i woke up this morning acutely aware of where i was exactly
4 months ago.
four months ago, i was watching mason’s final moments on
this earth. i heard the terrifying words “no pulse” and watched with horror as
my son began to receive chest compressions. he was already on a ventilator and
surrounded by nurses and doctors giving him meds, checking his vitals and
helping him fight for his life.
at 7:13 am he entered eternity. i see that day through my eyes,
a heartbroken hurting mother who looks back at the course of only a few
precious hours and still wonders with shock, “wait… what happened?”
i finished reading The Last
Battle with my kids this week. the final adventure in narnia ends with narnia
itself ending and heaven beginning.
my poor kids had to, yet again, sit through the discomfort
of their mother sobbing as I read the beauty and the glorious depiction of the
perfection of heaven. (they are more than slightly used to my tears, but
still…)
"'isn't it wonderful?' said lucy. 'have you noticed one can't feel afraid, even if one wants to? try it.'"
at one point there was a description of fruit. and after
trying and trying to explain how amazing it is, the author simply says, “if you
had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like
medicines after it. but i can’t describe it. you can’t find out what it is like
unless you can get to that country and taste it for yourself.”
with tears filling my eyes I said to my kids, “imagine how
great it is for mason today. imagine the delight!”
repeatedly, the newcomers to aslan’s country (heaven) are
told to come “further up! further in!” but… how can you rush so quickly through
the perfection and glory and beautiful detail of heaven? in fact, even as they
try, they can run faster than ever imagined, never running out of breath,
never running out of wonder and happiness to absorb.
today, mason is going further up and further in. exploring,
enjoying, laughing.
i wouldn’t want him to come back to this earth. don’t get me
wrong, i never, ever, ever would have chosen him to go in the first place. i do
want him here. i ache for him. but now that he has seen Jesus, now that he as
experienced true perfection, why would i make him suffer through this
existence?
the chronicles of narnia have been a beautiful comfort these
last months. while the reality of heaven is so far beyond our simple comprehension,
c.s. lewis does a beautiful job creating a picture, a glimpse, a thought, of
something spectacular.
and in narnia, death is never the ending. not for those who
love aslan. its only the beginning!
griffin woke this morning at 6:44, yelling for daddy, disoriented
after a night of sleep. i went in to get him and was met immediately with the
question, “sun up?”
griffin has an obsession with day and night. everything
revolves around “sun up.” he’ll ask for something at night… a snack, a trip to
the park, a movie… and if the answer is no, he’ll respond with, “sun up?” which
means, “can I have it tomorrow when the sun is up again?”
(the other night I was putting him to bed and he asked, “go
pool?” um, its january and freezing (or the equivalent of freezing in southern california). “no, we can’t go swimming.” his response was, “sun-up?” there is
always the hope the answer will be different tomorrow.)
and if its “sun up,” it means he can get out of bed… a new
day of hope and endless possibilities. i took him to the kitchen to look out the
window, to show him “sun up” and saw
the beginnings of the most glorious sunrise. the sky was bright red. glowing. the
clouds varying in different degrees of crimson. even griffin lifted his head
from my shoulder and breathed a surprised, “wow!”
we watched the sky for a moment and i looked at the clock.
6:47. at this moment 4 months ago i was watching a big, strong man doing chest
compressions on my sweet, tiny boy. No pulse, no ability to breathe on his own. i was holding my own breath at each 2 minute break in compressions when they’d
check yet again for a non-existent pulse and then yet another person would
resume compressions for yet another 2 minutes.
i can still feel that room. i can see the worried glances of
nurses in my direction. i can hear my husband whispering desperate prayers to
God. i can hear the calmness of the doctor calling out orders. i can see the
paramedic who transported us… with sirens wailing, sailing through red lights…
standing in the hall, still next to his stretcher, wiping tears from his eyes.
i can easily see all these things. i live this moment over
and over. but when I looked back from the clock to the beautiful radiant sky, i heard God tell me, “only a glimpse.”
this sunrise, this beauty and glory, is only a glimpse of
what mason is seeing right now. while i see that hospital room as an ending, it
really was a beginning. a beginning of such perfection and delight that i simply
can’t even begin to imagine.
“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been
the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of
the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which
every chapter is better than the one before.”
–CS Lewis, The Last Battle
