Good morning…
“How has your day been?” she texted me on Saturday.
“Special. Really special,” I replied. “I spent the day copying notes from the final prayer journals of my friend Julie Harlan. I enjoy learning the deep roots beneath Julie’s Dream, the non-profit started in her honor. She is all about authentic relationship, about getting kids outside to learn about God in nature, and furthering the kingdom of God on earth. I had a good cry when I finished my note taking, and I truly feel her strength and expansive vision guiding us forward.”
“That’s so very powerful,” my friend texted back. “The more time that goes by, I really think of death in such a different way … I feel like it’s a transition … I like that word so much better. Because Julie IS here – she’s just not physically here. But she is here in every other way. In peoples’ hearts … in their memories … in all of the ways she made impacts on the lives of so many people. She continues to give … it’s only her body that isn’t present …. but her spirit and her soul are, I believe. Seems like you experienced her today? Reconnected with her very alive spirit? My heart hurts with yours.”
“Yes, I feel Julie guiding me as we try to discern the movement forward with the agencies we serve through Julie’s Dream,” I admitted. “With Steve away doing a wedding in Michigan, I made my own dinner.”
“I made Beth Jordan’s favorite salt and vinegar chickpeas, in honor of another woman who taught me so much about living fully through her journey with brain cancer,” I texted. “Just feels like the veil between heaven and earth is really, really thin for me today and tonight.”
“Oh gosh. I love that,” she replied before sending me these photos from her home.
“It’s so beautiful to see God’s light shining through everything,” I noticed.
“When I read your text just then I looked at the butterfly and the dragonfly on my desk,” she said. “No … I’ve never paid particular attention to them sitting there. You know how much you and I love butterflies. Gosh. Amazing. And dragonfly symbolize transformation I also believe.”
“These are Julie’s final two journals,” I explained. “A gorgeous blue butterfly one, and then a black one that is only a third filled. She had no idea she was writing her way into her final journal when she choose this black leather cover. But God knew. God knows. God transforms all of the joy and all of the sorrow into eternal life.”
“Yes, He does,” she concluded. “The veil between Heaven and earth … ”
“… it is so marvelously thin,” I finished her final sentence.
You will know Christ’s love, which goes far beyond any knowledge. I am praying this so that you may be completely filled with God. Glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory belongs to God in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time and eternity! Amen (Ephesians 3:19-21, GW).
For all time and eternity! Amen and Amen.
…Sue…
