Ten Years Out....

It has been one VERY FULL weekend. That was good, in many ways, because it kept me occupied nonstop for two whole days. But am I ever exhausted today! I took a three hour nap starting the minute I got home from church because I was just wiped out. I didn't even eat lunch first!

Yesterday was the official 10-year reunion day. It started with class receptions for all the 10 year interval classes. The receptions were held in Teter Cafe, which is this little Applebees-style corner of our dining hall. It's named after one of the original buildings on campus, Teter Hall, (it no longer stands) and has a lot of old college memorabilia in it.

Dr. Smith made the rounds talking to each of us, which I thought was very nice.

This is my friend, Amy. She got married after our sophomore year of college, but she'd still hang out in our campus apartment in between classes. Very fun friend!

Jenny went with me too. (She stayed at my house Friday night and we stayed up until about 1 in the morning talking and having fun!)

The lovely ladies of Eastburn....Bekah, Jenny, Amy, and Faith.

After the reception, we were supposed to have lunch out at the athletic fields. As you can see, the weather wasn't exactly conducive...so we had lunch inside instead. But we still went out for a walk around campus. Lovely day for a tour!!

Faith and Amy had lived in Shatford House their freshman year....

I played "official tour guide" since I had given campus tours this summer. That day was much nicer. No umbrella needed then!

The hall of world changers with all the bronze busts that scare me.

Since no one was in the prayer chapel when we went in...I took a few pictures. I cannot tell you how much I love this place. This is the front. The sculpture is of Jesus agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane. He's holding a cup in His hand (to symbolize "let this cup pass from me").

The beautiful stained glass window above the door to the chapel...

The pews and windows....

Outside the chapel....

Jenny and I lived in Evans Hall our first two years of college....

After we toured campus, we went back in the Student Center to get some coffee from McConn. When we were students, McConn was an old church building that had been converted into the cutest little coffee shop. They ended up tearing it down to build something else, and the new coffee shop was named McConn in its honor. Faith tried out one of their candy frappes...

And I had a London Fog. It's some sort of chai, I think. SO GOOD.

All in all...a great day with my friends. Great day of reliving memories of classes, friends, professors, and crazy stuff we did!

There is one more "little" detail about homecoming to report, so come back tomorrow!!

Homecoming Alumni Banquet

It's true.

I'm not old enough to have been out of college for ten years.

But somehow I ended up receiving notifications that this year was my ten year reunion from IWU. Since I work there, Homecoming is usually just another weekend out of the year for me, but this year I decided to participate since it was monumental!

Last night was the alumni banquet, so I thought I'd let you see what sorts of fun took place. I do have to make a significant disclaimer about the photography. I had MAJOR camera drama yesterday. My camera requires 4 batteries at a time to operate. I have two identical sets of rechargeable batteries and yesterday I charged up one set, dumped them in the camera bag, and off I went. Problem was...they were mixed in with the uncharged batteries...and I didn't know which ones were "good!" So all night I had to keep swapping out batteries, hoping for a magic combo. As a result, my camera kept dying during photos and the focus on some is just awful. So sorry!


Okay. This year's theme for Homecoming is....

And last night was the banquet for all alumni. Those who had been out of college for 50 and 60 years were honored by name, but the banquet was open to any alumni...

You know Faith. You've seen her on here before. Faith and I met in college when we became roommates in a (no longer existing...sniff, sniff) apartment. I met her through my roommate, who had gone to high school with her. So last night, we were banquet buddies!!

My good friends Bill and Kristin. Kristin and I work together, but we first met in college. (Kristin is my voice of wisdom on a daily basis and Bill is the advisor of all my electronics purchases!)

Dr. Newman kind of ran the program for the evening. He is (according to the handy dandy schedule we received) the VP for University Relations.

Camera goes dead blurry picture #1. :( This is our current president, Dr. Henry Smith. He has been our president for the last four years, I believe.

This is Dr. Barnes, who was the president when I was a student. (I think they said yesterday he was president of IWU for 19 years overall.) Yesterday they named the Student Center in his honor. (Well, and his wife's, too.)

It's true. Jonathan is EVERYWHERE. :) At the end of the banquet, one of the student groups sang us a lil song. The group, One Voice, magically has Mr. Jonathan in it! I don't think he knew I was back there, but it was so nice of him to look at the camera for me.

