The day Jim left and God showed up

The day was like any other. I was working from my home office, flying around the house preparing to leave for a meeting out of town. I’d changed clothes three times and could not find the left shoe that the last ensemble hinged on. As I mentally prepared to hit the closet pallet for a 4^th time, I cringed when the phone rang, knowing that it was going to steal precious seconds away from the time I had left to get ready. At least hair and makeup was complete.

The voice on the other end of the line was out of breath and asked, “Are you sitting down?” 

And immediately I wasn’t, and I didn’t want to. That sentence never creates the calm that it intends, but it was more than that. I could feel the panic in my brother-in-law’s voice. I could feel how desperately he didn’t want to be making this call.

“Jim collapsed….they’re working on him…I don’t know Audrey…I don’t know”

          But I did. That sinking feeling in my gut, and the very real understanding of “working on him” that my nurse-brain acknowledged brought a clear and precise vision of what was going on. This was bad. I immediately started moving in slow motion. I felt it come over me; this intentional slowing-down.

I nodded to the phone and heard myself say “Ok. Call me when you know more.”

I sat down at my desk and called a couple of friends to set prayers in motion. I prayed too, but oddly…overwhelmingly… I didn’t really have to speak prayers. I felt the Holy Spirit immediately taking my spirit by the hand in some kind of cruise-control override. I was being held. Immediately swept up. Surreal, quiet, peaceful, clarity of mind took over instantly. Some of that was years of experience as a nurse. Breathe, slow down, think, but most of it was God. In the words of Disney’s Woody, “this is the perfect time to panic”. But I didn’t, and I didn’t even have to try not to. My head flipped through the files of the moment in anticipation of a couple of very big, very scary things coming next. Either I’m getting on a plane to Northern Wisconsin to rush to my husband’s bedside, “Oh Lord, he’s gonna make a terrible patient. How will I keep him from pounding fence-posts with a fresh chest-zipper…?” OR I’m not getting on a plane. I’m not going anywhere, there’s nothing to do. “Oh Lord, please no.” I slowly paced the house waiting for more information, I called my mom asking her to pick my daughter up from track practice. Jim’s shoes by the armchair brought the first slow tears. I called my son and told him to get ready to go, not sure which direction yet. Called another friend who somehow showed up in time to sit at my feet and hold my hand as I sat on the couch and received the run-down over the phone from the EMT about the course they’d administered.

The words I remember were: “cardiac arrest…epinephrine…CPR…arrhythmia…unable to resuscitate…expired…time of death…”

He was 44. Strong-as-an-ox. Bigger than life, just not bad genetics. Still in that slowed-down place with God holding me up, I remember very clearly my 13 year-old baby’s face as she came through the front door. “Mercy, she looks like her Daddy,” I thought. Her chin was already hard. Her heart understood something was bad and in her Dad’s style she was already irritated by it.

As I held her face in my hands, very close to mine, I heard myself say, “He’s gone baby. Daddy’s gone.” 

It was while my arms weakly tried to contain her violent sobs that my own flood came. I felt my inside voice repeating “Jesus, oh Lord Jesus, help.” And He did. I heard a man outside on the porch sobbing, saw the agony on my Mom’s face. There was my Dad. He sat on the couch next to me and took my baby girl into his arms with all the tenderness of a new-born transfer. I stood up, I hugged someone…and someone else. People entered, one after another. Every hug exchanged love and compassion and a desperate desire to ease our pain. Jesus was there, and my inside voice kept on, “Jesus, oh Lord Jesus, I love you.” My college-age son and (now wife), Ellen walked in, an expression on his face I’d never seen, his collar soaked with tears. I could feel his entire core tremble as he threw his arms around my shoulders and wept, the voice in my head crying, “Jesus, Oh Lord Jesus, I need you”.  At some point I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I scanned the room, and buried my face into Jim’s side of the closet. I hit the bed, face-down in an armload of shirts, willing the particles of his scent into my lungs. This is when it happened.

My inner voice came out, muffled but out loud, “Jesus! Oh Lord Jesus, Thank you that he was mine. You have received him already. Please tell him I love him. Tell him better than my lack-luster kiss did when he left last week for Wisconsin.”

          God’s answer was immediate. I literally felt arms wrapping around my body. My mind did a quick double-take… was this really happening? Yes it was. The warmth of a Heavenly hug persisted and squeezed a little tighter. My entire being filled with a loving, perfect, unexplainable peace. It was so quiet.

The voice in my mind was no longer my own. It said, “This is what he felt the moment he left his body Audrey. He wanted me to show you. All is well. All is peace. All is love. No fear. No pain. Brilliant light.”

My flesh started to grasp at it and I gulped on the tears as I cried out “Tell him I’m sorry! Tell him I never meant to take him for granted! Tell him…..”

The voice inside interrupted, “Is that what you want to hear from him? Apology? Regret?”

My answer: “no”

The reply changed my life: “He doesn’t either. All is known here. All is understood. Love remains. Your flesh will feel sad Audrey. But hear me now. It is ONLY sad. It isn’t consuming. It can take nothing from you that you don’t give it. Be sad for now, but know and remember what you’ve been told today. God is with you, Jim is with God. All is well. He loves you. I love you. Trust in Me.”

