Bro. Danny M. Hall

Well, spring is finally here. It has always been my favorite time of year and continues to be so, although now the Month of May will always be a bittersweet time for me. When the May apple plants started pushing up in the woods each spring, my husband would be found among them, looking for Morel mushrooms. They are called “spring chickens” in our neck of the woods. If he had good luck hunting, we would soak them in salt water, then batter and fry them for supper. What a delicacy!

     But it never failed that along with the spring chickens would be a fresh bouquet of Sweet Williams (beautiful blue phlox that grows in the woods) along with some May apples. You know, the little plants that look like umbrellas.  Brother Danny knew how much I loved the Sweet Williams because their fragrance is so sweet!

    Our anniversary was May 26, and  often on our anniversary he would bring  home a bouquet of wild, pink hedge roses, for that is what they decorated the little store-front church with on our wedding day. My sweet sentimental husband! How I miss him this time of year! Today he would have been 66.

    A few weeks ago, I did a bit of foraging in the woods. I came in the house with Sweet Williams, May apples, moss, dogwood blooms and some other spring specimens. I dried them in my silica gel and then when they were ready I arranged them behind the panes of an old window.  I added the verse from Song of Solomon which refers to the rapture.

Song of Solomon 2:10-12

My beloved spake, and said unto me,

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of the singing of birds is come …

  Now I have a window of spring hanging on my bedroom wall, and I will always think of my sweet Danny when I see the Sweet Williams and May apples.

  Just four years ago we spent his last birthday in the hospital. The next week on our 40th anniversary he was taken off the transplant list and a week later he was in Heaven.

I had a dream a couple of years ago that was so real, that I still am not positive that is was a dream. It was so real and personal that I could hardly talk about it to anyone.

   I was outside of my mother’s house, when someone strong and young picked me up and carried me inside to the back room. I then realized that it was Danny. He was healthy. He was tender and romantic. I held him  tightly and didn’t want to let go. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that he couldn’t stay and I didn’t want the moment to end. Then I woke up with such an overwhelming longing that I could scarcely stand it. I had read this script before, I felt like my experience was referred to in the Bible. I then opened my Bible to Song of Solomon chapter three.

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth:

I sought him, but I found him not.

I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets,

and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth:

I sought him, but I found him not.

The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said,

Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?

It was but a little that I passed from them,

but I found him whom my soul loveth:

I held him, and would not let him go,

until I had brought him into my mother’s house,

and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

  Never had the Bible come so alive to me. It had just described my dream of Danny. I felt that he had been with me. It was so very bittersweet!

And so today I think of him, visit his grave, and wish him a Happy Birthday in Heaven.

And as I long for him, so should we all have a longing for Christ, our precious and tender bridegroom to speak these words of love to us:

Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.

  Even so come Lord Jesus!

In the love of Christ, Dee Dee Hall
May 18th, 2016