His Banner Over Me is Love

Journal Entry: January 18, 2009

He brought me to the banqueting house,

And his banner over was love.

Song of Solomon 2:4

It’s my last full day with my daughter , and my last full day in my father’s house. Tomorrow I will move to another city south of Manila. I will be staying at Ayala Alabang Village in Muntinglupa City with my friends Joey and Ut. For the remaining days of this week I will be coordinating two Ancient Paths seminars with a group from New Life Church. My flight back to Bacolod is on early Saturday morning.

Again, I feel a tinge of sadness to be leaving my daughter, and this beautiful home, so full of warm memories of my growing up years.

It’s been very cold these past days. At night, I have been grateful to be warm under my thick comforter. But the other night, as I was about to sleep, I felt an aching void in my heart. How secure it made me feel to have that blanket of cover, but that void was so painfully real. Somehow, with my husband gone, there have been times that I have felt unprotected and alone.

Ernie was a very good husband—a good provider, thinking of his family’s needs before his own, he was a strong protective wall around me. With him around, I felt secure. Mostly because he cared, he loved me, and was always thinking of me.

Whenever we were far from each other, he would send me SMS messages on my cell phone, with questions “How are you?” or “What did you and Obedient One do today”. Or he would send me tidbits of what has been happening at home. Just little messages to let me know he’s around. The text messages are non-intrusive. I could read them when I opened my phone. A phone call had the sense of urgency, and he knows that I generally do not like phone calls. I prefer to receive these quiet SMS messages. So he would send them to me, when he was at the airport, waiting for his next flight, or just an hour before his next class, he would ask me to pray.

Now, with Ernie gone, naturally there is no one who will think of me that way. And there are no longer any of those thoughtful text messages on my phone.

When we got back from Thailand last September, we had several suitcases with us. Ernie decided to leave one of his bags here in Manila, to avoid excess baggage fees on our flight back to Bacolod. “We can always take it back with us next time around,” he said.

I opened his suitcase the other day. There were his favorite cotton polo shirts, all neatly folded and giving off that familiar fragrant scent of the fabric conditioner we used in Chiang Mai. I couldn’t help but shed a few tears. In that suitcase is the electric hot pot which he very carefully packed among his clothes. He wanted to bring it back with us, one of the very few kitchen stuff we had decided to bring home. “This will remind us of our beautiful time together in the university flat,” he had said while packing it.

Now there is no one to share those beautiful Maejo memories with.

There can be so many ways of spiritualizing my husband’s death. I have found myself saying, “It’s a new season.” “The winter is over.” “God is calling me up to a higher level.”

And it’s all true. But I don't really need to hide my pain behind these truths. I can be up front and honest about my grief. The bottom line is that he’s no longer around. And I miss him so much.

These were the thoughts going around my mind as I lay under my comforter that night.

Then I remembered another time when I felt something like this. It was the night I came home from the hospital on November 1, 2006. Ernie had a heart attack that morning and was in the intensive care unit. A respirator was attached to him, and a tube was in his mouth that went into his trachea, for lung fluids had to be suctioned out regularly. He had a heart monitor, and an oxygen meter to measure how much oxygen was flowing into his lungs. His creatinine count was elevated, indicating kidney malfunction…

I have written about the miraculous account of his healing in a previous post.

But I didn’t know that then. All I knew that night was that his blood pressure was going down, and he had zero urine output. Not a very good prognosis.

At about 10 o’clock, my friends and I gathered around his bed again, and prayed Psalm 91 over him. Then, physically and emotionally exhausted from the whole day’s events, I was admonished by my friends to go home and get some sleep.

Upon getting home that night, I recall the emptiness of our home, the feeling of being alone, and the deafening silence of not having him around to talk to.

Then, I took my bible, my NKJV Spirit-filled Life Bible, a deep source of comfort to me as it contains words of life spoken by my heavenly Father. And I hugged that book close to my heart.

Maybe some people will think I’m crazy to do this, but hugging my favorite book really brought comfort to me that night.

I told God, “Father, I just want to hug Your words close to me. Your words have fed me, nourished me all these years. In embracing your book I know I will receive a measure of comfort and strength during these lonely hours when I do not even know what will happen next.”

I was able to sleep and even woke up refreshed a few hours later. I went back to the hospital before breakfast to find Ernie looking pink, no longer pale, very cheerful, and most of all recovered. It was his 60^th birthday.

That memory came back to me the other night.

I had just finished reading Psalm 119:1-8 (for I am making a determined effort this year to commit that whole psalm to memory) before turning off the reading lamp by my bed.

And I sensed God speaking to me, “Let Me be as this thick blanket over you.”

And I felt so warm and secure. I knew that God was the covering over my head, my strength, my security, my protector. I once again hugged my travel bible close to my heart.

And I fell asleep.