Key Things

“She could die from suffocation.” My heart dropped.

My mother’s spine was slowly collapsing, disrupting the connection of brain to body. The parish nurse told me numerous scary results. I began to pray in earnest that she would not experience any of those frightening outcomes. “Please Lord, have mercy on her final days!” I pleaded. “Oh God, let her die peacefully in her sleep.”

You know…God listens.

He felt my troubled heart. While He cares deeply about the dying person, He also moves supernaturally to comfort those left behind.

So one day while praying, I had a brief vision: In my mind’s eye, I stood inside a planetarium with my mother. The space was dark, except for a spotlight, which shone down on her. She seemed radiant and serene. A golden key on a thin chain was draped around her neck. It gleamed in a mystical way.

Then I noticed something extraordinary. The circular loops at the top of the key had a sky-blue center. I lifted the key to take a closer look. The loops were actually tiny windows into different realm. And in that other place the sky stayed blue, though on earth it was dark. Just then, a panel in the domed ceiling opened, and through the slotted section I saw the starry night sky. The vision ended there.

A simple scene—a poignant message.

My mother had the key to heaven—her passage would be secure. The rounded ceiling of the planetarium symbolized her earthly life. The panel opened, signaling it was time for her to go. Perhaps she’d slip away at night. All was well. The dream laid a blanket of peace over me for the remaining months of her life.

But God didn’t stop there. He chose to repeat the message for emphasis.

Indeed God speaks once
 or twice…in a dream, or a vision…He opens the ears of men…Job 33:15

Not long after that vision, I received a book in the mail. My daughter’s close friend, Ali Smith, wrote a paperback on being single. She asked me to compose the Forward. As a courtesy, her publisher sent me a free copy. To my utter amazement, the book’s cover virtually had the same images as the vision.

But God wasn’t done yet!

Later that summer, my friend Lisa Pierson saw a bookmarker in a store while on vacation. For some strange reason, the Lord told her to buy it for me. She knew nothing about my vision or Ali’s book, but felt prompted by the Holy Spirit.

Do you feel those nudges? Do you shrug them off or pause and consider—hmm, could this be God?

Lisa responded and bought the bookmarker for me. Here is a picture of it. Now I ask you…was it odd or was it God?

In August 2009, I traveled to Cleveland to give my dad a break from the intensity of caregiving. When I arrived at my parent’s place (which I thought I knew backwards and forwards and upside down), for the first time I noticed a golden key ten times the size of the one in my vision. They used it as a paperweight on small table by the front door.

I examined the key and found two numbers on it: 50 and 12. Out of curiosity, I looked up Genesis 50:12. The verse tells about the sons of Israel laying to rest the body of their father, Jacob.

My mom died a few weeks later. And she slipped out at night, passing away peacefully in her sleep. I sat down and wept.

Tears of sorrow, because she was gone.

Tears of relief, because she did not suffer the scary possibilities of her disease.

Tears of joy, because God had answered my prayers exactly.

Tears of awe, because He showed me through a symbolic key that my mom would be okay.

And finally, the tears of feeling loved. God took away the trouble in my heart by telling me these things in advance–four times.

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May you come to know this God, and may He increase all the ways that He speaks to you in your world of divine happenstance.