My Miracle

I believe because of my mother.

Well, not just because of her. It isn’t because of something she said, and she never really shared anything with me that I can remember. What I do remember is standing outside her hospital room not long before she died and hearing her pray with an old pastor from the Bahamas, the father of a family friend.

I knew she’d read the bible occasionally prior to that day, but she hadn’t talked about it. At least not to me. What I heard from outside that room was the old man’s voice becoming stronger as he prayed–his accent less pronounced. Then I heard my mom’s faint voice going through a prayer of repentance.

I remember sitting with her a while after that, after they’d induced her final coma. I was alone in the room and I remember holding a newspaper and not being able to read it. I remember looking at her, and she was so skinny. Her cheeks were sunken in and her mouth slightly open, rasping breath in and out. Her eyes were cracked open a little, too, but she wasn’t really there anymore. Morphine is a great and terrible thing.

I remember telling her that my sisters and I loved her, and that it was OK for her to go.

It was a few days after that she actually did. My sister Valorie was with her. I remember the call coming in the small hours of the morning.

I don’t know how deeply Jesus sank into her heart in the time she knew him, but I like to think he spoke to her as the lover from Song of Songs:

“Come now, my love.

My lovely one, come.

For you, the winter has passed,

The snows are over and gone,

The flowers appear in the land,

The season of joyful songs has come.

The cooing of the Turtledove is heard in our land.

Come now, my love.

My lovely one, come.

Let me see your face. And Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is beautiful.

Come now, my love,

My lovely one, come.

Song of Songs 2:10 – 14

I became a believer in Jesus in March of 2000, but I don’t think I really experienced the fullness of the healing he can bring until 2007. I heard author Brennan Manning preach from the above scripture and it resonated in my heart.

I think Jesus calls out to all of us in that voice one day. Henri Nouwen speculates the Abba of Jesus called those words to him while he hung on the cross:

Come now my love, my lovely one come.

So that Brennan Manning conference was in my mind when my pastor gave a sermon not long after. He was relating the story of his mother’s passing, and how he led her to Christ. A radio softly played old music in her hospital room and at the moment of her death, the song “Heaven, I’m in Heaven” came on the radio.

That absolutely wrecked me.

I remember asking a friend from Healing Prayer to pray with me after the service and just coming unglued, totally falling apart in the third row of the sanctuary. I don’t remember what my friend prayed that morning, but I realized that was the first time I’d ever really grieved my mother’s loss.

I remember peace coming over me that morning, and it while the arms around me were my friend Ron’s, they were really the arms of the Christ, and his comfort was whispered into my ear through the earnest intercession of a good friend.

I think that morning prepared my heart for my wife more than anything else. I know I would have been useless to her had it not happened.

I’m feeling that comfort anew this morning. I’m sitting here on the couch holding my sleeping son and typing on my phone with my right thumb. I feel the love of my savior through my little man who loves me so much and sleeps so comfortably on his daddy’s lap.

It wasn’t my mom who led me to Christ–it was many things and many people all working together that did it. Many prayers rose to heaven on my behalf.

It was my mom who eventually led me to healing, whether she meant to or not.

So until God calls to me from Song of Songs, I will serve him to the best of my ability, and I will try and show my kids through my life what he’s done for me.

0727, 2 September 2012