Miracles

There have been miracles. Visions. Dreams. Lots of signs sent our way, which has been a little confusing for some of us, being former Baptists and all. Accepting the reality that we are spirit and God is spirit and Rob is spirit and, therefore, we can still recognize communication from beyond the veil, has been more of a faith walk than I expected.

The connections are varied, which is proof in itself that we’re not making it up or imagining things. As brilliant as my kids are and as intelligent as I am, we couldn’t dream any of this up on our own.

For example. Since January, there have been multitudes of hawks overhead. Hawks circling from their nest in trees across the street. Hawks doing flyovers while we—but mostly Katy—drives. She sees them on fence posts, light poles, rooftops, and not just in Arizona. They showed up for her in Florida, too. They’re her link to her daddy. He loved hawks and always pointed them out to us. I don’t know how he could spot them so easily, but his daughter has the same gift. Last week after the funeral was over, Katy knelt at her dad’s grave and called out to me.

“Mom! Look at this!”

Lying on top of the marble slab over Rob’s grave was a single feather. No one placed it there. No one saw it fall from the sky, either. My sister was watching as people came and went around his headstone and told me the slab had only been covered with Rob’s fire department helmet. Later I learned that feathers are often seen as a sign of God’s presence and comfort. "He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart," the psalmist wrote in Psalm 91:4. 

On Easter, Lee witnessed his father’s presence at the back of his church, two months after Rob went to be with Jesus. Standing quietly, unassuming as usual, posture familiar, clothing spot on, hidden by the shadows but entirely recognized by his son, Lee’s father listened while his son finished his message, only to disappear when Lee stopped talking. Lee was in Kentucky when his father took his final breath, and never got to see his dad again before he died. This personal visit was reserved for him.

The week before Easter is a very difficult time for a pastor who just lost his father to prepare four days of sermons reminding people that Christ defeated death. Drained by the effort, my son sank down late one afternoon on the front pew in his church where fading light kept the room in shadows.

“When are you going to show up?!” he demanded of the silent One. Closing his eyes there, they immediately began to burn. Looking for the source of his pain, he saw boomeranged light bouncing off the Emmanuel candle on the alter in front of him. The late afternoon sun, shining through a window high above him on the wall, sent a ray of revelation into the space, ricocheted burning light off the metal ring on the candle and straight into Lee’s weary, closed eyes. Looking at the source, even the wick appeared to be lit, and he realized his question was answered. Emmanuel. God is with us.

Even now, when it feels like He isn’t.

When we decided to save the memorial service for late July in Florida so all the family could attend and Rob’s headstone would be finished, we chose to do a memorial tribute on video, too, for friends and family, particularly those who couldn’t attend the July service. Rob and I didn’t talk about funerals much because we had so much more living to do. But one afternoon a few years ago, he told me about a song he wanted played for his someday funeral. I didn’t want to think about such a terrible thing. I listened to the song and promptly forgot about it.

Until February. Desperately, I tried to remember the name of the one thing Rob had asked for should he pass away before me. I didn’t know the song title, any lyrics, the vocalist, or even the genre. The only thing that stuck with me was the gist of the lyrics—it was a guy singing about the satisfaction he wanted to feel at the end of his life. I asked everyone in the family if they knew of such a song, but no matter how we searched for it, we came up empty handed every time. I cried over my lack of foresight. The one thing Rob had asked for and I couldn’t deliver on it.

A week into the gathering of photos for the video, I woke in the middle of the night and heard a man’s voice clearly say, “When it’s all been said and done.” That was it. Nothing else. I thought it might be a line from the song, though I had idea why it came to me that way. Too drowsy to write it down and too forgetful to remember it, I picked up my phone, dictated it to Siri, and went back to sleep.

I remembered it the following afternoon and told Katy about it. She googled the phrase and got a hit. By the time she’d played the first stanza, I was in tears. It was Rob’s song. And the phrase spoken to me in the night was the song’s complete title—"When It’s All Been Said And Done.”

In the last few months, I have sensed Rob repeatedly in moments of joy as well as fear and pain. Two weeks ago, as I crested the 260 on the Mogollon Rim, our favorite view spread out across the miles of juniper forest below the highway and I felt my heart break again only to realize Rob’s presence was there in the truck with me. I sensed him there for the next hour as I drove the highway to the home we lived in so briefly and sat in our former driveway in sorrow. As I pulled away, Rob’s presence disappeared.

Last week, driving back from his memorial in Florida, I was alone on the final day, exiting I-40 at Holbrook when I realized he was with me again. It’s a strange feeling that I’m unaccustomed to. A spiritual connection, for sure, but it’s like using a spiritual muscle that’s barely been exercised by me before now. It’s not scary, but comforting, and I pay strong attention to it whenever I sense his presence. How could I do anything else, having been one with this man for forty-four years? Of course I know when he’s close by.

But why there on a nothing back road in the high desert instead of in the pines where we tried to make our dreams come true? Because I was headed back into the mountains, back to Heber and Payson and the Mogollon Rim where we raised our kids and anchored our dreams and relished the journey together all those years. Half an hour later, overcome with tears in the middle of a cloudburst on that desolate section of road, I had to pull over and cry out more sorrow. It wasn’t safe to drive—it was only safe to stop. When I got back onto the road, Rob’s presence was gone again.

These are not the miracles we prayed for. The only one we asked for was the one we were denied. Maybe Rob’s prayers were more important than ours as he spent weeks suffering in an ICU in the hospital in Show Low. Maybe his was the one God answered. I don’t know. It’s one more explanation we’ve been denied, and speculation just brings more heartache.

But these glimpses into the heart of God, beyond the veil that blocks my vision. These experiences are gifts of mercy and compassion. It would be simple to explain them away. They’re not very scientific sounding. Birds fly, feathers fall, dreams are full of voices, memories trigger strong feelings. I hesitate even here to tell you about these things.

But if God is our Creator, and Jesus used nature all the time to explain His Father’s kingdom, why shouldn’t I take these evidences of Rob’s presence and God’s comfort as reassurance that, though my world has spun out of control, my Father is still in charge and carries me.

“As an eagle that protects its nest, that flutters over its young, He spread out His wings and took them, He carried them on His pinions.” Deuteronomy 32:11

I still believe in miracles.