Jesus Was There: Rebekah Long

We never ask to wait. To feel lonely. To grieve. But like many, if not most, that’s been my experience during the past year.

I’ve waited. For my son to be born. To introduce family and friends to my baby. Waited for answers. For healing. For the terrible phone call that a friend was gone. Waited beside my grandmother’s bed for her to meet Jesus.

I’ve felt alone. At 2 a.m. with a wide-awake infant. When I found out I’d developed a lifelong autoimmune disease during pregnancy. Separated from family in the wake of my grandmother’s death, as she wanted us to wait to have a service until it wouldn’t put anyone’s health at risk.

I’ve grieved. I’ve grieved for my grandmother and for her best friend who died three days after she did. I’ve grieved for a dearly loved friend and attempted to be present with his wife, also a dearly loved friend, in her grief. With four friends who also lost grandparents this fall and winter. With the world, watching case numbers and death tolls rise. I’ve grieved over injustice and blindness and hatred and racism and brokenness.

I wouldn’t have asked for any of it, and I certainly haven’t known how to do any of it on my own. But the glory of it all is Jesus was and is there in it. He has been with me; indeed, I haven’t been alone. He has grieved with us. Jesus was there with my family, and He made Himself known. My grandmother’s last night wasn’t obviously different from the nights before. I had told her “good night” at the end of the three days I’d been there, but on that night, I had the impulse to tell her “goodbye.” My mother sang hymns over her mother. My grandfather confessed the next morning when we realized she was gone that he had prayed that she would be free and with Jesus that night. My son woke in the middle of the night, and I rocked him for over an hour. As we were rocking, it occurred to me that I may be awake as my Meme was breathing her last. I dismissed that as a sleep-deprived and dramatic thought. Turns out, I was right. Jesus was there.

For all of our fallen history, humans have loved and lost and grieved. What I am experiencing is what we are all experiencing in some way through the losses and loneliness of the past year. Your experience with waiting, loneliness, and grief isn’t mine, and mine isn’t yours, but it does bind us together in understanding. We rejoice and we weep together. Paul tells us in Romans 12 to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Maybe that’s a cliche verse to cling to in grief, but I cling to it in gratitude, knowing that I haven't grieved alone. What a gift to have the Holy Spirit who can be present in and among all believers around the world during a time like this. While you and I grieve and are comforted by the Spirit here, Christians the world over receive the same comfort from the same Spirit. “For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all” (Eph. 4:4-6). In our waiting, loneliness, and grief in an unjust and broken world, Jesus is here, the Spirit is with us, and the Word is still true. Hold onto that truth with me. That is where my hope lies. That’s where my grandmother’s hope lay. And as I celebrate my son’s birthday on her birthday (yep, they have the same birthday), I will “rejoice in our confident hope” (Rom. 12:12) of his new life on Earth, her new life with Jesus, and our daily renewal until we are with Him, too.

“You can do more in my waiting than in my doing I could do.”

- Bethany Dillon, To Those Who Wait -

Rebekah Long is an alum of Mississippi State’s Wesley Foundation. She and her husband Will have been residents of Ruston for almost four years, where they have found connections with the Wesley Foundation through dear friends at church. Will currently serves on Wesley’s board. Rebekah and Will welcomed their son James on Leap Day, February 29, 2020.