by Alana Terry
I know Sandy would say it’s the Holy Spirit. Right now, I’m too grateful to finally connect again with the real world that I don’t think to wonder. I plug in my phone, wait an impatient ten seconds for it to get enough charge to turn back on.
I don’t see any texts or missed calls from Jake. None that pop up at least. I’ll look through all that later. Right now, I jump onto the Safe Anchorage website. I’ve got to learn what happened to Grandma Lucy. It’s so slow loading up I think I might scream. I get to the main homepage with its pictures of cute baby goats and images of the lotions and soaps they make there to sell. Nothing about Grandma Lucy. Come on.
I go to the news tab. There it is.
No, it can’t be.
There’s a video right there on top of the page. Yesterday’s celebration of life service for our beloved Grandma Lucy.
CHAPTER 82
No, they’ve got it all wrong. She can’t have died. She believed in miraculous healings. I know she did. But she still passed away. So if her faith wasn’t strong enough to fix herself, why did I put any hope in her ability to pray for my daughter?
I click on the video, morbid as it sounds. I’ve got to understand. Will people actually talk about that at her funeral — or her celebration of life service as they call it? Will they talk about the fact that she still died even though her faith was larger than a million mustard seeds?
I’ve got to see this. Maybe it’s just because I like to torture myself. I don’t know. But I want to see this service. I want to know what happened.
I want to know how God took away someone with a faith like Grandma Lucy’s.
While the video thinks about loading up, I read the comments beneath.
Grandma Lucy, that was so inspiring.
I love you, Grandma Lucy! Thanks so much for sharing with us.
What’s with these people? Do they think heaven’s connected to wi-fi and that Grandma Lucy’s really going to be spending time watching who’s posting on her funeral replay?
But it gets even more ridiculous.
Praising God for your healing.
I was so excited to hear you’re home! PTL!
You’d think these people were welcoming a war hero or something like that. “She can’t even hear you!” I want to shout at them all.
Some of the other comments make more sense. Here’s a post from a twenty-something young man who says that Grandma Lucy led him to Christ and saved him from a life of drug and alcohol abuse. There’s a middle-aged woman who says Grandma Lucy kept her from committing suicide. It’s a little rambling and hard to follow thanks to poor grammar and autocorrect, but I catch enough of the story to learn that Grandma Lucy once stopped a crowded bus to talk this woman down from a highway overpass and then told her how to be saved.
It’s a little eerie, really. Everyone’s got such powerful stories to tell. Isn’t someone sad that she’s gone? No matter how good of a person she was, isn’t anyone allowed the space to grieve?
Enough of the video loads that I can start the service. It’s the same pastor from Orchard Grove Bible, except it’s not in his church. Grandma Lucy apparently touched so many lives they had to hold her funeral service in the high school gym.
The pastor greets those in attendance, and I find myself looking for his petite wisp of a wife. I know this is supposed to be a celebration of Grandma Lucy’s life, but I wish the pastor looked a little more somber. He’s not even wearing a suit and tie. Said that when he and Grandma Lucy were discussing the arrangements for her ceremony, she wanted people to dress in their brightest colors. She wanted her friends from different ethnic backgrounds to wear traditional clothes to represent the way heaven is filled with people from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
The pastor looks markedly American in his basketball jersey. I still can’t tell if he’s got more Hispanic blood or Native American. Not that it really matters. I’m just curious.
After an opening prayer that feels far too enthusiastic for an event like this, Pastor Greg talks about how Grandma Lucy handpicked all the hymns for today’s service. I wonder what kind of person would be so obsessed with her own mortality they’d planned their own song arrangement.
Different strokes, I guess.
The pastor leads the singing on his guitar. I haven’t heard the song before, but I’m sure it’s got to be a hundred years old or more. I Know Whom I Have Believed. It’s got a catchy enough tune, but the language is kind of clunky, which is what makes me think it must be so ancient. Everyone’s singing at the top of their lungs. I don’t think I’ve even been to a wedding whose guests are this excited.