After the banquet, there were some dessert receptions around the Barnes Student Center, and this was one of them. The Wind Ensemble alums played some selections....and Miss Kristin (see above photo) was one of the participants!

And then down in the piazza...look who was singing! Yep, it was Chorale. Here, they were singing their Rain out of Africa song. That's probably not even remotely close to what it's really called, but I know all those words appear in the song at some point in time.

I HATE it that this picture is blurry. They invited the chorale alums up to sing my favorite (though I highly doubt that's why they sang it) - A Mighty Fortress. Jenny, my college roomie, was in Chorale, so she went up to sing. That's her on the end in the front row. I was SUCH a Chorale groupie in college.

Camera is really really going dead...so we didn't have a chance to see that we needed to redo this one so Jenny could smile! :( Faith, Jenny, and me. We sat back here at this table and talked forever, even after the Chorale stopped singing.

They invited the alums back up to sing A Mighty Fortress again...because Dr. Barnes had missed it the first time. If you'd like to play a little game of "Where's Jonathan?" - he's in there!

After we were all done, we took a walk around campus. I wanted to take some pictures because the buildings are so pretty all lit up. "Some" turned in to "one" because of the battery issue. This is the little prayer chapel I love so much.

Show Us Your Life: My Confused Dining Room

I like for every room in my home to have a nice theme and purpose. They don't all have to match each other, but I like for them to be put together on their own. The one room in my home that has NEVER succeeded is my dining room. It is so confused, poor thing!


Well, to be honest, THIS is my dining room:
It's true. I'm one of those people who eats on the couch in front of the TV. GASP!! I was not raised to do that. We always ate dinner as a family while sitting around the table. And if I had a family, I'd carry on that tradition. But it's just me and I can be a rebel, so I eat right here.


Having said that, I do have a dining room, so here it is in all its purposeless glory!


The lady who lived here before me also wallpapered the ceiling of this room. But it's never been painted, like the living room, so here it is - au naturale.

Right now, my dining room holds three bookshelves. That won't be the case much longer, as Dad is about to build some bookshelves in my new office. But for now...

...meet the nonfiction shelves. I l-o-v-e books. LOVE them.

I also have this beautiful poem, which my friend Sarah wrote. Sarah was a temp in our office a few years ago and she and I became very good friends during that time. We shared a lot of struggles over singleness and finding God's purpose for us, so when Sarah wrote this, she wanted to share it with me. It is a beautiful comfort and challenge, and I love displaying it in my home.

More pictures!! :) This is my twin. I mean my niece. Isn't it scary how much we look alike?

After visiting the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago, I was inspired to get some pumpkins for the dining room table centerpiece. I put them on a meat platter. :)

Yes, I do have a dining room table. When I first moved into this house, my sister Lori passed down to me the HUGE dining room table my grandparents used to have in this house. (I think Lori had owned it since she got married 25 years ago.) I loved the table, but it was huge and took up more space than my house has to offer. So I bequeathed it to a friend of mine and bought this high square table instead. It's GREAT for scrapping. My back doesn't hurt nearly as much! Oh and I put it together myself, thankyouverymuch.

If I had to declare a theme for this room, it would be the "heritage" room. I have a lot of pictures of my family in here. A few years ago, my aunt made this collage of my grandma's early-year pictures. It was a gift for Mom, but I loved it so much that I asked for one of my own. This is the grandma who lived in this house where I live.

And my grandpa...

The fiction bookshelf. I haven't read a ton of fiction in recent years, so these are mostly the books I grew up on, but I love them so....

A few years ago, I made one of these for myself, my parents, and each of my sisters. One side has all our baby pictures....

And the flip side has us now....

I am not anti-Halloweeen, but I don't like to get super crazy with decorations for it. Some are just way too creepy and some are way too cheesy. I noticed that this year, Meijer has some "classier" Halloween decorations. I liked this one.

OOH! Who is this in my dining room???? Hey David Phelps!

I have a buffet (since the table...when used...is too small to hold place settings and food...) and Mom gave me one of these charger stacker thingies. (Official term...feel free to use.) I have Indian corn on it for the fall.

