The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

This is my desk at the lake. I'm blogging this morning with John and Jesus!   After our loss, we find ourselves fascinated with the subject of Heaven. It makes sense, right? Our son is there and we miss him. We want to know where he is, what he's doing, and if he can see what's happening here. We want to know if he's enjoying his life, and what his days are filled with. Our fear of death is gone, and we look forward to the day we are reunited in our Heavenly Home. For those of you who have never read or studied about Heaven, I think you'd be amazed at what's in store for believers after our life here is done. It's going to be fantastic. In looking back, I see once again the hand of God as He - being detailed and thoughtful, put people in our path and paved the way for us to learn more about his residence and what our lives there will look like. It started with a friend mentioning the book "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn. It was several yea

Last Wednesday, we met with some fellow BP's, {Bereaved Parents}, and we were talking about near-death experiences. You've probably all heard or read at least one story about someone who died and was brought back. (i.e. Heaven Is For Real). The stories often include a description of seeing a brilliantly white light and going towards that light. So in this conversation, our friend talked about a NDE (Near Death Experience) that someone he knew had had. When he died, and before he was brought back by the emergency personnel, he went into that bright white light and he said that the feeling of being in that light was one of pure love, peace, and joy...just an unbelievable and indescribable feeling. He said there was nothing like it on Earth. As I heard that and remembered other stories my husband has been sharing while reading books on Heaven, a thought struck me. Euphoria. I've been reading a lot about drug addiction. You get pretty interested after losing a child

Speaking for the general populace, in our need to be helpful, we find ourselves wanting to encourage the bereaved and help them along their path.  We want to know that they are okay, and we are probably looking to move on as well.  After all, we've brought the casserole or attended the service.  We've offered our prayers and condolences, blessed them with a card, flowers or a plant, and we would now like to believe that they are happy, moving forward, living life again, and being thankful and grateful for all the other blessings in their lives.  When this isn't happening, in our self-suggested time frame, which seems to be around 3-6 months, we start to assume the bereaved parent is stuck and may need our help.  They may even be depressed, and we have several brilliant ideas that we feel we must, most definitely, share with said bereaved souls. So, again, we dig deep and we start throwing out a few  helpful cliches:   {a phrase or opinion that is overused