Lots of things happened in a flurry over the next days and months, most of which I was only semi-conscious for, but my point here is to convey to you the miracle that happened that day and carried on for weeks after the death of my husband. That hug on my bed. Those answers to my heart-cries. Those were miracles. The Creator of the Universe… no matter how you feel about Him…took time and actually made me feel touch and love and hear His comfort in the midst of the worst pain I could imagine at the time. My inner criticizer (The Valley Girl), likes to shush me when I tell this story. She wants me to know that anyone I tell about it is only going to feel left out. She reminds me that anyone I share it with is going to think that I think I’m special and that it only happened because I’m such a “perfect Christian”, (a huge oxymoron, btw).

And what time has taught me to reply is this, “Yes Valerie (I’ve named her now)…. I hear you. Thank you for your input, as always, but here’s the thing sugar: God didn’t bring me through all this and show up in such a palpable way for me to keep it to myself. I’ve taken your words under advisement, but I’ve gone to a higher authority on this one and I’m going to trust God with the outcome of sharing this. Tell ya what Val… you can sit the rest of this one out. No worries though, I’ll for sure call you next time I try on a bathing suit.”

I’m the kind of Christian who isn’t all that good at quoting scripture…or studying it for that matter. I so aspire to be that girl who’s eyes pop open every day and have the first place I look be in God’s Word. But the truth is, there are more days in the week I open my Facebook before I open the Good-book. I ain’t proud, but there it is. As sloppy as I can be with this, God has brought me far enough to know that if I wanna know what He thinks about something, I almost always have access to that information in His Word. So as I pondered how much of my “hug miracle” to share, and wanting to make sure my motives were in-line with the miracle-giver, I went to His word about it:

• “It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me” Daniel 4:2
• “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death”. Revelation 12:11
• “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” 1 Peter 3:15
• “Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deed among the peoples!” 1 Chronicles 16:8.
• “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” 2 Timothy 1:8.
• “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven” Matthew 10:32

So ya, thanks, but no thanks Valerie…Bye Felisha…peace-out. My acknowledgement to Valerie-the-Valley-Girl is the following caveat: If any part of my miracle had not been able to stand up to what God’s word says is true, then I would have followed her advice and clammed up.

My Miracle was the embodiment of Matthew 5:4 which says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”.

God didn’t take that moment of my greatest grief to tell me how the world would end, or who to vote for, or criticize my reaction, or anything at all that contradicted what I know or can find to be true about what He has already said. He simply showed up, met me right where I was, and offered exactly what He said He would, with confirmation that was very hard to deny in that moment or any moment since it happened.  God comforted me in my grief. He just did. He did it in a way that I could physically feel, and some of you may have a problem believing that, or approving of my belief about it and that is OK. I have not the intent or the energy to strong-arm you into anything. My intent is to tell you what happened. My intent is to tell you that God IS willing, and available, and real. I have had experiences since that day that try and undermine the “proof” I witnessed. Valley-Girl-Val and her friends are always working to get me to despair and to doubt what I know to be true, but here’s the wall they are beating their heads against: It happened. I know like I know I currently have 10 fingers that it happened exactly as I’m relating to you here. More hurt has come, more hurt will come, but no matter how my flesh fights against the truth that a good and loving God is in charge of my life and knows what’s best for it, I cannot erase what was done. I cannot make it untrue. My doubt and my fear and my despair does not stand up to the evidence He has provided. To call it a “gift” sounds so incapable. It was the key. He gave me the key that day to every single struggle that will ever come. Even if I don’t feel that physical element, or hear the words clearly in my head again this side of Heaven, it happened once, it accomplished its mission and I feel the need to follow it up with my own. As much as I am good at telling you how it felt, and about the things that grief has taught me, I desire to be even better at helping you hang on to God through the worst. If you are one of those people, (like me for much of my life), who doesn’t have this eye-opening, shock-you-out-of-yourself experience to validate your faith, then consider this: Maybe my experience, and my wild conviction of its reality and insistence to share it with you….and your willingness to hang in there reading this post… is YOUR experience? What if today, God is speaking to you through what He did for me? (Valley-Girl-Val has stopped smacking her gum and is staring at me with her mouth agape).

I pray with my whole heart that this is true for somebody today. I pray that by cooperating with God, and opening my mouth about His goodness, my story will somehow become part of yours, and that it may cause you to open your mouth about Him too. Somebody needs to hear your story and receive the same healing you have. Pain and grief and “sad” can never outdo what Grace can. Ask God to help you to help spread some.

God asks you and me to grow and to stop being fooled by the same things that have stumbled us in the past. (Ephesians 4:14-16) Isn’t it lovely to know that He knows we’ll struggle with that? If He thought we’d be able to take Him entirely at His word, He would not have needed to show up and heal the sick, blind, lame and dead. The Bible is full of one account after another. He knew we’d need that. I think He knows we need it still. So now, for what it is worth to you, you’ve read another one.  It’s not raising Lazarus, but I can tell you it was no less impactful for me at that time. And in the telling, I pray His will is done.