“And now we’ve got something really special to share with you,” the pastor says. “We weren’t sure she’d be feeling strong enough, but Grandma Lucy’s going to come out now and say a few words.”
I’m so stunned I nearly drop my phone. The cord catches on Natalie’s crib, which is the only thing that keeps it from crashing onto the floor. I know for a fact that someone like Grandma Lucy wouldn’t have anything to do with a séance or anything like that. I re-read the title of the video again. Celebration of life service for our beloved Grandma Lucy.
Celebration of life. That’s a funeral, right? Then why is she on my cell phone screen? Why is she wearing a yellow blouse with flowers the size of dinner plates and waving to everyone who’s clapping and cheering as she makes her way to the stage?
The Lakers-fan pastor holds the mic for just another minute. “When the doctors told us about the water around Grandma Lucy’s heart, a lot of us feared we were going to lose her. Many of us didn’t feel ready yet to say goodbye. I went to talk with her at the hospital, and she said she was ready to meet her Jesus. Her only regret was that she didn’t get one last chance to tell the ones she loved about the Lord. She wanted to make a video, record it one night when she felt particularly strong. It was going to be her goodbye video, but as we all know, God had other plans for our dear sister.”
Cheers and shouts of hallelujahs interrupt him and persist for several minutes before he quiets the crowds again.
“Grandma Lucy walked out of that hospital even when the doctors expected the worst. When she got home, she joked with me and said that it was a shame the video she made couldn’t be shared with the world yet. And that’s how we came up with the idea for today’s celebration of life service. We’re still not going to watch that recording she made. We’ve got something even better. We’ve got Grandma Lucy herself, healed from what most people assumed would be her deathbed, and she’s going to tell us directly what the Lord put on her spirit the other night.”
This time, it’s a full five minutes before the cheering stops and Grandma Lucy begins. I’ve got tears streaming down my cheeks, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m relieved to find out she’s not really dead or if I’m just longing for that peace and radiance that shine out of Grandma Lucy’s face. I’m biting my lip so hard it might bleed. My phone is trembling in my hand. I pray that the hospital guest wireless will give me enough bandwidth to watch the whole video without interruptions.
Grandma Lucy takes in a choppy inhale. I lean forward, forgetting to breathe myself as she begins her speech.
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“First of all, I want to apologize to those of you who think it presumptuous for me to plan my own celebration of life service. To the rest of you, I just want to thank you for being here with me today. My soul is so full. I couldn’t have asked for a better life. Heartaches and all, God was there for me. I’ve had so much more joy and love and grace that I ever deserved. Thank you, Jesus for being the author and perfecter of my faith.” She slips right into prayer without closing her eyes, and all of a sudden she’s addressing us again.
“My heart’s been giving me trouble lately, as of course you all know. But just like the psalmist declares, my heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. He is the one who has awakened my soul and loosened my tongue, just like he did for Isaiah when
the seraphim touched his lips with the fiery coals. You may believe in a God who has ceased to do miracles, but my heavenly Father still sets prisoners free and gives sight to the blind and releases those held by chains.
“Many of you today are held by chains even now. Fears. Despair. Bitterness. Unforgiveness. The chains of pride or lust or anger or selfish ambition. And that’s why even when my heart is so full, even when I rejoice at the thought of being surrounded by so much love and joy today, I regret that I haven’t made better use of my time here on earth. I regret I haven’t prayed with more of you. Shared with more of you. Demonstrated God’s love to more of you. But God has given me this chance. It may very well be my last, so I don’t want to waste it.
“Jesus loves you. There is nothing that you have done, no sin you could ever commit or even conceive that would make him love you less.”
