Generation NeXt Parenting

Blue Like Tidy-Bowl Cleaner, Kool-Aid, and Heaven:

Thoughts on Home, Family, and God from the middle of Suburbia!

Before 1999, I didn’t think much about heaven. It was out there somewhere, beautiful and wonderful I was sure.

Thinking of it, reminded me of food. (Like everything else reminds me of food, too.) Although meat always smells good when you pass a barbecue, grilling up dinner, if you’re not hungry, has no draw. But the hungrier you are, the more interest you have in what’s under the cover of that grill. And it wasn’t until death met our home that I became hungry for heaven.

It all started when my husband and I moved 1,000 miles from California to Montana. I had one main concern, and that was leaving my aging grandparents behind. A few years after we’d moved, the news I’d dreaded came. My grandfather was dying of cancer and he didn’t have long to live.

The thing that surprised my extended family the most was his desire to spend his last days in Montana. So over Christmas break, my husband and I drove through a blizzard, packed my grandparents up, and moved them to our home.

My grandpa seemed fine at first. Sure, he was a little slower than normal but that was to be expected. Then the weeks and months passed, and the weaker he became the more I started thinking about our eternal home.

I had listened to songs about heaven and read about it in the Bible, and while it was interesting, when you’re in that situation it’s about as filling to your soul as reading a cookbook or watching to a cooking show when your hungry.

Never having lost a close family member before, I had a hundred ideas of how I thought I’d deal with things, but none of them were right.

After four months living with us, my grandfather was bedridden. My grandmother and I would spend time in his room reading Scripture verses and praying with him.

Then, one day the idea of heaven heightened. I was reading aloud to my kids when my grandmother called me into the room. My grandpa was praying with hands lifted. Later he described smelling beautiful scents and seeing white birds and a gentle lion. More than that, he saw his Savior with arms stretched wide.

The next day, my grandfather went into a coma, and while I should have been terribly sad instead my heart nearly burst with joy. Every time I walked into the room it was as if heaven had touched the room with blue electricity. It seemed brighter and filled with the sensations of the brush of angel wings.

I have two final memories of my grandpa’s last waking moments. One was the peace in his eyes, and the other was the kiss he blew my direction. Though unable to speak, he was giving me a final farewell. Or a “see you later” to be exact.

So while I’m not ready for my life to be over today, heaven has great appeal. The small taste of it was enough to last a lifetime, and the reality of it will be a feast that I’m eager to enjoy . . . forever.

Labels: angels, cancer, death, grandparents, heaven, prayers, the bible

posted by Tricia Goyer @ 9:11 AM 1 comments

Guest Blogger...Cara Putnam

I really should be writing. Finishing that last sprint to the end of my current manuscript. I only have 3500 words to go, but this blog post has been running through my mind for days, so I’m going to stop and write it.

Deep breath.

Here goes. This is another one of those gut-level honest posts.

I’ve experienced a little grief when one set of grandparents died and when a uncle died. We also lost our dog (and first child in many senses) very unexpectedly a couple months ago. All of those were big losses.

But I’m learning that the death of a child through a miscarriage falls into a whole other plain…and very few people understand. Unless you’ve had one, most people don’t get it (with rare exceptions).

My family doesn’t understand. My friends don’t understand. Even my husband struggles to understand.

To each of them, it is a loss – a real loss – but a one-time loss.

It couldn’t be farther from that for me. Each month I am reminded that I’m not pregnant. Then there are the times that my son or daughter will say something innocent that reminds me again that we’re waiting for a baby. Or that they still think the baby will arrive someday. Or I’ll pick up my son and think I shouldn’t be able to do that because I should be nine months pregnant.

There’s the count-down of what a normal pregnancy looks like. The dates that you anticipated after the baby was born. And the one I dread, almost fear, the due date. That one’s barreling at me, and it’s easy to feel like everyone else has forgotten while I’m curled up in a fetal position wondering how I will survive.

I’m not prone to depression, but there are days that I truly struggle to find the positive in life.

Now don’t get me wrong. Life is still good. God is still good.

But there is also real pain. And if you know someone who has experienced a miscarriage, please remember that the pain doesn’t end – in fact in some ways it builds.

So pray for them. Ask how they are really doing. Because you may be the only one who cares enough to remember and ask.

Here is a great resource for women and families who have experienced a miscarriage.
http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/ma2006/information/leaflets/hiddengrief.pdf

Labels: death, empay, hope pregnancy center, loss, miscarriage, prayer, writing

posted by Tricia Goyer @ 11:09 AM 1 comments