Believing can catch you in the most wonderful ways

There’s a New Testament question Jesus puts to a sorrowing Martha, whose brother has just been buried. The passage says this, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

I found out how much I believe it when my mother died. We were always a very close duo. I could not conceive of life without her. She was over ninety and becoming more frail. Still, I pictured us continuing like always.

It was an Easter morning — about four months before her death. I sat outside with my feet up, wearing a coat against the chill. I heard a chickadee call. It sounded enough like “hee-hoo” that it brought to mind those words of Jesus. I noted in my journal, “… he who believes in Me will live even if he dies …”

Soon after a chickadee — the same one? — flew onto the deck railing near me. I held still. It hopped to my propped up feet … bounced up my leg … paused in my lap looking trustingly at me with its bright eyes … flew to my shoulder … then to my head. It rooted around in my hair, its tail feathers covering one lens of my glasses. Eventually it hopped back the way it had come and flew off.

I was amazed. How could this have just happened? I thought maybe my husband had seen it through the window and went inside to ask. He hadn’t been watching. Jokingly I said, “I’ll go out again. Maybe it will come back.” Within minutes it did — hopping along my leg to my lap. Enough for Terry to witness its unusual behavior.

I remembered this scene as I sat with my mother in her last days. The moment I thought I could never do arrived. Mom took her last breath. I stood beside her hospital bed — still in the same room where we’d been for two weeks. Looking at the same four walls. And I had a totally unexpected response. I said out loud in a voice brimming with wonder, “She’s there. She’s there.”

I knew with certainty that my mother was alive in Heaven. And I would see her again.

Sometimes believing catches me by surprise in the most wonderful way.