I ended my last blog post with these words:

Thank You, Jesus, for the hope of a life hereafter.

A few nights ago (the night my Uncle Wes died), in between what felt like endless wakings with my baby, I went out to the kitchen around 1am and turned on the computer and wrote most of the following words. I had been going to post it on the end of my last blog post, but it got so long, and I wanted Uncle Wes to have his own post anyway.

Just think of this as Part Two. 🙂

Here's a link to that previous post if you missed it: Until We Meet Again.

(When my dad heard that I had done what he wanted to do--stay up late writing a tribute to Uncle Wes--because my baby kept getting up anyway, he said he guessed he'd better borrow Emmett for a night. Then he wondered if I had a Rent-a-Grandson program in the works. 🙂 I have a very funny dad!)

But back to the topic at hand . . . thinking of heaven in regards to Uncle Wes got me thinking about heaven in regards to those who have gone before him, and I must say, the older I get the more heaven feels like it carries a tinge of familiarity with it. After all, I know some of the faces there. I know their names. And it makes the thought of heaven a little more real.

I remember the first time it felt like death touched me. I had lived twenty-four years of my life without losing anyone I loved. The only people I knew who had died had lived long and fulfilled lives and had faded out so slowly at the end that it was simply an anticipated finale, an expected end.

And then one day we were newlyweds in Newberg, and we woke up late on a Saturday morning, and we listened to the message on the church hotline saying James Smucker had been killed in a car accident and that his wife Orpha was fighting for her life (and later succumbed to her injuries), and I just sobbed.

I wasn’t close to James and Orpha. I’m not sure why it hit me so hard, other than the fact that I couldn’t quite fathom our church without them. It was foreign to me to have someone there one minute and then suddenly gone forever the next. We’d never see them again. We’d never hear Orpha’s unique accent again, never tune in to decipher the long and slow story James was telling.

But more than that, I couldn’t quite fathom that they were there. That their feet had finally touched the streets of gold. That their eyes had seen the river of life, flowing clear as crystal. That their ears had heard the angels sing. That they were in that beautiful city, where there is no more death nor sorrow nor any more pain, for the former things are passed away.

That they were in heaven, that glorious and elusive place, beyond imagination, beyond reach and touch and sight and sound, but ever beckoning.

They were there, these ordinary people who I’d just seen at church not that long ago. Whose hand I had shaken, whose shoulders I had hugged. They were there.

They were seeing the face of Jesus.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. People I knew, in heaven. People I would never see again, in heaven. With Jesus.

Incredible.

And then shortly thereafter my cousin’s mother-in-law, my old school classmates’ mother, Esther Boss, died from cancer. We had joined a large group to go and sing for her a day or two before she died, and we saw her there in her bed, facing the end with her husband beside her and her children around her, and then she, too, was gone.

Just . . . gone.

It’s impossible to wrap your mind around it, that someone can be here and then cannot be. That an entire life lived here can end so suddenly and with so many loose ends. Esther had not yet seen any of her grandchildren. Now she has seven of them, one even named after her. She’d seen only one of her five sons married, and now they all have their own families.

My cousin Karina, who was Esther's sole daughter-in-law when Esther was still here, said that maybe Uncle Wes could fill Esther in on all that had happened in her family in the last seven years . . . the new babies, the new daughters-in-law, even the new love for her Marvin. What a terribly sweet thought.

Perhaps after Uncle Wes has told Esther all the earth-side news, she will tell him of her own heaven-side news, of sweet babies who never got to see their parents' faces but who came straight to a loving grandma's arms in heaven instead. Beautiful and perfect and waiting till the day it is their mommy and daddy whom their grandma is introducing them to, and not just my Uncle Wes.

Then there was Rhoda Showalter, taken shortly after that in a car accident. So sudden. So abrupt. I didn’t know her well, but she had a ready smile and a giving heart, and hers was yet another face that would be missing in our church.

Death still hadn’t touched me, but it had come closer. It put a face to some of those thousands that walk the streets of heaven, and it was both shocking and incredible, both sad and beautiful.

I wrote a blog post about it back then, when it was all still fresh, and I haven't reread that post, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it sounds pretty similar to this one. 🙂 Here is it if you're interested: They're There.

My grandpa died a while after that. His had been a slow decline, slow enough that when it finally came time for him to go, it was no shock. Eric and I were out at a job site when we got the phone call that my grandpa had passed. We finished up our business and went straight to the hospital. I didn’t want to see him lifeless in that bed. My grandpa was anything but lifeless.

In a way, it was good to see him finally be able to go. To step from his long suffering into the presence of Jesus. To leave behind his body and his mind that had failed him and to be whole again. The next time we see him, he will be more like that wonderful grandpa we grew up with, the one I about couldn’t stand that Eric didn’t get to know. I was pregnant with Alec at my grandpa’s funeral, but no one knew it.

(I blogged about my grandpa, too, believe it or not: A Granddaughter’s Memories of Her Grandpa.)

And then there was Aunt Rosie. I still remember the last time I saw her. We had invited my extended Roth family over to our house before we left for a couple months in Australia, and I can still see Aunt Rosie sitting there on our couch, wearing a blue dress and a blue blazer, talking to Drew. I remember telling her goodbye and someone helping her out the door and down the front steps. That was the last time I saw her.

We were in Australia when she died. Thankfully our time there was nearly over, and all we had were a few days yet in New Zealand, so we were able to make it home in time for her funeral without having to adjust any flights. I remember wishing I had whispered to her before we left that I was pregnant. I wished she could have known that secret. But she died with no idea of the child in my belly. I had been to her house frequently to clean for her, and it felt like I had gotten to know her a little better than I ever had before, just in time to let her, too, slip away from this life to a far more glorious one.

And now Uncle Wes has followed them as well, and it is 1am, and in between my baby's incessant wakings I am here pondering death and life and life hereafter.

No, death still hasn’t touched me the way it has touched some. It hasn’t left raw places within me. It hasn’t stolen from me. It hasn’t taken unfairly or prematurely or unfathomably.

And yet . . . I’ll say it again.

Thank You, Jesus, for the hope of a life hereafter.

And if you do not know that hope, if you have not believed on the name of Jesus, then I beg you to open your hand and ask God to pour out a blessing. Even just a drop. One touch. One sliver of light that will call you from where you are to where He is.

One inkling that the way His words were twisted and used against you were not His doing. One hint that the things His people said and did that hurt you and pushed you away were not actually from Him. One token of His never-ending love for you, no matter if you’ve known Him and now know Him not or if you’ve never known Him at all.

One soft call. One still small voice.

Out of thunder and fire, out of lightning and storm, out of earthquake and turmoil . . . one still small voice.

May you open your hands, and your hearts, and may you hear Him. May you be found of Him. And may He be found of you.

And may you, too, have that glorious hope of a life hereafter.