Loss is hard, no matter how I think about it. I have friends going through it, right now.
The portal you call death is a lot like jumping to hyperspace, or going to warp speed—all of a sudden, the essence of the person is too large, too fast, and holds too much energy for the physical body that has been its home. The soul jumps to Eternity, leaving behind the empty shell. In this eternity there is no separation, not from Me and not from anyone loved in this life. In fact, since Love is the core of Being, the soul actually experiences unity with everyone and everything, while still retaining individuality. This is a mystery beyond your comprehension. You see glimpses and hints, nothing more.
Lord, the Old Testament warned against trying to connect with anyone who had died, so that warning makes me, I am sure makes a lot of us, wary. Yet some days I would like nothing more than a conversation with my Mom or Dad, or Patrick. That is why those dreams about them are so precious.
What the Old Testament warned about was substituting that contact for a genuine connection to Me. In Me and through Me and through the power of My resurrection, you have access to anyone for all of history. Who do you think sends you those comforting dreams? Who do you think summons the blue butterfly or the pileated woodpecker, just when you need some reassurance?
I gave you these earthly relationships to be an eternal blessing to you. I don’t intend you to remain in grief over the loss of physical contact. Instead, try asking Me to arrange experiences where you know your loved one has communicated with you, in a way personal and private to you, and see what happens?
Lord, I will never forget driving home after Christmas 2000, when Daddy died Christmas day, and the smell of his pipe tobacco that he got every Christmas in my childhood filled the car out of nowhere.
Not out of nowhere, out of Beyond. Out of Eternity. No, your father is not smoking a pipe in heaven! But that experience—what did it do for you?
I felt as if he was somehow near, along with my Aunt who gave him that tobacco, saying that he was okay. That he was well and healthy and somehow aware of me and where I was. It was a powerful moment of connection.
And did it increase or diminish your faith? Did it comfort you or plunge you into depression?
Lord, it increased my faith. And yes, it comforted me too—like the man I had lost to Alzheimer’s was somehow suddenly my Daddy again. Wow, I never put that into words before.
That was the exact intention, My intention, in the experience: to comfort and assure you.
So I can ask that my friends be comforted? And assured?
Indeed, yes. These are prayers I love to answer—happy serendipitous surprises of love.