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A new focus

Beginnings and endings of life offer more than statistics. We are often faced with an experience that pulls us from our daily-ness and refocuses us.

Recently I recalled one of those events that took place over six years ago.

After my grandson was delivered prematurely, he seemed fine for the first 24 hours, then his little lungs couldn’t keep his oxygen levels up. He was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). That night I contacted friends and relatives across the world to pray for him.

I had no idea how serious it had been until I was sitting by him several days later, watching five medical personal working furiously on another little boy. They lost him.

A nurse approached and nodded his way. “That was your grandson on Sunday night. We’d done everything we could, but nothing worked. We’d about given up when, for no reason, he turned the corner and pulled through.”

I told her about all the prayers. She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know much about that kind of thing, but he’s alive, and it’s for sure a miracle.”

Unable to touch him because his heart rate would soar, I had to spend my few minutes of visitation time just looking, and talking and praying. When I drove away from the hospital, blinded by tears, I had to pull over.

newborn in NICU

“Lord,” I gripped the steering wheel and cried. “We’re grateful that you saved him, but to start life in a plastic box, IV’s and monitors all over his tiny body, lights blinking, monitors beeping and alarms sounding, with the background of rock music from the radio – what a terrible first impression! And we can’t even touch him and comfort him.” I wiped away the tears. “Please, hold him while we can’t. And do something to block out those sounds.” Feeling more peaceful, I dried my eyes and drove on.

Big sister holding him for the first time
Big sister holding him for the first time

About six weeks later my daughter brought the kids to stay with us while she and her husband enjoyed the rare treat of a dinner out. Before she left, she warned me not to let the baby cry because it would drive his heart rate up.

When he grew sleepy, my grandson didn’t want to be put down, but wasn’t really happy being held, either. He began to fuss. I waltzed around the living and dining rooms, singing as I held him close, rubbing his back, and doing whatever I could to calm him.

Without even thinking about it, I switched to Spanish songs.  I started Pescador de Hombres, about Jesus after the resurrection, calling to Peter from the beach and looking into his eyes and smiling with love.

sunrise on water by Jack H Thompson

My grandson froze. Then he looked up at me, and I swear, it was as if he recognized the song! His whole body smiled. He exhaled and relaxed against me, in a deep, peaceful sleep.

As I continued to walk and hum the song, I “heard” a still, small voice say, “That was the song I was singing to him while I held him in the NICU.”

I still get chills remembering it.

Healthy boy at home
Healthy boy at home

My recent experience was with my youngest grandchild. During her first time alone with me she was tense and hadn’t made a sound for hours.  Even though she was exhausted she didn’t want me to put her down. I had to walk and sing. Finally, I sat to give her a bottle and asked her older sister to bring a book for me to read. She brought her children’s Bible.

From her questions about miracles I ended up telling her about her cousin in the NICU, and the song.  Of course, she asked me to sing it.

Grammi holding Elysse at 6 weeks

I was barely into the first verse when the little one shifted in my arms and looked at me with a “Why have you been waiting so long?” look. She started singing along, her whole body engaged. I kept singing, and she grew more and more animated, as if her life were tied to that song. When at last I became hoarse and stopped, she grew quiet again, but contented and relaxed.

Our good friend Hugo Pena, the retired Bishop of Honduras, used to tell us to work on our Spanish, because that is the language of heaven. Could he be right?

One thing is clear, there is so much more going on around and in us than our minds are aware of, than we can comprehend with our five senses or any amount of logic.

It is the Lord of Grace — Love surrounding us, holding us, calling to us when we’ve gone far away, singing into our spirits, breathing life into our bodies and souls.

 I’m asking God for one thing,  only one thing:

To live with him in his house my whole life long.
I’ll contemplate his beauty; I’ll study at his feet.

That’s the only quiet, secure place in a noisy world,
The perfect getaway, far from the buzz of traffic.

