her Sunday devotion to hear universal truth, receive forgiveness, and to worship, God uses to bless and model how I can fully walk through life day by day.

By faith I will get to my final home as my mom did to her temporal home Sunday. My legs may give out on me, still Unfailing Jesus Love will get me there. Hallelujah!