Two years ago, these early September days, I was sitting at Olivia’s hospice bed, watching her closed eyes wishing to know what was going through her mind. She knew it was the end. We knew she only had a few days left with us. Was she remembering her childhood, or some significant events of her life? Or was she already drawn to the other sphere trying to make the scary choice of letting go of her body so her soul could slip into a completely unknown existence?
I wish to remember her as she was before – my always full of life, unstoppable, radiant, spirit-filled Orsa. But the memories of her last six days in that hospice bed keep haunting me.
As I was sitting on the back porch under the weight of these memories, I remembered a vision the Lord gave me. It was about a month before Olivia passed, the day when the doctors told her that there was nothing they could do for her anymore.
It’s not easy to put it into words because it was a picture and a feeling that the Lord filled my heart with, but I’ll try.
I saw Olivia in Heaven in her absolute GLORIOUS form radiating life, joy, and holiness! Her being was indescribably beautiful!!! She was looking down at her earthly self as that Olivia was standing in their living room supported by the walker, weak, in pain, broken, sick from the poison of long chemo sessions, swollen up by steroids, burnt and bald from whole brain radiation, ravaged by this awful disease. And her heavenly self was radiating the utmost LOVE and GRATITUDE toward her earthly self. Like she was saying to Olivia down there in that pain-filled living room that “Hang on my dear! You WILL see, ALL the pain will go away. EVERYTHING will be more wonderful than you can imagine.”
It somehow made me understand that from a heavenly point of view all our sufferings here are … blessings that we will somehow (???) treasure once we are in heaven.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Romans 8:18 NKJV