FINALLY!

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. Acts 20: 24 NIV

Today, I experienced a single word bounce off of my eyesight and straight into my heart; the term was FINALLY. Finally is a word that expresses an entire sentence, a full range of emotion, a solid arrival of some kind, an ending, and a beginning. Finally.

When a woman lies in exhaustion and pain, not knowing whether or not she can travel this birthing journey one more step, she endures it because she knows her "finally" is coming. 

 When a man, after forty years of working to pay his bills, to carve out his place in his world, and to make life a little better for his children, makes the decision to go two or three or five more, his encouragement is that he will soon be able to walk out of that job for the very last time and breathe "finally." 

When a parent falls in love with someone else's birth child but knows in her heart she is as much her own as those she has birthed, she fights with an unending conviction that one day they will be family, "finally." When he longs for his soul mate, when he believes against the odds, when he knows the good will rise to the surface and swallow the bad, and they will be they again, he waits for finally.

There are not-so-great 'finals' along the way: finally getting the chores done, the car washed, the bills paid, the bond posted, the drugs kicked, the divorce papers, the death certificate, and the weeds pulled out in the garden. Finally getting it, having wasted so much time ignoring it. Finally realizing it wasn't what it appeared to be. Finally, knowing you didn't get the job, the house, the cure, the friend. Backbreaking, nerve-wracking, physically tormenting, emotionally paralyzing finales are a part of everyday life, in everyone's life.

Two finales hit me today; the first one was that somehow, somewhere along the way, I believed in something that wasn't the truth. That I gave years and years to something that wasn't even real. That my 'finally' from that time and others 'finally' from that time is so very different and drastic, it's mind-boggling. 

The first finally today was hurtful, sad, unasked for, and quite undeserved. It tried to make me angry, resentful, and bitter. It echoed, "You're not worthy." It hung like a full dark rain cloud on the day I hoped for the sun. It brought more questions than answers, tore at an old wound, and then laughed.

Ah, but then, as if to chase that old fight from the very core of my heart, the second finally came to my mind in all its shining glory. And there is no other final to which this one can be compared. There is no other that can be victorious over this one. No other is strong enough to deny its supremacy. No worldly finale is finally above this one or any different kind in any other fashion that takes away one iota of its reality and wholeness. Therefore, when I experience this finally, all others will be as if they never existed, even the one I so profoundly grappled with today. 

For you see, when I walk into the gates of heaven and see face to face the one who died for me because He thought I was worth it, every fiber in my being, every wish in my heart, every fathom of every idea and every song ever sung within me will whisper "FINALLY" and there will be no need to sigh another one, ever, ever again. 

Eternally final. Finally.

Copyright © 2023 [Janice Hart] All Rights Reserved.