Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven (But Nobody Wants To Die)

PART I

It's a quirky little song but I like it. And it's why Henry was getting a malaria test this morning, after a spiky fever overnight and complaining of several of the other ambiguous symptoms of malaria this morning. All of which could also be from simply getting overheated, and it is HOT here.

Looking back, there were several things I would have done differently this morning. Ruby getting to school should have been my first priority, and I let myself be pulled off course by my concern for Henry. In reality, the outcome of the blood test did not change Ruby's need to get to school on time.

Also, I would not have announced to Henry that he was going to be giving me a blood sample. It seems three year olds are not so keen on having their finger stabbed (as Henry eloquently stated), and five year old sisters sometimes get a sick satisfaction out of telling their little brothers how much it is going to hurt.

Some dear loved ones sent us a little pen-gun thingy that holds a small needle; you just open the end, load the needle in, twist off the plastic needle protector, replace the end of the pen, and push a button and it quickly makes a jab into the digit of your choice, to an adjustable depth. I loaded in the needle, but its little plastic protector wouldn't twist off. So I held it up close to me for better leverage, and somehow managed to stab myself in the chest (don't worry, the needle is only a few millimeters long) and bent the needle doing it.

Replacement needle loaded, I went off in search of my patient. Following his screams, I quickly found him face down on his old bed, which, I tenderly noted, must make him feel some sort of comfort. At this point, he had been screaming and running around the house for almost ten minutes while I gathered Ruby's lunch and the malaria test. Fortunately for me, he was pretty tired and didn't attempt anything violent when I grabbed his little hand and quickly cleaned and stabbed his middle finger. It was the biggest target, and he has been giving me the middle finger all day to show me how he feels.

After the prescribed 15 minutes' wait, the test announced Henry's blood drop was negative for malaria, and we took Ruby to school 30 minutes late. Somehow, I still ended up Henry's hero and he demanded I hold him continuously (except for the truck ride) for the next hour. The finger was fine when I was holding him; he was in unbearable pain when I wasn't.

The wonders and beauty of heaven are mysteries we try to build into our children, yet the thought of them actually going there terrifies us. Which brings me to Part II of this post....

PART II

Gillis Dillion died this morning. Well, last night where he was. It was actually the first thing I read on the internet this morning when I was looking at email, and it stunned me. Thinking of his sweet wife, his perfect partner, spending her first day in decades without him, his adult children (who really are crowns on the heads of this couple) and grandchildren (Gillis was kind of everyone's brother/dad/granddad though) living in a new-old world without someone so central to it - all of this has dominated my thinking today.

My first instinct when something goes wrong is to ask, "What went wrong?" And while there will be a medical explanation, that does not fix the problem of the pain his family and friends are experiencing.

Yet I find myself asking, "Did anything go wrong?" Are we promised tomorrow? Is death no longer part of life?

When my sister died many years ago, I remember watching her take her last breaths, and being in shock when they stopped. The silent break from life into death was nothing, yet blindingly fierce. And when my dad died a few years later, I felt the same desperate desire to reach backward and re-live those moments before he died, even as they raced into the distant past.

God and I had harsh (well, most of the harshness was on my part) words over those years and the few that followed. I went from a trusting, optimistic young teenager whose sister was diagnosed with cancer to a young woman who couldn't believe what was happening to my family to a very angry woman feeling picked on by the God who was supposed to love me. I was pretty sure God could handle my words and thoughts, and kept telling him what I thought even though at times I seriously doubted his existence. What kind of loving God allows this? Really?!

Fortunately for me, God is patient and loving and didn't pitch me for all the unkind things I said to him. "I believe - forgive my unbelief" took on new life for me after that time. Still I am seeing new beauty even from the painful parts of that time, beauty from God's patience and plan. God was always there; he was always faithful. I was like a butterfly in a hurricane.

Yet here I am over ten years later, asking the same questions. How could you let this happen? Could you not see what this man meant to his family? Why not kidneys for my pregnant friend's baby, who will die soon after birth without them? What are these things to you?!

And the answer, which in my moments of submission I hear clearly: faith.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, in the classic The Sacrament of the Present Moment, presents,

"To live by faith, then, is to live in joy, confidence, certainty and trust in all there is to do and suffer each moment as ordained by God. However mysterious it may seem, it is in order to awaken and maintain this living faith that God drags the soul through tumultuous floods of so much suffering, trouble, perplexity, weariness and ruin. For faith is needed to discover in all this God and that divine life which can neither be seen nor felt but, nevertheless, in some mysterious way, unmistakably reveals itself."

Easier said than done. Still, this time around I'm willing to give God the benefit of the doubt, that he is still who he says he is. The answers of how these and other painful situations will benefit anyone remain largely unknown. But this time, even as I struggle with they whys and hows and what the-s, I'm believing that God is big and I am not and that he is in charge of the situation. And I am not.

One thing I am as sure of as a mortal can be...Gillis Dillon has bravely (after all, who wants to die?) left this finite world for one infinite. And we can unite in faith to pray for his wife, Barbara and their sweet family, that God will carry their broken hearts until they can manage again, and that over time, the mysteries of this faith will become more visible to all of us.