A Thin Place…. Experienced

 2010 was a very difficult year. As a family, we lost two more grandparents…a generation was no-longer with us. We experienced pain, shock, longing, regret, loneliness and hope. Our memories were both happy and sad. We celebrated their lives but ached because they were no longer here….. they were missing.

There were times when it seemed alright but times when it wasn’t fair; times of peace and times of anger; times of joy and then utter despair; times when our memories are full but then times of total emptiness; of numbness when we wondered if we would ever feel anything again and then feelings of overwhelming pain. There were times of a sense of closeness and then empty absence; times of overcoming and at other times feelings of incredible devastation. Times when you start to see the dawn rise and others when the you are seemingly thrown into the ink black night. It felt like being orphaned, that somehow, we were now real grown-ups!

It all seemed to come too quickly …and out of the blue. We realise this is all part of the the process of lament and grieving; many people have experienced similar things over the ages. Of course, time has passed, things are less acute but to be honest we still have days or periods where these feelings rise up again. It’s not so much that time heals, more that time gives perspective for the shock and other realities to be assimilated.

But in the midst of it all there was a reality of another side of life ….of the eternal… of the spiritual…. of the ‘other’ worldliness… of heaven and hell… of angelic beings….of a hope that is sure…of life and joy that cannot be understood.

Last week I wrote in my blog post about Thin Places:

“………..these [thin places] are defined as where the veil between heaven and earth is “thinnest” – where the supernatural and the natural mix….. where the world that is to come is found to be here now…..where heaven touches earth….. where things unexplainable are curtained not in thick velvet, but see through the thinnest silk……….” 

The idea I was trying to get across was that these places were real …if mystical …and they were places that we might be able to facilitate as well as experience ‘…where we could become a conduit …where heaven touches earth’.

Now I know this might sound strange, weird…. even mad, but during the process of both Jessica’s parents dying we experienced a thin place. We experienced both the privilege of ‘being able to be a conduit where heaven starts to touch earth’ and experiencing the mystical wonder of…. ‘a thin place where the veil between heaven and earth is like seeing through silk rather than thick velvet.’

Let me share our experience with Jessica’s dad’s last days with us in our home:

We knew that Jim’s time in this life was nearing an end. In fact, a number of people, including Jim himself, had had a sense of the actual day he would die or to put it a different way the day he would start a very different adventure!

During the two days before he died Jim had said a number of times that he sensed others in the room with us. He would ask us ‘who is that with us in the room….’ or ‘who’s standing behind me…’ or ‘who is that over there in the corner?’ It is important at this point to convey that Jim was not on any medication that would have caused this kind of stuff… in fact the medical staff were amazed at how little pain medication etc. he needed, how little pain he was experiencing, and how lucid and normal he was during these last hours considering his condition.

But during those last days, especially his last hours, he was able to say the things he wanted to say, to express what he needed to and communicate his last feelings but all the time it seemed that he especially sensed the presence of others ….something angelic. It was like those waiting to welcome him into a new life, and take him on the next part of his journey …to a new existence…a new reality … a new adventure were patiently waiting in the room for the things that needed to be said and done and finished to happen. And when they were, they helped him slip easily into that next chapter.

Through the whole experience there was an unfathomable sense of peace and timing.

The Jim who had faithfully followed Jesus when he had lived here on earth now had an escort of angels to go and meet his Lord. Heaven had touched earth and taken one of their own to begin his greatest adventure!

Madness, sentimental slush ….as they say you had to be there!