Psalm 27: 4-5 The Message

As she lay dying

His sister called, and early the next morning my husband flew west to be at his mother’s bedside. He and his sisters kept vigil. At the hospice nurse’s urging, they spoke to her as if she could hear them, even though she didn’t respond.

old hands

Back home, I waited and prayed. For three days, I prayed that the Lord would minister to them even as they ministered to her. Prayed that whatever remained for her spirit to transact with Jesus would take place.

After hours of thunderstorms, late in the afternoon the rain stopped. I grabbed my dog’s leash and pulled on my walking shoes. Outside, leaves dripped, shinning in the soft light of twilight. The grass and trees seemed greener, more vibrant.

When I stepped out from under our oak trees onto the street, I looked up and gasped. On my right, pink and purple clouds tumbled upward from a sunset of scarlet and tangerine.

As I turned to the east, peace poured over me. Pink cotton candy clouds billowed with reflected sunset colors, and two complete rainbows, one over the other, arched across the horizon. The outer bands of color fluxed in and out of the clouds as if someone were mixing watercolors.

A holy moment. A gateway to heaven. I couldn’t move.

double rainbow for blog

Finally, Lily tugged, anxious for her long-awaited walk. I set out, often turning to witness the rainbows. I tried to snap their exquisite beauty with my cell phone, frustrated that the purples and greens wouldn’t come through. I was too close to capture the complete arcs and hoped I could move far enough west to get them. But when I came around the circle and out from under more oak trees, the rainbows had vanished.

But the deep peace abided, an other-world kind of peace that has no basis in circumstances or status.

Pure gift.

sunset

Not long after I returned home, my husband called, his voice hoarse with emotion.

“Mom’s gone. She’s gone to be with Dad.”

They had been telling stories and laughing about their hard-headed father, who’d died only months before. The sister who’d been caring for their mother so long was holding her hand when she slipped away.

I loved her very much, and I knew that somehow, the Lord had included me in her home-going, 1,300 miles away.

These tiny glimpses of heaven are promises of what is to come, encouragement when the sky is dark and life is brutal. When progress seems so long in coming. When we lose a loved one.

Have you recently experienced a great loss?

Or do you face the gradual seeping away of hope?

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV)

The vows from 9/11

As we remember September 11th, that horrible day, we may also recall the days that followed in which many of us vowed to make every moment count, to spend more time with family, to realign our goals and ambitions, and for some of us, lay up treasures in heaven.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:20 NIV

For a long time I tried to follow that command because of the negative sides — what I would not be able to hang on to. While we were missionaries in Honduras I learned that lesson well. With so much poverty we had an abundance of thieves, as well as little creatures called wood lice which ate into any boxes I had stored. And in the humid environment (no A/C, sometimes not even electricity for a fan) everything was subject to mold or rust. The wonderful washing machine we brought down rusted and the outside fell off.

rust

We didn’t have a permanent home, so a small living room rug, family pictures, and my guitar were our only necessary possessions. We learned to live lean.

It was only a year or two after moving back to the U.S. that stuff began to grow in our home. I worried that I was putting the emphasis on the wrong place again. — the negative side of that command.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net David Castillo Dominici
FreeDigitalPhotos.net
David Castillo Dominici

I’m beginning to look at the other side now — the treasures in heaven. Perhaps it’s because my hourglass has considerably more sand in the bottom half than the top. Maybe it’s because more and more people I love have died.

Studying the book of Revelation in a Beth Moore Bible Study has influenced my thinking the most. For the first time I sense of how absolutely fantastic heaven will be, that everything we enjoy or delight in here is only a tiny glimpse of what heaven will be like. Every natural desire we have is planted within us by our Creator so that we yearn for heaven, so nothing here could ever completely fulfill us. In this life we only have a taste, and are never completely satisfied. We won’t be, until we join the company of heaven. God truly has written eternity on our hearts, and all of creation calls out to us.

 

Have you ever stood outside on a starry night and felt a strange longing, or on the shore, watching waves roll in and feeling something so much bigger than yourself?

waves and setting sun

Or paused on a snowy pathway to enjoy the quiet and an occasional crow in the distance, only to feel in awe of something so much bigger than yourself, than the woods, or even our world?

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