by Kim Jones
“Will I be able to see you from heaven?” Beve asked as we sat on the sofa, curled up under the afghan. “Why do you always ask questions I can’t answer?” I replied. Never easily put off or detoured from her agenda, she pressed further, “Can I watch what you do every day?” Having lived a life entwined in the lives of others, this was a logical question to ask on the day before her second brain surgery to slow down an aggressive, cancerous tumor. Again, I had no answer. But the fact that she asked me these questions so calmly and without a trace of fear confirmed what we both knew. She was going home to heaven. An unexpected, quiet peace filled the room. We curled up closer together. This was a side of Beve I had not seen before. Heavenly conversations were not her usual fare. She was a concert in constant motion, catching up everything and everyone in her whirlwind of activity. Driven by her energetic personality and a fear she kept safely hidden, Beve extracted every moment out of life. Few people knew it, but Beve, like so many of us, was terrified of dying. Just days after her initial diagnosis, Beve experienced a head-on confrontation with her fear. Facing the battle for her life, she turned to God, the only one who could help. Reaching out to Jesus Christ as her personal savior, she cried out from the depths of her soul, “God, I need you!” Instantly her body, tense from waves of anxiety and hours of tears, relaxed. Her troubled expression changed to one of peace and calm. She opened her eyes in amazement and said, “I met Jesus, Kim. He’s real!” One year later we celebrated Beve’s 44th birthday. We were thankful that she was doing better than the doctors had expected, but a few weeks after our celebration, the tide suddenly turned. The seizures and symptoms escalated. Within hours we sat in the doctor’s office, awaiting the results of the latest brain scan. The news was grim, the outcome inescapable. Surgery to remove some of the tumor and buy a little time was scheduled immediately. “The valley of the shadow of death,” we discovered, is a very real place. We began to pray that God would prepare her to come home to Him, and He did. Several days after her surgery, Beve and I were alone in her hospital room. She woke up from a nap and said with absolute conviction, “When I close my eyes to pray, Jesus is standing right beside me.” She went on to describe seeing the faces of her parents in her sleep. Although they had died years earlier, she seemed to know that she would see them again soon. I don’t recall what I said, but I remember how I felt. Beve was moving into a realm I didn’t understand, a place where I couldn’t go. Most amazing, she wasn’t afraid. I found that I wasn’t prepared to handle God’s answer to my own prayers. God had not only replaced Beve’s fear with peace, He had taken her by the hand and was gently leading her away. Within days, Beve began to sleep more and converse less. The speed at which her cancer progressed stunned the surgeons. God, in His infinite mercy, shortened her time of suffering and ours. The night before Beve slipped into an irreversible coma, her room was filled with college students, friends of her youngest son. The room was silent. She was too weak to talk, and they were too overwhelmed to try. One young woman began reading Beve’s favorite Bible verses. One in particular stood out: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). These words of hope filled the room, providing an anchor in a sea of sorrow. Like a dam bursting forth, emotions flowed uninhibited. I glanced at Beve, she was smiling. She wanted to speak, so I drew near to her face to hear what she wanted to say. With a weak and failing voice, yet one that was filled with the strength of fearless conviction, she uttered her last words to me: “Kim, tell them to live by these words.” And so I am. Beve went home to heaven, peacefully, days later. Can she see us from heaven? I still don’t know the answer, but I know Beve does. Kim Jones is Ministry Coordinator for Outreach of Hope. For the twelve years they knew one another, Kim and Beve were best friends.
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