FIRST BIRTHDAY IN PARADISE (including excerpts from Chapter 11 of UNDEFEATED INNOCENCE)

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“Why am I here? I want to be dead. Today was the day I was supposed to be dead. Can you tell me why I can’t be dead?” Mom’s words spoken through the filter of mid-stage Alzheimer’s horrified me. I thought, How could our nightly phone call take such a terrifying turn?

Mom and I were best friends. She needed my help, and I needed a lifeline to find solace for my tears. I took a deep breath and silently asked God to give me words to say that could bring comfort to both of us. I told her Jesus unconditionally loved her and had an appointed time for her to be with Him. I said, “Mom, I love you dearly and have been richly blessed to have you with me.” Her voice steadied, as did mine. God released us momentarily from the heinous lies and emotional chaos of the disease that took my father a few years earlier.

But Alzheimer’s never goes on vacation. It steals short-term memory and confiscates long-term memory a decade at a time. It followed my mom through senior independent and assisted living, as well as skilled nursing. Mom repeatedly asked if her husband was dead, called 911 to demand that someone bring her back to her childhood home three states away, punched a pregnant nurse in the stomach, believed no one loved her because she couldn’t remember if anyone visited, and barged into another patient’s room in the middle of the night demanding to know where her dead husband’s body was located. She wanted to know where her young children were because she couldn’t remember my sister and me as her adult children. And everything suddenly seemed to be stolen, when in reality she probably flushed them down the toilet.

Graphic? Yes. Did I feel empathy with Job? Yes.

Job suffered great calamity and loss, but through it he experienced life-changing rebuke directly from God. As I studied Job 38-41, I wept as God recounted all that was under His control because He created it all. He has power over everything. That’s easy to say, but reading Job allowed me to experience a taste of what God has done, is doing and can do. We don’t always believe God listens, hears or responds. But “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding” Job 37:5 NIV.  “God does speak . . . though man may not perceive it.” Job 33:14 NIV.

God brings us out of darkness and gloom and breaks us free from our chains. Psalm 107:14 NLT. I wasn’t sure my chains were breaking, but I knew how broken I felt as Alzheimer’s continued to rob my family. I couldn’t understand why God would allow the fragments of my mom’s life to become so terribly broken. “I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be.” Amos 9:11 NIV. Where was God in the brokenness? How could He rebuild my mom? What great things beyond my understanding could He possibly give us? In reality, I was asking God to prove His grace, much like Job.

I prayed that Jesus would come for Mom and release her from the bondage of the disease. I asked Him to prepare and allow me to be present when He brought her to her promised home in paradise. Luke 23:43 NLT.  My mom and I prayed the Lord’s Prayer together. The promise of “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” was seared into me. Matthew 6:10 NIV.

On Mom’s release day, I received a call from the hospital. She was being transferred to the Emergency Room. I raced like Jeff Gordon to drive the twenty-mile drive through the Ozark roads. With tears staining my steering wheel, I begged God not to take her until I got there. After all, I felt He prepared me to be with her.

My pastor and his wife met me at the emergency entrance of the hospital. We were escorted into a family meeting room. God promises that He’s never late, never early, and always on time. But had I arrived in time?

The doctor came in and through torrents of tears, I begged him to let her go. As we were escorted to the emergency suite moments later, the nurse told me Mom’s heart had stopped. I paused to breathe in God’s presence. I’d never done “this” before. I entered the room, stood beside my beautiful Mom, kissed her lips and held her hand. I prayed, cried, said goodbye, and praised God for getting me there on time.

Fifteen minutes later, the coroner came in and introduced himself. I continued to hold my mom’s hand as I turned to greet him. “Is it okay if I hate you?” I flashed a smile, and he graciously responded, “Most people feel that way too.”

My attention turned back to Mom, and I clearly felt her index finger twitch. I wanted to scream, “She’s alive!” But I was afraid they’d think I was crazy. I stared at her face and wrote off the twitch as something that happens after death. That thought was quickly dismissed when a spark, like static electricity, passed from Mom’s finger through mine, and I remembered that her heart stopped more than fifteen minutes earlier. And there were no wires connecting her to any machine.

I recalled my prayers to my heavenly Father, who prepared me in advance to be with Mom when her spirit passed. I was reminded of the power of grace and the realness of God’s presence. I believed my earnest prayers in the car were fulfilled. Her heart stopped immediately after I arrived in the emergency department, and her time of death was noted as three minutes after I first held her hand. He answered my prayer to be with her through the death of her body, and He answered my prayer to be with her during the release of her spirit. Perhaps the twitch was Mama reaching for Jesus, like she did many times during her final Sundays at church. Perhaps the surge was when her spirit left and she first touched Jesus. I believe God gave me a glimpse of Mom’s first moments in paradise, and I believe the Holy Spirit directly touched me during the release of my mom’s spirit. Moments later, the room felt very empty, even though many people surrounded me. I silently praised my Creator for His faithfulness, and then methodically took care of business with the coroner, the funeral director who buried my father years earlier, and the hospital staff.

Job’s story is replete with stories of God’s power. God didn’t have to give me a glimpse of eternity. But because I believed, because I dared to see a glimpse of His power and love, and because I trusted that His kingdom would come and His will would be done in my mom, He gave me the gift of sharing in the moment she went to paradise. Why? Because He loves, He promised, and because He could. He repairs and restores our broken places. And He escorts us personally into paradise. Mom was the first to hold me, and I was the last to hold her. He does indeed do great things beyond our understanding.

And today we celebrate her first birthday in heaven.

June 25, 1934 was her first birthday on earth; June 25, 2017 is her first birthday in paradise.

Happy birthday, my sweet mama.