Day 64 - surreal.

Day 64 - and the day we received the sad news that Carolyn's mother quickly passed away. To make matters worse, Carolyn had just been home visiting her mother and was flying back to the US from Scotland as I received the news. It was left to me to break the news to her when she landed in Fresno after 28 hours of travel.

It was rather surreal.

Carolyn appeared at arrivals all happy to be home, glad she'd had a good visit with her mother, eager to see the boys joking as to them not being with me to welcome her home, talking about her flight and the fun things that happened on it, even laughing when yet again our luggage did not make the connection from LAX to FAT (yep avoid LAX if you possibly can!).

And while all this is happening I am carrying news she does not want to hear, I do not want to tell her, but most definitely, I was not going to tell her in the lobby of Fresno airport.

Surreal.

Do you enjoy her jokes; do you talk the usual trivia about what's happened in little 'ol Reedley since she left 6 days earlier; do you mention 'hey we had frost this morning!'

I'm standing there knowing the news, but not yet able to share it.

In some ways, in the relatively few minutes this all took until we were alone, I was thinking of Solomon's wise words "there is a time to laugh and a time to cry" - and we were experiencing that all in the space of a few short moments.

Surreal.

To know something, but to live in the tension of it needing to be told, but you can't tell it just yet, and the person you're with has no idea about what they need to know.

For me there was no option, I just had to wait.

But it's got me wondering of how too often I create a tension like that. Got information people
need to know, they don't know they need it but they do, but I don't (not so much can't) share it with them.
Sometimes its the full truth (blog of a few days ago), but often its the amazing essential news of Jesus Christ .....people need to know it, and I have it, but I don't tell them it.

Is that not also surreal?

"Lord, may I never hold the information of you quiet; may you inspire and embolden me to always tell people the news of Jesus Christ."