To be totally transparent, I don’t talk about the life that I left very often.

 

Sometimes, pained by shame, I make jokes out of my misery, attempting to cover up the mess that my decisions have made. Sometimes I bring it up, drawing attention to it with my own words and actions in the hopes of beating someone else to the punch. 

 

Sometimes, I sit and think about how naive I was and how my hope in others nearly led me to my end. 

 

But now— right now— I am not dwelling on the shame or the hurt or the guilt of falling into man-made traps.  Right now, I am resting in what I gained from it: my dear, sweet Maria. 

 

Years ago, I walked into a house that was shrouded in hurt and secrecy, and there she was, right in the middle of it: lively and curious to know me. 

 

Red flags popped up left and right, warning me that I was in danger of being pulled into something much bigger than me, but I ignored them and walked forwards. I ignored my better sense and walked into a wooden prison, and every time that I took a step, she was right there stepping with me. 

 

Somehow, we had both been drawn into this mysterious community together, and despite having our reservations, just being together made it feel safer.

 

Maria was bright and vivacious— the antithesis of me. I had once been bubbly and excited, but years of abuse and discouragement stripped me of that. She was what my spirit was, but not what my flesh lived in. 

 

She was captivating. Dark brown eyes enticed you in with their open nature. Thick black hair cascaded down her back, elevating her to royal stature. Ethic brown skin labeled her as exotic, but her heart labeled her as one of your own. 

 

Simply put, she was beautiful. 

 

Maria was life. She was compelling with words and interpretive with spirit. She seemed to deeply see into people and she always spoke into it. You didn’t leave Maria’s presence without knowing that you were loved.

 

We were both strangers where we were: neither one of us belonged. We looked alike and dressed alike and talked alike, but we were the minority. We were foreigners in a land unknown. 

 

Somewhere, somehow, traversing a new and dangerous land, we found one another. Somewhere, somehow, we loved one another. 

 

Maria and I had each other through the most difficult of times. When her marriage was crumbling and a blossoming pregnancy was the only thing keeping her tied to it, I was there. I’d show up to talk or sit or hold her while she cried. I was her person. 

 

When I was ready to leave my positions and titles and names and relationships, she was there. She was a safe place. I’d yell and cry and feel.  Before her, I didn’t know how to feel anything. She was my person.

 

We held on to each other when our worlds around us were burning, and we survived them all because of it.

 

Finally, it came time to leave. 

 

It was my time to step into goodness and step into fullness, and that wasn’t possible in the land of depravity in which we resided. I made the decision to abandon the toxic community of people that I had named myself a part of so that I would survive. I left so that I could live. I left so that I could be loved. 

 

But she stayed in it. 

 

Maria stayed. 

 

She had every reasonable reason to. Family, her home, and the only semblance of security she’d ever known dwelt there. No matter what else came from it, her marriage and her daughter came from it, and that was all that mattered. 

 

I wanted her to stay for them, but I knew that I couldn’t. Part of her knew that she couldn’t either, but she knew that she had to. 

 

She had to, until she didn’t anymore. 

 

In the heat of August, with the mystery of fall on the cusp of arriving, Maria left. 

 

 On August 27 of 2020, my dear, sweet, beloved Maria finally left. 

 

I remember the hour so vividly. I was on a small tractor, tending to the foliage on my friend’s farm. 

 

My phone rang and I looked down to see a message that I had fully anticipated yet never hoped to see… her heart had stopped beating. 

 

When I received the news, I screamed through clenched teeth. Air left my lungs and heat flooded into my stomach and throat. 

 

“Where are you at?” 

 

Without thinking, before I could process, I sent a text to my sweet friend who owned the farm. 

 

“Meet me by the entrance to the barn?”

 

I slammed the gear forward and hastily drove to the top of the hill where my Jill met me.

 

“Hey girl!” Her nonchalant greeting was customary at this point. I looked at her, putting the machine into park, face deadened to hope. 

 

Before I could swing my leg across the dash and off the mower, she met me. She knew. 

 

She wrapped her arms around me and clung to me as if I were her child. Sobbing, I snaked my arms under her because I felt my knees begin to buckle. 

 

Heaven was shattering on that hot August day and my breath was leaving me. She was gone. Maria was really gone. 

 

Still crying, I pulled away. “Her heart… her heart stopped beating,” I hyperventilated. “She was alive but then her heart just stopped.”

 

Stuttering and bumbling, Jill pulled me close again. I don’t remember what she told me; I just remember it was what I needed. Maria was gone. Maria was gone. Maria was gone. 

 

Clutching my fists tightly against my body I tried to tell her. I felt delirious. The sun and the sorrow had soaked up every available ounce of energy that I had left to offer, and I was collapsing into my grief. 

 

I felt like I couldn’t breathe anymore. I felt like I couldn’t make sense of life anymore. No pain that I had ever experienced compared to the loss of my best friend: my sweet and beloved Maria. 

 

Worse came after that: people acting in anger and confusion and pain. Worse came, and for the first time in years, she wasn’t there to walk with me through it. Worse came, and I was left alone to walk through it.

 

I bartered with the Lord: I will give up my own life to see hers restored. I will give up anything– everything— just for her to return. Please God, just bring her back. 

