{"id":214,"date":"2019-06-07T19:16:13","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T19:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/?p=214"},"modified":"2019-06-07T19:18:12","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T19:18:12","slug":"a-new-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"A New Song"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Fourteen days in the hospital when\nyou don\u2019t know what is wrong can be very be tedious. My wife was not feeling\nwell. Hadn\u2019t for a while. She never complained when sick, so it took a while\nbefore I noticed. Her aliment? She couldn\u2019t retain any food or fluids in her\nbody. She lost sixty-five pounds. I took her to the emergency room and they put\nher in a room to run tests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I stayed with her every night except one\nduring her hospital stay. I slept on a rickety cot that the hospital provided\nme. My mother and I bought her some pajamas, so she didn\u2019t have to spend her\ndays in a gown that opened in the back. She was grateful for that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nurses constantly hooked her up\nto dripping stuff and monitors everywhere. The Doctors ran test after test\nmeasuring everything that went in and everything that came out. They checked\nher inside and checked her body outside looking for any clue to what was wrong.\nThey took a lot of blood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to make her time there fun\nand not boring. She read books, did crossword puzzles, and worked on a cross\nstitch of a bear for my brother. Her stitchery stuff was always the best anyone\nhad ever seen. You could frame it from the backside and it still looked great.\nShe then worked on another one that had a beautiful house with a wraparound\nporch. She told me she wanted a home like that someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had been married for thirty\nyears and it got better every year. She was the best part of my day and I loved\ntelling her so.  But I never could give\nher a house like that on a ministry wage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After two weeks, we talked about\nhow we always enjoyed going out to dinner and to a movie together. She apologized\nand laughed saying she couldn\u2019t do that while in the hospital. Christmas came.\nChristmas passed. We celebrated Christmas in her hospital room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On New Year\u2019s, I told her I had to\ntake care of a few things and I would be back. I went to the church where I\nworked as a youth pastor and borrowed a projector I could hook up to my laptop.\nThen I swung by home and picked up two of her favorite movies. Princess Bride\nand Pride and Prejudice. We arranged her furniture, set her up in her bed, and we\nwatched movies on the wall of her hospital room like it was a drive-in movie. We\nlaughed and cried. We held each other\u2019s hands tightly the whole time. Nurses kept\npeaking in as no one had ever done that before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days later, she was dismissed\nfrom the hospital. They never found the cause of her problems but decided to\ntreat it as if she had celiac disease. That, I learned, is a problem with the\nlining of the intestines. You can\u2019t eat anything with gluten in it like bread\nor pizza. We went home and bought all new utensils and pots and pans and\nstarted the gluten-free diet. She was always hungry and still could not keep\nanything in her system. After about a week and a half she felt better but was far\nfrom well. A month went by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I brought home a single yellow rose\nand caramel apple for her Valentine\u2019s gift not knowing that four days later she\nwould die. I was devastated. We never thought it would come to that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the funeral and burial at the\ncemetery I stayed with my mother for a while. Eventually, I went back to our\nhome\u2014alone. I went back to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While at work I would sneak behind\ndoors to cry. I\u2019d come home and just sit in the driveway at night not wanting\nto go inside. I would take meds, so I could go to sleep. I put a picture of her\non an end table in the living room and I moved the picture to the bedside table\nat night when I went to bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cried constantly. I even considered\ngetting a sailboat and sailing into the sunset never to return. I wanted to be\nwhere she was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I\u2019d stopped going to church where I served as\nI couldn\u2019t walk into the building without remembering where we ministered together.\nShe sang solos in church all the time. One that everyone loved was an upbeat\nsong that had the phrase, \u201cAin\u2019t no grave going to hold my body down.