My mirror above the buffet. It was a $100 mirror from Hobby Lobby that I got for $20 because it had a chip in the top. Eventually (when I figure out the color scheme and purpose of this room) I'd like to paint the edge of the mirror because I'm not crazy about the gold.

This also will be relocated shortly (I'm developing a "princess nook" for the house) but for now it's above the door...

Hopefully one of these days I'll settle upon a color and point to the dining room. For now - it's the hodge podge of the house!

Tunnel of Spiders

Remember when God said I needed to work on fear? Remember when, in the span of ten days, He threw about 112 things in there that would work on that? Well at the two week mark, He threw in one more.

My friend Ronda (Jonathan's mom) acquired a boat this year, and the day arrived for the official boat launch.

Actually I think Jonathan was the most excited about this boat and spent hours lovingly waxing it and preparing it for its launch and maiden voyage. He asked if I wanted to come with the whole group – I would make the eighth member of the party – for McGee’s entry into the water. I’d been in the desert long enough to know some days were best spent alone and others were best spent in the company of friends, so I accepted the offer to go along.

We drove an hour and a half to get to their spot on the lake. We pulled into the parking lot and the driver backed the boat down into the water. I’d never before sat in a boat as it moved from land to water, so I snapped pictures at an alarming rate, determined to capture every moment.

The launching site they used was just beside the road that ran next to their house. The main part of the lake, however, was on the other side of the road. I knew from my previous visits to the lake that the path that led from one side of the lake to the other ran through a massive corrugated pipe tunnel underneath the road. I’d watched fishing boats and even a pontoon or two make that slow and narrow trek as I sat on the grassy bank beside the piers last year.
I anticipated that portion of the journey.

What I did not anticipate were the words that came out of Jonathan’s mouth. While I sat in the side seat of the boat, happily snapping pictures of those in the back, I heard him say, “Rebekah, can you get up in the front and guide the boat?”

I also knew what that meant. I’d seen the occupants of last year’s boats do it. They stood in the boat and walked their hands along the top of that pipe, keeping the boat on a straight course as it glided through the water.








As Jonathan made this request, please note that the front of the boat was just a few feet from the entrance to the tunnel. I abandoned my precious camera and climbed over the life jackets and beach towels that had been tossed in the front of the boat earlier. I reached for the top of the tunnel and found it surprisingly difficult to guide the heavy boat with just my fingertips.

The boat began to drift toward the edge of the tunnel and I desperately grabbed at a thick bolt protruding from the ceiling. Though the tunnel was dark, enough light drifted in to reveal a series of fully inhabited spider webs.

You do not understand my fear of spiders.

I grew up in the country and spiders – even little granddaddy longlegs – made frequent appearances in our home. More times than I can count, I went into the bathroom to take a shower, pulled back the curtain to climb in and found a spider taking a stroll along the wall. I’d grab a towel, wrap up faster than I thought humanly possible, and tear through the house hollering for my Dad to go kill that thing! I had to be specific about the demise of the spider because he’d often collect it and relocate it to our back room. But when that happened, the scene was likely to be repeated the next day. I preferred to put an end to shower spider misery.

And yet that night, I stood hunched over in the boat (the water was so high it was impossible to stand without hitting my head) furiously grabbing at bolts, well aware that I could not be responsible for McGee’s crash before he ever really got into the lake, and screeching each time my hand drew precariously near to a sticky web filled with water droplets, tiny bugs, and the patriarch spider in all his fat glory.

Ronda, was kind enough to come to my rescue and help guide the other side of the boat. When we emerged safely into the main lake, I collapsed back into my seat and reflected on what I’d just done. I…Rebekah J. Freelan…had helped guide a boat through a spider infested tunnel. I’d placed my hands on the walls and I’d accepted that I had to think of the good of the boat above the fear of the spiders. I couldn’t stop to focus on the fear. I just had to plod through it until the boat emerged into its lake.

Before the Morning

Late that night, after the exhaustion that had been my day, I couldn't wait any longer. I had to know if I was going to see Isaac that weekend. I knew in my heart the answer was no, but my deep desire to hope for a miracle still surfaced, and I had to know. So in the wee hours of the morning, I found myself texting back and forth with him for just a bit.

And the answer was no. It wasn't a good weekend to visit.

I sobbed in my bed. When was God going to bring about this miracle? In my lifetime?

