Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Compassion (05/23/24)
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TITLE: Homesick | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ellen Janson
05/30/24 -
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Sitting alone in the bleachers at her 11 year old’s soccer game, she almost felt invisible.
Maura’s husband had taken a new job in a new state far away from everything familiar. She and her youngest three sons moved with him, leaving the two college aged sons behind at their respective universities. She was trying to keep an open mind, but she knew not one soul in Baltimore, and sometimes the tears started without warning.
She missed everything. She missed teachers who knew her family so well because they had watched all five of her boys grow up over the past 14 years. She missed the precious women in her Bible study, who nurtured her in her faith for over ten years and had become dear friends. She even missed the familiar faces of the clerks at the grocery store.
Her heart hurt.
One day Maura was comforting her teen-age son, who had just found out he hadn’t made his high school’s soccer team. He had been the captain of his team at his old school, and it was a devastating blow. She cried with him and heard herself telling him,
”Our God is a God of compassion. Nothing is too small for Him. Just like I am hurting for you, He is hurting for you too. Your pain is real to Him. Talk to Him.”
Hearing her own words as she spoke them to her son, was a turning point for Maura. God saw the hole in her heart too, and hurt for her too. Once her eyes were opened, she began to see His compassion show up for her over and over again in such crazy beautiful ways.
In one of the largest malls in the country, Maura pleaded with Him.
“How long, Lord? How long will it take before I just run into people I know like I used to? A year?” Literally ten minutes later a girl she had met twice stopped,
”Maura? Hi, how are you doing?”
Maura almost laughed out loud at the immediate answer to her lonely prayer.
Standing in the cafeteria at her youngest son’s school, Maura had to choke back the tears. She had forced herself to sign up for “lunch room duty” thinking it would give her son a bit of support while at the same time familiarize her with the school and staff. In their old school she had known every teacher and most children (especially the rambunctious ones), but when Maura looked around this new noisy cafeteria, she didn’t recognize one child or teacher, and she was, apparently, the only helper. Again, she pleaded with God,
“Lord, this is so hard.” Minutes later a girl with beautiful red hair came running in expressing her apologies for being late. When Maura explained that her family had just moved to Baltimore, this beautiful girl saw her heartache and threw her arms around her. By the end of the hour, she was giving Maura all of her contact information with a promise to meet her in the cafeteria the next week. Again, Maura was struck by God’s almost immediate answer to her prayer.
On a morning walk, Maura again cried out to God in her loneliness. Once more her husband was out of town, and she was remembering how much she had enjoyed playing tennis at an indoor club with her sons on these quieter weekends. Within five minutes of this thought, a man carrying a tennis racquet walked past her, and Maura watched him make his way to a public court right up the street from their new house.
Over the next several months, Maura was continually amazed at God’s sweet tender compassion for her. She was still lonely, but she knew without a doubt that He was with her. And she knew that that (and time) was going to be enough until she got used to this new town.
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