\u201d I saved\nall the church recordings of her singing and I made a CD of fourteen songs. I\nlistened to it over and over and somehow it comforted me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stayed away from church. Surely,\nthey understood. Yet I felt I needed to go back and say goodbye to the teens\nthat I worked with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Wednesday night I showed up\nand told the pastor what I was intending to do. This was going to be very\ndifficult for me. I didn\u2019t think I could do it alone. I asked him, \u201cCan you\nplease ask someone to come in and work with me and the teens tonight?\u201d\nImmediately, he asked a deacon and his wife to do that. Maybe I could get\nthrough this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I went into the class and I preached my last\nsermon to the teens to encourage them about my wife\u2019s death and to tell them\ngoodbye. I told them how even though we had prayed for her healing, that God\nsees our circumstances from a different perspective. I spoke to them alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, I walked back out into\nthe vestibule and went up to the pastor. I asked him where my help was. He\nsaid, \u201cOh, I thought that you could do it by yourself. You\u2019re pretty good at\nthat.\u201d I left that night and never went back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had never wondered about heaven\nbefore this happened. Hadn\u2019t needed to. In my crying I would say repeatedly, \u201cShe\u2019s\ngone. She\u2019s gone.\u201d My son corrected me once. \u201cDad? you need to finish your sentence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need to finish your sentence. She\u2019s\ngone\u2026 to heaven.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That only made me grieve more. Does\nshe see what we do down here? Does she see how hurt I am without her? How can I\nkeep going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then one Saturday night she visited\nme in a dream. It was so real. She looked so beautiful. She said she was okay\nand she loved me. Then she sang a song. It was a song I had never heard before.\nI couldn\u2019t get the tune out of my head. After I had the dream, as it was now\nSunday morning, I decided to go to church. A different church. I decided to go\nto a church where I thought I might see someone I knew that could comfort me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went in and no one noticed I was\nthere. I sat in a pew three rows from the back. My wife\u2019s dream-song kept\nplaying over and over in my mind. I especially remembered one phrase. \u201cHe gives\nus the Heaven and Grace our hearts always hunger for.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The service began. The first praise\nsong started, and everyone stood up. I didn\u2019t know it. I belonged to a church that\nused a hymnbook and declared that they would never show words on the wall. The\nnext song was also unfamiliar. But it sounded nice. A violinist played a\ncounter melody that I enjoyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came song number three. The\ntune sounded familiar, yet I know I had never sung it before. Had never heard\nit before…before last night, that is! I sat down, and I started crying. It\nwas my wife\u2019s Dream-song. The very same one she had sung to me in my dream.\nWhen they sang one verse that kept repeating in my mind, they changed her word\n\u201cHeaven\u201d to \u201cHealing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had prayed so hard for her\nhealing. We all have a hunger for heaven. She did too. And for my wife, going\nto Heaven became the greatest healing. I understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I returned home and framed the\nunfinished cross stitch of the house she\u2019d always wanted.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Here is her Dream-song as sung by\nSelah.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wonderful merciful Savior
\nPrecious redeemer and friend
\nWho would have thought that a lamb could
\nRescue the souls of men, Oh You rescue the souls of men<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counselor, comforter, keeper<\/em>
\nSpirit we long to embrace<\/em>
\nYou offer hope when our hearts have<\/em>
\nHopelessly lost the way, oh we hopelessly lost the way<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are the One that we praise<\/em>
\nYou are the One we adore<\/em>
\nYou give the healing and grace our<\/em>
\nHearts always hunger for, oh our hearts always hunger for<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almighty infinite father<\/em>
\nFaithfully loving Your own<\/em>
\nHerein our weakness You find us<\/em>
\nFalling before Your throne, oh we\u2019re falling before Your throne<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Eric Wise and\nDawn Rogers 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fourteen days in the hospital when you don\u2019t know what is wrong can be very be tedious. My wife was not feeling well. Hadn\u2019t for a while. She never complained when sick, so it took a while before I noticed. Her aliment? She couldn\u2019t retain any food or fluids in her body. She lost sixty-five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonhopkins.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}