I could tell from his texts that he was still deeply hurting. The Isaac I knew...the Isaac I'd fallen in love with...was not the Isaac texting me. In those early days, I seemed to have the ability to calm and comfort him when he was hurting and anxious. This day it wasn't there.

When I awakened the next morning, I heard a song I'd never heard before. And I'll be honest with you and tell you there are a couple parts of this song I don't like. They seemed too fluffy in the face of the deep, wrenching pain I felt. But most of the lyrics were so perfect.




I immediately opened the computer and sent the lyrics to Isaac, along with this message:

Isaac, I BELIEVE with all my heart that God has a powerful testimony to build in each of us individually and also in our story together. He has even said that to my heart. So yes, I do pray that one day we will be able to see the reason for all this and more than that, I am confident that we WILL see it.

This time apart from you is hard for me, but I'm so aware that God is at work. And I know the time itself is harder still for you - maybe not because you're apart from me but just because you hurt.
I spent the rest of the day clinging to the lyrics of that song:


Would you dare, would you dare to believe
That you still got a reason to sing
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It can’t compare to the joy that’s coming
Come on you gotta wait for the light
Press on and just fight the good fight
Cause the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the hurt before the healing
Oh the pain that you’ve been feeling
It’s just the dark before the morning

You'll get to see this as you keep reading but I literally cannot tell you the amount of times over the next several weeks I heard this song. Dozens and dozens. (And that was all on the radio, which I don't even listen to with great frequency.) It became my personal message from the Lord, I believed.

I journaled later that day,

I felt You so near me – loved Your presence, loving Father. Thank You for encouraging me. Thank You for being near and comforting.

Judy told me – who better to pray for Isaac than the woman who loves him? Keep me faithful to pray!

Later, You reminded me…I trusted You FOR him…now I need to trust You WITH him. Oh Father. Do help me.

Streams today was based off Numbers 22:17 – “Spring up, o well! Sing about it.” It says, “What a beautiful picture this is! And it describes for us the river of blessings that flows through our lives. If only we will respond with faith and praise, we will find our needs supplied even in the most barren desert . Again, how did the children of Israel reach the water of this well? It was through praise. While standing on the burning sand and digging the well with their staff of promise, they sang a praise song of faith. Have you learned to praise Him in advance for answers yet to come?”

Cake Mix Cookies

I don't know about you, but all the desert reading makes me need a cookie! So I thought I'd pop in with a recipe in case you're in need of a cookie too.

This recipe is one I learned about last year from someone at church. We have a carry-in dinner every week before our mid-week service, and one night there were some pretty fabulous cookies on the table. I found out they were cake mix cookies and this recipe quickly became my staple for cookies when I need them quickly and don't have much time or energy to turn out a batch of "real cookies."

The nice thing about this recipe, too, is you can customize it to any old flavor you like! I was thinking the other day I should go get a spice cake mix and make some spice cookies with it.

Lately this has been my go-to recipe when people drop by and I feel the need to serve them something (because I am my mother's child) and I don't have time to make something more elaborate. Tonight, for example, I was helping Jonathan with a school project. Now everyone knows you can think better with food! But I was doing laundry and washing dishes and multi-tasking a few other things too, so I didn't have time to cook much. I made these...TOTAL HIT!


The Recipe

1 cake mix (any flavor...this time I used chocolate)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1/2 bag chocolate chips (substitute nuts or leave out entirely with other cake flavors)

Mix ingredients in bowl. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.


I often use devil's food cake mix but any flavor will work! In this picture, I also put my favorite canned frosting - Betty Crocker's Rainbow Chip frosting. I always have some on hand to eat on graham crackers, but I like to spread it on these cookies too! (The cookies I made for this photo shoot never ended up frosted, so I wanted to at least point that out.)


I just dump everything except the chocolate chips in the bowl...

And mix it up well. It is a very super thick batter. Almost impossible to stir well by the end, it's so thick, actually.

Then, because one can never have too much chocolate, I added the chocolate chips...

This time, rather than using a regular cookie sheet, I used my Pampered Chef stone. I did not grease it. I had no issues getting the cookies off the stone.

When the cookies came out of the oven, I let them rest on the stone for just a couple of minutes before transferring them to a wire rack. They're pretty soft at first, so waiting just a minute seems to help.

