Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, you who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’

• Genesis 32:9

The Boilerplate

My wife started to write her thoughts down at one point in her life.  Some hints point to 2018 and 2019, after she had her open-heart surgery.  In spite of her trials and the atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) that required her to take blood thinners, this was before her major health decline.

Sometimes, she wrote a thought.  Other times, she wrote a Bible verse, and maybe her idea on that day.  Other times, it is a prayer, but I am going to take one entry at a time and try to write about it

Her comment

“Return to your country and to your relatives and I will prosper you.”

• My wife’s next comment in this notebook

The Discussion

My wife wanted to move down south.  She wanted warm weather, but her hands were always cold even when we visited Texas.  We had a son in Tennessee, but he did not want us living with him, other than to visit or to prepare a new home for us.

This was probably one of those times when my wife was looking up real estate on her phone.  She would show me houses that looked nice, and they were only so many miles from our son’s house.  At the time though, our son was talking about moving to the mid-West, Indiana or Illinois.  Why move to Tennessee, buy a house, and then not be close to the grandchildren when they moved?

So, we came up with one set of excuses after another.  By the time we got the idea our son was probably going to stay in Tennessee, my wife was too ill to think about moving, unless she got a kidney transplant, and then she definitely wanted to move.  One day, not long before she passed away, we got a call to get our bags ready.  There were two kidneys that were an exact match.  She was third on the list and if either person in front of her was unable to have the surgery, we had to get to downtown Pittsburgh in a hurry.  We never got the call, but that meant for exact matches, she was next in line.  As for universal donor kidneys, she was further down on the list, maybe a couple of years later, years that she never got to see.  But she is in a place where there is no pain, no sin, no death.

In that respect, my wife has grabbed onto God’s promise here.  She has gone home.  She is with her mother, who was a great prayer warrior.  And she is prospering.  She finally has the mansion she always wanted.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory