Tonight I came across a draft blog entry that never got posted. I had written it on February 13, at the end of a very busy and stressful week–and four days before my mother’s unexpected death. The blog begins: Last Sunday morning as I was praying, I sensed the Lord was telling me to be expectant. To expect Him to do good things in my life, to give me opportunities to speak into others’ lives. To not be surprised when He answers the needs and desires of my heart. Didn’t He, after all, fill me with hope for this new year back in January? And then, quite unexpectedly, I heard my pastor say as...

The outskirts of loss are deep places. There in the shadows of non-comprehension, there in the smacking reality of pain, emotion and intellect collide. There in the crater of grief lies meaning. And I cannot imagine trying to find it in the midst of such dust without my heavenly Father. Nor could Jesus. In John 17, He stands on the edge of death–and not just normal death, whatever that is. Excruciating death. Torture and torment. Unimaginable humiliation–the Healer wounded, the Savior not rescued, the King executed like a criminal. So Jesus, considering the darkness before Him, turns to...

And somehow this is a gift from my late mother: the draw of eternity.   This life is just the beginning.   I think that’s what Mom would say now—because she is more alive right now than she ever was. She’s just living in a different realm. The pain is ours, not hers. She experiences what we can hardly imagine. She has begun the rest of her life in that hard-to-comprehend state, eternity.   I think, though, one of the points the Scripture makes is that eternity has already begun; it is embedded in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11). Forever starts now. Our lives begin, but they won’t end.   How...

Grief. It is heavy as it sounds, wrenching with desperation toward the flatness of the word’s final f. Flat like the smack of an anchor hitting the water before it sinks, downward, downward to the bottom of the sea.   Yet Handel’s Water Music Suite cascades over the airwaves, regal in its procession, glorious and joyous, as I write.   Days later, grief continues to swell after the muddy Cumberland drowned my city’s treasures, including the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and the Opryland Hotel, not to mention personal homes, businesses, livelihoods, memories and family members.   Family...

In the two months since my mother died, I’ve wondered many times exactly where she is. I know—the answer is, generically, heaven. But where is heaven? What is it like? While there is comfort in knowing that she is there, it doesn’t really take away the pain of loss experienced on earth. And for me, it’s raised a lot of questions and thoughts that have, quite honestly, disturbed me at times.   That’s why I started reading Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven—a thick and wonderful tome studying everything the Bible says about the place followers of Jesus go when we die, as well as the place we will live...