About My Dad Being Killed & Believing We Have A WayMaker

T he actual date my dad was crushed and killed it was right there in the top right hand corner of every single page of that version of the WayMaker manuscript the publisher had returned to me for edits:

WayMaker: 04/29/2021

There was the date, every time I opened WayMaker.

And all over again, I am back to noon on April 29, standing in the cold spring rain on the farm I grew up, my father’s farmyard full of police cars and all our eyes shell-shocked and empty.

And our Dad gone.

How could Dad be crushed and killed exactly the same way my baby sister was crushed and killed — the very same way, on the very same farm?

How could we lose my own dear dad, Bryan L. Morton, in such an incomprehensible, traumatic way?

WayMaker? A waymaking God?

Who writes a story line that goes this way? How is this the staggering way our story goes?

Could I still truly believe:

There is a WayMaker who makes wrecked ways into ways for resurrection.

Could I, all through my line by line edits of WayMaker, wrapped up in this softest blanket, sent by the kindest of editors, still not only see my way through — but could I trust the Way Himself?

There is a WayMaker who makes wrecked ways into ways for resurrection.

I ached through a daze of grief.

And with every page of editing WayMaker, I could actually feel myself growing stronger, and standing still on it, standing even surer:

The ways we don’t understand are truly safe in the hands of the WayMaker who always stands with us, His very arms truly under us.

Crushed hearts can still trust:

There is a way through, because we follow the Way Himself.

We’d lost my father, Bryan L. Morton, in the most bewildering, traumatic of ways.

A nd you can lose your people and your hopes and dreams — but you don’t ever have to lose your way.

And then just this past week?

The way the WayMaker makes may not make sense to you —

but you can’t see how every way is connected to the way of everything else. 

Only a few days before WayMaker launches out into the world, the loveliest woman’s walking just a few steps ahead of me, both of us strangers to each other, both of us guests at a luncheon, both of us about to walk out the door, and forever go our own separate ways.

But just before she gets to the door — can she sense me right there, close? — she turns, a bit startled — but her eyes find mine and she asks real earnest:

“Oh! Would you?”

And there in her hands, she’s extending an early, open copy of WayMaker toward me to sign, and I feel shy and awkward, but I reach for it.

It’s the very first copy of WayMaker I have ever held in hand to sign.

And I smile, and ask her gently?

“Your name, ma’am?” Just a first name, please, and I’ll dedicate the very first signed copy of WayMaker right here to you, your first name, just right here in the corner.

But she leans in to say what I could never have expected, her ocean clear blue eyes glint as she smiles and says, not just her first name — but her whole name:

“Betsy Morton.”

Betsy Morton?

My father’s name was Bryan L. Morton.

All I can sense the WayMaker Himself here, right here, so close.

And everything brims and blurs. And I inscribe the very first copy of WayMaker, before it even releases, for Betsy Morton — Betsy Morton who will read the story of our WayMaker that I believe even deeper in my bones after losing my Dad, Bryan Morton, in the most unimaginable of ways.

I hand the first inscribed and dedicated copy of WayMaker to Betsy Morton, smiling sure through tears and we are all carried through:

You may not see why your story has gone the way it has — but you can trust the Way Himself sees you — and is still writing a good story in powerful ways for you.

The way the WayMaker makes may not make sense to you — but you can’t see how every way is connected to the way of everything else. 

How can we know how the way this story intersects with the way of that story over there, that changes the way of that story over here, that would totally effect the way of that story over there?

The Way is Who He is — and the Way is what He does.

As long as you have the WayMaker — you always have a Way.

This is a world of ways, this is a world of a million, billion, trillion ways and the only one who can navigate all the ways, orchestrate all the ways, understand all the ways — is the Way Himself, the one who says, “I AM THE WAY.“

How would understanding the reason for suffering

 matter more 

than knowing God Himself 

stands with us in it?

You do not not have to understand the ways of God, you only need know that the Way stands with you — and He can’t stop making a way, because that is who the Way is.

The Way is Who He is — and the Way is what He does.

As long as you have the WayMaker — you always have a Way.

And up there, in the corner of everything, are the sacred signs everywhere, of a sure and steadying grace.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

DO PARTS OF YOUR WAY FEEL KINDA TENDER… WRECKED?

THE WAYMAKER‘S MAKING A WAY TO YOU & FOR YOU

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