Day 16: Standing Between Two Worlds:
"As I looked, I saw a door standing open in heaven, and the same voice I had heard before spoke to me like a trumpet blast. The voice said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after this.' And instantly I was in the Spirit, and I saw a throne in heaven and someone sitting on it. The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones—like jasper and carnelian. And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow." —Revelation 4:1-3
Today's lesson is simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. Anderson tells of a family who was having to say goodbye to their mother in a nursing home. She was no longer communicating with them directly. Though she seemed calm and relaxed, she was groaning, "like she did when [her kids] were younger and [they'd] catch her praying." Dr. Anderson had examined her a few days before and saw no evidence of pain or distress. "It's my opinion," Anderson told them, "that she's close to leaving this world, but only the Lord knows the hour. Her responses make me believe that, right now, she's standing between two worlds—heaven and earth. Though she's lying in bed, she's resting on holy ground. I know it will be hard for your family to say good-bye, but I believe she is already making plans for the reunion you'll have with her in your forever home."
Anderson encourages us to thank God for making a place for us and to ask God to help us to not lose sight of His glory in our daily life, but to always remember what awaits us in heaven.
The story is heartwarming because Anderson's words reassured them and heartbreaking because I remember how I felt when my mother was dying. I did not have the same assurance though it may have seemed that I did because there were no tears...not at first.
From the time I first heard that my mother had cancer, until the time that I received the call that she was admitted to the ICU, and even after that, there were no tears. There was only the desire to fight along side of her. To do anything that she needed. To “be there” for her—whatever that would mean. No tears.
When I
watched her go from a vibrant woman to a silent shell, no tears. When I tried to hug her and she pushed me
away because she could no longer take the feel of things touching her skin, no
tears. I remember a doctor telling me
the technical term for her action, but I swallowed it, like the lump that
formed in my throat and forgave it as my mother had forgiven me so many
times.
When my
father and I had to make the decision to admit her to the hospice room, I
didn’t know what that room entailed, but I knew once my mother entered it, she
would not be coming out. No tears. We all—my father, my Uncle Mike who was my
mother’s brother, and my two older brothers, Lonnie and Todd—gathered in the
small hospice room and tripped over one another, and slept on recliners and
makeshift bed chairs, and sat on window sills and waited.
The dreams
I had while waiting for the inevitable were grotesque and disturbing. One woke me up, and everyone around me as
well, for I jumped out of my recliner and yelled out something. I was so frightened by the dream because in
it my mother’s bed was bouncing off the floor from her uncontrollable
convulsions. She was struggling to
breathe and had one hand up by her neck as if she was choking and the other was
reaching for me. The room was eerily
dark, but I could see that her eyes were wild with terror, and I couldn’t do
anything. I think I must have yelled for
help and that is what woke everyone up.
Through blurry eyes I saw my dad standing in front of me and felt the
light touch of his hand on my shoulder, “It was only a dream.” I explained to him that my dream had been of
my mother. “She was struggling to
breathe. The whole bed was shaking and I
couldn’t help her.” My father repeated,
“It was only a dream.”
He then
explained to me that her passing wouldn’t be like that, that she would simply
and quietly slip away. Reassured by his
comment and lulled by the sound of my mother’s breathing and the small click of
the oxygen machine, I fell back to sleep.
It wasn’t
long before the sound in the room changed.
It was slight, but startling and we all got to our feet. My father moved closer to my mother’s frail
body on the bed. I saw my uncle who had
been on the hard chair next to my mother cover his mouth and heard him breathe
hard and quick through his fingers. My father turned to me, took a few steps in
my direction and said, “She’s gone.”
Tears. It was as if every painful moment came
crashing in on me at once. I couldn’t
breathe, and my father held on to me so I wouldn’t crumple to the floor. My brothers watched us and wiped their
eyes. As I held onto my father, I
realized that my mother was free. She
would no longer have to endure treatments and vomiting and pin pricks and hair
loss and the endless list of demoralizing effects of cancer. It should have been enough for me to realize
that she was free, but it wasn’t. She
was free and I would have to learn to walk in this world without her…but I was
crippled by tears.
I still cry when I think of that day. Even as I type this, tears are streaming down my cheeks.
I'd like to think that she is heaven right now planning our reunion, assuming I myself make it to heaven. And there it is, doubt of my salvation. I wish I wouldn't do that, but I have been made keenly aware through a multitude of church lessons and even casual chats that though no one can snatch me from the hand of God, I can always walk away. The church was quite adept at using fear as a motivator. They would warn that walking away happens subtly (missing a service or a church event, not confessing everything to one's discipler...) We may not even notice that we are doing it. It's not to say that their warnings were completely unwarranted, but the method was a bit misguided. I may have turned my back, but something within me will not let me step away so far as to lose sight of God. I suppose that is the Holy Spirit within me. I know the truth deep within. There is a God and he has prepared a place for me.
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