 

Nothing came.  No restoration, redemption or hope for resurrection.  I begged and nothing came.

 

I had faced loss before, but I had never been affected by loss.  I had a system of beliefs in place that were formed from a place void of feeling. When Maria died, everything that I knew to be true about death and life after death changed.

 

Before Maria passed, I had been relatively indifferent to what happened to others after they died and were judged.  I had no belief system for anything past that. In my mind, they were just in heaven.

 

I had heard people contemplate on whether their loved ones could experience them or whether they completely forgot about them, but I had never been pulled to one belief system or another.  I didn’t need to know.  I just needed to know that an eternity in heaven was open and available.

 

But when Maria died, with death now as a companion, I was lost.  I was confused.  Some people talked as if every bit of her died when she did, and others talked as if she was still living.

 

I didn’t know, and it killed me to not know.

 

Days before her death, I had told a mutual friend that still belonged to the community that Maria was going to live. I had steadfastly said that despite her health and circumstances, that she was going to awaken and that she would live. I knew that she would live. The Lord had told me that she would live. 

 

When the news came that she didn’t survive the conditions that she was in, my seemingly wrong beliefs in her ongoing life were shared with others in the group of people I had decidedly left.

 

In the wake of her death, a man at the head of the community that I had left sent a vicious message to me. His words stung with poignant venom that drained the life from me.  He sent a long message meant to bring death to my hope and sense of well-being, but one part brought life.

 

“Can’t you see that there is something very wrong about the way that you are “hearing” God? You were wrong… you were wrong about Maria living.”

 

In that moment, anger and frustration flowed from the blasphemy that came from his perspective.  In that moment, furious at the ignorance to the eternal, I snapped. Battered by a cold and callous man, something in me shifted.

 

I knew that I wasn’t wrong. I knew that I wasn’t wrong when I heard that she would live. In that moment, despite anger and pain and sadness, I knew that she was more alive in the moments following her earthly death than she ever had been before. 

 

Maria’s body was dead, but her spirit was more than living. 

 

She was alive. 

 

She was very much so alive. 

 

He was wrong.  That man saw her laid in a grave, dead to everything and everyone, lifeless.  He saw her dead, but in doing so, I was able to see her as alive.

 

That day, in all its tragedy and heartbreak, was a day that I now fondly remember. That day was the day that a great awakening occurred in me. That day, I came to the realization of life after death. 

 

As a Christian, I had been familiarized with the eternal. I understood life comes after, but there had always been a distinct separation between the then and the now. 

 

Heaven was the then and earth was the now. 

 

Heaven and glory would be achieved then, but trepidation and trial would live now. 

 

There was no connection between the two: only an exceptionally large gap. 

 

One day I would know Maria again, in glory, but for now, I would live in the pain of her loss. 

 

One day, we’d be together, rejoicing together, dancing and smashing dishes and laughing together… but that was one day, and this was now. Now, we couldn’t be together. 

 

But in that moment of discovery— when a man’s disbelief led to my belief— I understood.  In a moment of heartbreak, God delivered the distinction that I needed.

 

 

 

“If I am in you, and she is in Me, you are bound together in unity of the Son forever.  If I am always next to her, yet I never leave your side, how could you not both be together on opposite sides of the universe?  Her home is now in heaven, and yours still rests on earth, but I came to bridge the gap between the two.  Together, we are all connected.  Together, we all live.”

 

 

 

 

She is here. She is now. She is in heaven, but through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, heaven has been delivered to the earth where I can now experience it. 

 

She is in every cup of tea that I drink and every cute infant onesie that I see. Almost every time that I consider purity and marriage and the hope that lies therein, she is there. When I yell and cry and smash dishes in anger, it’s as if her spirit is there counseling me to let out my emotions and encouraging me to really feel what I’m so afraid of feeling. 

 

To this day, every time that I hear an Upperroom song, I dance. I dance because we used to dance. I dance because we still dance her in heaven and me here on earth, we dance.

 

She lives and moves and breathes alongside me because the veil has been torn.  Nothing separates me from Jesus any longer, and since she lives alongside Him, she now lives alongside me.

 

My heart finds joy in knowing that she is here for as long as I live and longer. She may not be here in body, but in spirit, she lives. She lives and she loves, and she dances once more. 

 

Because the gift of salvation and the grace of God expand so much further than just salvation, Maria lives once again. 

 

Who knows if her spirit watches me, walks with me, or encourages me? Who knows if it’s sovereignty comforting me in her place?  Who knows if she is conscious and aware of what I am experiencing? Questions like that can wait until the grave. 

 

For I know, through Jesus, our hearts are bound, and neither life nor death can separate that. I know that He lives in her, and He lives in me, so together in Jesus, we have an eternal friendship. 

 

Your life and your loved ones are the very same. Whether they are lost to death or lost to worldly circumstances, they remain with you, marking both your days and your dances with their presence. They are here and now, whether you see them or not. 

 

Through Jesus, all is given life. 

 

Through Jesus, love lives. 

 

Through Jesus, we now possess what was once stolen from us. 

 

Through Jesus… we are bound as family, never to be separated by death ever again.