My hand is shaking so hard that I can’t even focus on the picture on my screen. All the guilt, the horror at the mistakes I’ve made, these dark secrets I’ve kept buried in the blackest depths of my soul for so long — they haunt me now. Stare me full in the face. Ugly. Accusing. They will not be ignored. They will not be silenced. Grandma Lucy’s talking about a God of forgiveness and grace, a God who willingly forgives liars and petty thieves. Not people like me. People who contemplate murder. A mother who subjects her baby to a life of disability and pain just because ...
No. She can’t mean me. Guilt hooks its talons into the muscles of my neck and shoulders. I feel the icy chill. I need to turn the video off. I can’t survive any more dashed hopes.
But I can’t bring myself to stop the recording. Maybe I’m addicted to punishment. I don’t know, but I have to hear the rest of what this woman tells me.
“Now maybe you’re listening to me, and maybe you’re saying to yourself, Grandma Lucy, you don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know how bad it really is. Well, that much may be true, but God knows. And still he promises us in the Bible that while we were his enemies, Christ died for our trespasses. While we were lost in our transgressions, God forgave us the guilt of our sins. While we were once objects of God’s wrath, we can now experience grace and abundant life in him.”
My heart is racing. I’ve felt this way before. At that youth retreat when I was a teenager, the one where I promised God to turn my life around and serve him wholeheartedly. I feel the same way now, the same sense of excitement. The palpable energy surrounding me, some sort of cosmic Holy Spirit fire in my chest. I want to believe Grandma Lucy’s words. I want to believe this forgiveness and grace can extend even to me. I want to believe that if I open my heart to this divine invitation, if I accept this heavenly love that’s tugging at my soul like the strings of a master puppeteer, it will be enough. Enough to wash away the guilt of my shame, the trauma of my past, the torment of my despair. I want to believe that this grace Grandma Lucy mentions is enough to change me. For real, not just for a day and a half until Lincoln Grant gets me in the backseat of his dad’s truck again. I want to believe that this time it will last. This time I won’t feel like I’ve faked my own conversion.
But I’m so scared that I’ll end up disappointed again. My faith is too immature, my soul is too weak to endure that level of cosmic disillusionment.
I have to fight it. I have to resist. This is some kind of emotional manipulation, a psychological trick meant to make me feel like I’m God’s most beloved creation in the entire world. I can’t give in like I did as a teen. I’m a grown woman now with a daughter to look after. A daughter who needs a mother, not some Jesus freak.
“I’m still weaker than normal.” Grandma Lucy’s words are slower. I think I detect a hint of a slur, but I’m afraid to admit it even to myself.
“I’m finishing my little speech with a full heart. I’ve known my share of sorrows, but through them all, I can say with certainty that I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed to him against that day.”
It’s the same line from the hymn we just sang. The words make very little sense to me, but she speaks them with such joy and peace. I know I’ll never be as faithful or confident as she is. It would be stupid of me to even try. But still, something is tugging at my spirit, urging me to take that chance. Take that leap of faith. Give God one last shot to change me.
Grandma Lucy invites us to pray with her. I bow my head and shut my eyes.
I don’t know if I’m ready for this or not. There’s only one way to find out.
CHAPTER 84
I don’t know what I was expecting when I bowed my head with Grandma Lucy. I still can’t believe I did it, followed a prayer by some woman who’s preaching at her own end-of-life ceremony. First, she prayed with anyone who wanted to become a Christian for the first time. It’s all the stuff I remember from Sandy’s church. You know, I admit I’m a sinner, please forgive me, come into my heart, I make you Lord of my life. And I remember enough from her husband’s preaching to figure I’m set because I prayed that one a long time ago, and everyone there told me you’ve only got to do it once. But I do it again, just to be sure. It can’t hurt, right?
Next, Grandma Lucy looks straight at the camera and I swear she’s watching me with some third eye or something. She says, “Now, I know there are some of you who have been Christians for years. You know that Jesus died to take the punishment for your sins, you believe he was raised back to life through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you’ve asked him to forgive your sins and prepare a place for you in heaven. But deep in your heart, you realize something is still missing, only you can’t figure out how to find it.”
