Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
You truly know that the spirit of God resides within you. You know with all of your heart and soul that you are a child of God. In Gods Truth
Chase
Blond, blue-eyed Chase came into the world two months too early. For this he suffered for the rest of his short life. With constant seizures and too much medication, he became limp as a rag doll, completely unable to move any part of his body. Sometimes he would smile at me, the corners of his mouth quivering with the strain of unused facial muscles.
When he became too big and sickly to care for, I placed him in a nursing home. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Many years went by, and many late-night emergency phone calls, ambulance rides, and hospital stays. The nursing home wanted to have a feeding tube installed in Chase without the use of an anesthetic due to his condition. I flatly refused, and hired an attorney to make sure that Chase's painful life would never be artificially prolonged.
A year later, Chase began to die. He fought for each breath for four days. I had anticipated he would pass on in his sleep someday, and now I feared I had caused him even more pain. I was numb, but in the outside world around me it was spring and beautiful.
The night Chase died, he was thirteen years old, and the June full moon illuminated the sky. I sat next to the window in my dark living room, watching the moon and stars. "Where is he? Are you all right, Chase?" I had always been there for himinthe past. Now he was alone, and he had been so out of it. How was he handling the transition? For the sake of his younger siblings, who were constantly tiptoeing into the room to hug me, I decided I should go to bed.
It was four A.M. when I got up to lock the front door. Looking out the window in the door, I noticed the crosses on top of each of the two neighboring churches. Both crosses were brilliantly ablaze. I had never seen that before. The next day, I checked them out, but both were just wooden crosses with no lights on them. For many years after that, I would check on the crosses, but they were never again lit up. Could it have been an answer from God to my question of whether Chase was okay?
A year later, caught up in the busy world of my three younger children, I seldom dwelled on Chase. The worst grieving had actually been when he was alive and suffering. I did, however, miss the joy I used to feel being with him.
Very late one night, I discovered I was sitting straight up in bed, but I did not remember waking or sitting up. I was just suddenly in that position. Instantly, I sensed I was not alone in the room. My mind said to run, for I was in fear. I began to toss the covers back so I could jump from the bed. Then I saw him standing at the foot of my bed. He was not the invalid thirteen-year-old, but a strong twenty-two-year-old, handsome and physically fit, smiling at his mother. His voice, which I had never heard before, calmly formed in my head. He simply said, "It's me."
Chase said, "I just came back to tell you I love you, and to thank you." Excitedly, I moved to wake the rest of the family. "No," was his response. "This is just for you." I told him I loved him, and I perceived he wanted me to go back to sleep. I laid my head back down and was instantly asleep.
The next morning, I thought, "What a great dream. It seemed so real." Everyone went off to school, and I began washing the morning dishes. Suddenly, I knew I was not alone in the room. Startled, I spun around. Chase was standing in the dining room. Now my eyes saw an energy mass about five feet tall. My mind, however, saw what he looked like, the young man of the night before. He telepathically said, "I just want to stay around the family for a few days." Answering out loud, I talked back to Chase as if he dropped in every day like this. It seemed perfectly natural, as if he had never died. He hung around and watched us for the next two days, but I did not tell the other kids, as I did not want to frighten them.
The morning of the third day arrived. I was sitting on the living room carpet with a take-home classroom test spread out on the coffee table before me, I was trying to concentrate. It was important for me to finish the test before my little boy bounced in the door from kindergarten. Chase was standing about eight feet to my left. In my head, I heard him say, "Look up." In a typical motherly fashion, answering him out loud, I said, "Just a minute."
"Look up," he repeated. I looked straight ahead at the clock, and knew I was running out of time to get my test done.
"Just a minute," I said again. In a more stern voice, he said for the third time, more slowly, "Look up now!" I turned my head and looked at him. He gently said, "They're coming for me now, and I won't be back." We exchanged "I love you" just as two balls of energy flew into the room, and just as quickly he flew out with them. I sat on the floor, stunned. The room seemed incredibly empty. That was six years ago, and Chase has never been back, at least where I can see and hear him.
He gave me a great gift those three days. I have never since grieved over him, but instead think of him as a young man capable of taking care of himself. Every once in a while, some wonderful little miracle will happen to us in conjunction with something to do with Chase, but that is another story. This story is how it came about that death no longer exists in my home.