Not Imagining

Since the time of Megan's passing, I think often of places which I rarely thought of before.  And, just as we know is true of educating children, experience is the best way to gain understanding of formerly alien concepts.

Now, when I go to a cemetery, I understand that beneath my feet is my beautiful daughter's body in a dark box.  No, I never got that understanding from losing grandparents, in-laws, friends.  It took an earthquake  experience to give me this understanding.  Enough understanding that if I think too long, it urges me to peel the earth back and move her.

Heaven is a place that I no longer imagine as a place that there really are people who smile and talk to one another and recognize Megan.  I need to know it.  I need to know some who never met her are thrilled to know her on the eternal side of life.  This experience of her death has left me trying to feel and know about this heaven beyond my imaginings.  I'd like to know the events of every day.  I want to read every book ever written by anyone who had a death experience and lived to return to this planet.

To think of heaven now is to think of a bright soul who is so delightful and precious that even Jesus smiles bigger.  That the friends and family already there are now even happier.  It isn't that far away now because my daughter is there.  I think of it often and wonder what she is doing.  Yes, she lives there so I know she is doing something.  As her mother, I need to know these things!

As I struggled to worship this morning, overcoming my doubts and my questions, I gained a sense of what she was doing.  We sang Revelation Song....."Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty.....".  That is what she is doing most often now.  Somehow, I knew for that brief few moments that I was joining her and doing the exact same thing as she was at the exact same time.   It brought me a joy in that moment to know we were joined.

She really is there in heaven.  Heaven is a real place.  My experience makes it real.

So, for today, for a while, the fog of grief in my mind, lifted enough for me to sing with my daughter.