I’m bending down over my phone so that my face is as close as I can get to the screen without making Grandma Lucy’s image blurry. I’m not trembling anymore, at least not outwardly. All those physical symptoms, they’re now confined to one spot in the center of my chest. I’m no longer nervous. I wouldn’t even say I’m afraid. It’s more like dread, this emotion I’m feeling. But when you call it an emotion, that makes it sound like it’s coming from somewhere within me, except it’s not. It’s this Presence. This conviction. This certainty that I know I didn’t conjure up on my own. And I’m terrified. I don’t think there’s a word strong enough to express this sort of fear.
I’m no longer afraid that God’s mad at me. I’m afraid that whatever it is Grandma Lucy’s going to ask me to do to get right with him is going to be too hard. I’ll be too stubborn. I won’t have the strength to follow through, even though something in me knows — just like I knew that Jake and I wouldn’t be able to make it together for the long haul — something in me knows that if I don’t respond to this tugging at my spirit, I may never get another chance like this for as long as I live.
Now you can understand when I say there’s not a single expression in human language that can describe this level of terror.
Help me, God. I’m not sure what I’m asking him to do. I just know that without his strength, I’m going to be too weak to take this step of faith, whatever it is. I’m so exhausted by this bleak, dismal existence I’ve been leading. If you were to take all the moments in the past twelve months where I’ve been truly happy, I don’t think it would even total half an hour. Not a single hour out of the entire year. I know enough about Christianity to realize that it’s not all about me being happy, but I also know enough about myself to understand that if something doesn’t change, if I don’t find some sort of higher purpose, some outside source of joy that’s not tied to my emotions or my circumstances, I might not be here in another twelve months when next Christmas rolls around.
That’s why I’m bending so attentively over my phone. That’s why when Grandma Lucy begins what she calls her prayer of repentance and renewal, I’m soaking in every single word like I’m a sponge that’s been sitting out in the desert heat for months. I take each phrase, each individual word, and make it my own. I wrap it up as a prayer that I toss up to heaven, hoping against all my uncertainties and fears that, as weak a
nd sinful as I am, it will still be enough.
I beg God to free me from guilt and shame. I invite him to fill me with the Holy Spirit until I’m overflowing. I ask him to give me victory over sin and doubt. And I surrender my future, uncertain as it is, and I surrender my daughter’s future to the God who has promised that those who put their hope in him will never be put to shame.
Right after Grandma Lucy says amen, my phone pauses to hunt for more bandwidth. There’s a soft tapping on my door. I glance up like a third-grader who’s been caught cheating off her neighbor’s test.
“Hey,” Jake says. His voice is so soft, I can hardly hear it over the pounding of my own pulse. I hardly feel human at the moment. What just happened to me? What did I just do?
He steps into the room tentatively. Glances at our daughter in her crib, his look full of compassion and pain.
“Sorry to bother you.” He doesn’t meet my eyes. Or maybe it’s me that’s keeping my gaze so low.
He pulls up the doctor’s swivel chair. “Do you have a minute? I came by to talk to you about something.”
CHAPTER 85
For a second, I think Jake’s here to apologize. That’s the look he’s got on his face, that sort of humble expression. A little timid. But he doesn’t come right out and say he’s sorry, and I’m glad he doesn’t because I honestly couldn’t tell you right now what that boy has to feel bad about. Of course, some of that’s my mental fog. It’s like everything in that Grandma Lucy video was so intense, my brain cells have shut down one by one until all I’ve got are the basic functions left.
Jake looks me right in the eyes. I can hardly keep my heart from jumping out my throat. I seriously wonder if I’m going to gag on it. I’m not nervous about Jake being here. I’m just so confused and emotional after that whole prayer thing. It couldn’t have been worse timing for him to stop by.