Boychurch
Janet

Janet

At a Rose Hedge in Heaven

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Gloria moved among the hedges. She looked down at her body. She felt good. No phlegm rattled harsh against her ribcage. She was hungry. She knew where she was, with the purest, most accurate knowledge. Actually what she knew was beyond knowledge, far beyond the three years that were accounted to her on earth. Heaven wasn’t really a place that earth words could describe, although some had tried. And interestingly enough, the Father was always sending small, little hints, messages if you will, of how this place worked on earth, but most people that inhabited that earthly realm were too busy to notice them or too proud to believe in them.

She hadn’t known that it was her Father who had made the rules that governed that earth, she had been there so briefly. Now she did. Those rules included the one that allowed the one little mistake in her DNA to not make salt channels properly in the organs of her body and on her skin when she was on earth. There she suffered because of it; here it did something different. No sense in explaining it, but her skin glowed with a little shine different than some of the others here and like she said, she was hungry and she knew that whatever she would eat, it would go down well. There would be a feast today, as there was always, and she would eat whatever she wanted. What she knew now was the that for all those in Heaven, their imperfections, so senseless on earth, were the very things that made them knowable here. It was all so sensible when you had the kind of mind that you got once you got here.

It wasn’t that Earth rules didn’t work here too, they did. But they worked in ways that were far beyond and above and more and better and purer, because He was in charge and clever and His word ruled and the whole thing, heaven and earth, were in His plan. That was the thing. In every moment since she had been here in Heaven, her heart swelled at knowing how complete and sure that fact was. He could speak anything and it would happen, and when He did that He did it in ways that never failed to amaze her. His ways were creative and unimaginable and He was always working, He and his Son. They were ever diligent. It was clear, they always had been and always would be, and they were one with their spirit that moved on the earth, giving relief to those whose head and heart and soul were seeking to understand their reason for being.

The hedge she moved along was full of roses. There was a celebration today. ‘Today’ she thought to herself. Such a strange word here, because there was an ever present light that filled and moved among all the inhabitants of this place. There was no dark. It was a light with properties of wave and energy, but just like everything here, it was more. In it flowed of the mind and heart of the Father, bits of His heart creeping down through something earthlings knew as time and space, to offer solace and respite. But here in Heaven, wondrously it flowed freely, unfettered, through each of the inhabitants and it did so every day, although there were no days here, this was eternity. Fluid among the light, she could see the smell of the roses as her steps disturbed the bright foliage and tender petals.

There were two colors on the hedges, shades of purest white, glistening in the light, soft to the touch, like satin and silk. The other color was red. While the white was pure as snow, the reds were resplendent in the different hues and shades. Some had so much magenta it seemed like blue filled the veins of their petals. Others were more orange, as bright as the sun that shown in the heavens of her previously earthly home. Gloria spied the one she wanted and reaching down, picked it from the hedge. It unfurled in her palm, its petals moist and stamens and pistils tickled her nose as she breathed deeply. Something about smells here in Heaven; the Father really liked noses and that whole invention.

She felt someone next to her and she knew who it was although she hadn’t really felt him before.

“Hi Jake”, she said. In earthly terms, it was her nephew. They of course never knew each other on earth, she having died more than twenty years before he was even born. It was a leftover habit here, reckoning time, even when it meant nothing.

“Tell me again, my Jake,’ she said, seeing all of him, the heart of him, the soul of him. It was like that in Heaven. It was how everyone knew who everyone was. “How old were you when you left earth?”

“Twentyseven,” he said, showing the peculiar smile that his earth mother loved so. Jake hugged Gloria.

“That one is beautiful, Auntie,” he said as he bent down and picked a red one of his own, one that was equally but completely different in its own beauty.

“It something how the Father does this, isn’t it?” he said, his blue-green eyes full of the light that had made him his mother’s joy on earth.

“Yes, it’s that continuity thing,” Gloria said. “Your mother Janet remembers when her mother Doris taught her how to remember Mother’s day with roses. It’s your mother that remembers the rose bushes beside her childhood home”

“Heck, I remember it too, and I wasn’t even there,” Jake says always exuberant. Gloria agrees in her own way, in her quiet soul.

“Sometimes humans got things right, didn’t they,” Jake said, as he bent down to pick more, sticking his own nose into the center of each one.

“White is for your mother being in Heaven and red is if she hasn’t gotten here yet,” Gloria said recalling her own brief and few memories of the tradition at the little brown house on Oak Hill in those three little earthly years.

“Jake, that is so like you, you have gathered an entire bunch!”Jake was known in heaven to think in quantity rather than quality, just like he did on earth. In heaven, he got both.

Joy seemed to surround them, seep through them, ethereal and solid at the same time.

Gloria held Jake and Jake held Gloria.

The atmosphere around them changed a bit and they could actually see love flowing between heaven and earth. They knew what was coming. Thy felt bigger arms around them. The Father was always with them but sometimes like this, His presence was different. It was like all the hearts and energy of all of creation and eternity filled you up and you didn’t know whether to sing or dance or just bask in the glory of it all. Jake’s and Gloria’s hearts seemed like they would burst with the sheer enormity of the joy that held them.

It would be undetermined in earthly time how long they remained that way that day in heaven.

Time there has no meaning remember, but when they just didn’t think they could feel any more joy, the Father spoke.

“Tell Doris and Janet you love them, they’ll hear it, I promise.”

Gloria Jean Huddle, born August, 1954, went to Heaven, October, 1957, daughter of Doris

Jacob Samuel Siefert, born August, 1979, went to Heaven Octoboer, 2005, son of Janet

4 Responses

  1. beautiful.
    you are one of the strongest, most beautiful mothers I know. such a blessing to everyone around you. happy mother’s day…

  2. A tear runs down my cheek and I have a lump in my thoat. Goodness what a wonderful message Janet from a loving mom and sister.

  3. So very moving, my dear friend. I remember seeing an oil painting in your home of Gloria when we were both just little girls. At the time is saddended me so, since I had never lost a sibling. Now, as you describe her and Jake in Heaven and the coincidence (or not) that they came and left in the same months, brought me comfort just reading your words. That both loving mothers would share the same tragic loss in a different time and place, and yet know that your children are in the best of all places. God bless you, your Mom, and your children – on earth and in Heaven.

  4. Beautiful message from a mother about a mother and for
    other mothers. Thank you.
    Mary Ellen

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent posts!