If It Were Not So

THE PHONE RANG. My sister’s emotional voice quivered as the spoke, “The nurse said everyone had better get down to the hospital right away. Mom’s dying.”

My husband and I jumped in the car and rushed to the medical center. When we arrived, however, my father and other relatives were leaving. “She’s already gone,” they told me.

Grief came like a tidal wave. I cried hard.

 It was at my sister’s home a few minutes later that my brother, Everette, a minister, began talking to those of us gathered there. He quoted John 14:1-3:

 “Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also.”

Everette paused a minute. “Do you believe it? Now’s the time to find out.”

He didn’t say anything more. It seemed strange to me that he would say such a thing. My father and all eight of us children professed to be born-again Christians. Yet, I noticed Everette had a kind of peace about him that I didn’t have.

Most of us had a difficult time eating. The law had been laid down by somebody—I don’t know who—that no matter how we felt we were not to display our grief in front of Dad.

It was while we were seated at the table where they told how Aunt Marge, the hair dresser, had gone to the mortuary to fix Mother’s hair that I became unable to control myself. Aunt Marge styled Mother’s hair for years without charging her because with a large family and a low income my parents couldn’t afford any luxuries. I knew Mother had appreciated her generosity. The final act of love—so Mother’s beautiful red hair would be fixed the way she always wore it—made me remember how thankful Mama was for each thing anyone did for her. But now she couldn’t say thanks!

 As soon as I burst into tears, I was led from the room and told to “get a hold of myself.” After this gentle reprimand, I buried my grief deep inside me. I didn’t go when they picked out the casket. The evening we visited the mortuary, the muscles in my throat were so tight I could hardly swallow.

I remembered Everette’s voice saying, “Do you believe it? Now’s the time to find out.”

I was almost to the casket, following the others as they filed by, when the sickening dread in my stomach changed to a stirring of joy. Suddenly I knew I believed it! As I looked on the face of the shell my mother used during her earthly stay, I knew she was not there—she was in heaven!

Sure, I still loved those wrinkled work-worn hands. I still loved the lips that used to gently caress my cheek. But those hands and lips were not Mama. Mama was gone. She had already seen the Lord and was safely in heaven.

I stood there looking at her earthly body from a distance while the others walked by. I shed no tears. Yet, my buried grief had vanished. All I could think of was what Mother probably was doing at that moment. I thought of her meeting Jesus, Moses and Mary and the apostle Paul and renewing acquaintance with friends who preceded her into heaven.

Like a supersonic jet undergoing its first test flight, my faith had been tested. Sure, I’ve missed Mother. But I know she’s in heaven.

--excerpt from Confessions of a Pentecostal

Confessions of a Pentecostalhttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B0088OP460 

Book published in 1978 © Gospel Publishing House. E-book © Ada Brownell 2010