They're really soft and fine to eat with no frosting - but of course you can always add that!

How Long Must I Pray?

Day two of the serenade presented a song by a group called Tenth Avenue North. I admit I don't know their music - and this may have even been the first time I heard this song. But again, I couldn't believe how appropriate the words were for my life.




I'm not a song writer. You've probably gathered that I'm much too wordy for my own good. But if I could write songs, this one could have been my theme. Especially these lines:

“How long must I wait, must I wait for You? How long til I see Your face, see You shining through? I’m on my knees, begging You to notice me. I’m on my knees, Father, will You turn to me?...Could the Maker of the stars hear the sound of my breakin’ heart?...Right now I can barely stand. If You’re everything You say You are, won’t You come close and hold my heart?"

I wrote the words to the song in my journal and kept it open on my desk all day at work. In fact, this began the season when I couldn't be away from my journal or my Bible. I carried them with me everywhere. To work...to lunch...everywhere. I never knew when I might start gasping for air and I'd have to write a prayer in order to get through the moment. And I also never knew when God might say something to me and I didn't want to lose any of it. This journey was much too important to lose.

I wrote things like, Help me. It’s early in the day yet, but I am struggling. It’s the 25th – the day he told me he loved me and now I wonder if he remembers me at all. Hold me today. I need to cast my anxiety on You instead of clutching it to myself. Help me, Jesus, today.
Later that day, Isaac posted an update on his blog. Since it was the only way I could know what was going on in his world, I lived for those updates. And they were pretty infrequent. Among other things, that day he told the story of Nate's little boy having a seizure. (This had actually happened while I was in Virginia Beach, and I'd heard about it through the grapevine, but this was the first he wrote about it.) As he wrote about how terrifying that experience had been to witness, I grew angry.
Angry that I was not there with him for that. When I was nine, I babysat a little boy just about his nephew's age who had the very same kind of seizure. I literally knew exactly what he meant about how scary it was to watch. It was one of those moments when I could have helped. I could have related. I could have understood. And yet it felt like he didn’t want me. And that made me so angry.

That night, I needed some sort of interaction. During this particular part of the desert, I was such a mess, I was completely holed up in my house most of the time. I had stopped doing social things entirely. The only reason I got out of the house was if someone came and made me go somewhere. I was literally incapable of initiating any sort of plans on my own. But that night, being alone was the worst thing for me, and I knew it.

So I got online and started chatting with my brother-in-law, who, by the way, is one of the wisest people I know. He said to me, as I shared with him the way Satan seemed to be after me, “You are so listening to the Lord. Let it be a divine appointment from Him. Trust the Lord, the Lover of your soul, to take your deepest need into consideration and to do what is absolutely best for you, even if it is uncomfortable. You know where doubt, accusation, and such come from…Anita Schrock used to say run from that because it smells like fire from the pit of hell.”

Another way God spoke to me during my entire desert was through the words people wrote on their blogs. I learned that specifically the blogs of moms who had lost children or struggled with infertility seemed to touch me the most. They were honest about their questions, doubts, fears, and anger in the face of delayed desires. This night, Kelly's blog said, “Count EVERYTHING you go through as joy because you don’t know what kind of testimony God is building in you and who in your life you will be able to encourage and how you will one day be used because of what you have faced.” I knew it was true, but I wasn’t sure I could count this sickening journey as joy.

That night I journaled, Streams says, “Oh if only Job had known, as he sat in the ashes, troubling his heart over the thought of God’s providence, that millions down through history would look back on his trials. He might have taken courage in the fact that his experience would be a help to others throughout the world…We never know the trials that await us in the days ahead. We may not be able to see the light through our struggles, but we can believe that those days, as in the life of Job, will be the most significant as we are called upon to live. Who has not learned that our most sorrowful days are frequently our best?”
I also went back to Gloria Gaither’s comments at the World Changers convocation back in March. She said this completely off the cuff, but it became a foundation in my desert: “Serving God is going with what you know to do today with all the passion you have…Because it’s not about the long-range plans. It’s about being faithful, with passion, for this moment. My mother used to say, ‘God’s will for your life is God’s will for this moment.’”

Jesus, keep me so faithful. Faithful to love and to pray for my sweet boy. Faithful to allow Your loving, refining hand to reign over my life. Faithful to trust You in this silence. Faithful to believe I know how to hear You. Faithful to serve You by sitting quietly and listening. Faithful to prepare. Oh Jesus. My life has been preparation. Keep me going now my Lord God.

Six a.m. Serenades Begin

Today's desert tale includes something I alluded to a while back in real-time, but today I want to tell you how it began. In case your Sunday afternoon nap wiped out your memory of where I stopped desert-talking on Saturday...I'd just driven down to the airport, by myself, to pick up Jonathan from his midnight plane arrival. Needless to say, by the time we got home, it was pretty late. I think I finally fell asleep sometime around three in the morning.

Three short hours later, my alarm went off for work. I wake up to the radio because I don't believe in the annoying BEEP BEEP BEEP sound. And that particular morning, the song that played was one of my favorites. Not only was it a favorite, it suddenly seemed very appropriate for my life.

The song is Selah's Unredeemed. Here is my favorite rendition of the song:




I love all the lyrics to this song, but that day, these were the parts in particular that stood out to me:

“Life breaks and falls apart. But we know these are places where grace is soon to be so amazing. It may be unfulfilled, it may be unrestored, but when anything that’s shattered is laid before the Lord, just watch and see: it will not be unredeemed. You never know the miracle the Father has in store.” Oh my Jesus. Be magnificent and miraculous in our story.

My life had certainly broken and fallen apart. And I literally (nearly physically) clung to the hope that God's grace was about to be amazing in my life. I had come to practice taking the shattered pieces of my life and laying them before the Lord because I didn't know what else to do with them. I needed God to have a miracle. I couldn't breathe if He didn't have the promise of one. So I chose to believe He did.

I had no idea that the playing of Unredeemed that morning was just the start of weeks and weeks of songs that went straight from the station playlist to my soul. It was one of the sweet messages Jesus sent to me each day. I won't go so far as to say I looked forward to the morning (let's not get crazy, here!) but I will say I wondered each day what song God had planned for me. Nothing will convince me that He was not penning that playlist from His Throne!

Also appropriate (not surprisingly) that day...the words from my lifeline of Streams in the Desert. I wrote in my journal, based on Genesis 21:2 – “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” And oh Jesus, have You not given me a promise, too? Have You not spoken? It says, “We must be prepared to wait on God’s timing. His timing is precise, for He does things ‘at the very time’ He has set. It is not for us to know His timing, and in fact, we cannot know it – we must wait for it…So take heart, dear child, when God requires you to wait. The One you wait for will not disappoint you. He will never be even five minutes behind ‘the appointed time.’” Oh my precious Jesus, strengthen my heart to trust Your perfect time. It is not mine to understand.

I also couldn't breathe unless I clung to the hope that He would not disappoint me. Hadn't that one verse I'd read over and over...the one Isaac shared with me from Romans...said that hope does not disappoint? And didn't I serve a God of hope?

Something else that began that day...actually I think it began the day before, but I didn't become fully aware of it until Monday...was the start of the most intense spiritual attack I've ever been under in my life. This was the lowest of the low of this entire desert. You are peeking into day one of the lowest.

I hesitate to share this next part because if Isaac is still reading, I know this is going to hurt him and I really don't want to do that. But to be fair to the chronicle of the desert and the way God worked in my heart during it, I don't want you to think these thoughts never came. Because they sure did. So I will take the risk of sharing.

That night, I wrote, Precious Jesus…my desert is difficult tonight. I miss my sweet Isaac. Truthfully? Right now? I feel so forgotten. Does he remember me at all? Does he still have a Bekah in his life? Does he ever think of me? Will he want to heal? Will he want me back? Has he found someone else? Oh Jesus! Help my unbelief!

Protect me from the temptations. The temptation to call or text him. Give me the strength to be silent before You and wait for his pursuit. The temptations of the attentions of others. Satan has dangled them before me. Keep me faithful. Isaac is my desire, and I know he is worth the wait.

Jesus, this weekend was supposed to be when I met his family. When I got to see him for three days. Logic tells me it’s not happening, but oh how I wish You would plant a desire within him to see me. How I wish he would call and ask me to be there. Oh Father, my longing is great. Sustain me in the ache.