Little Do We Know(40)
“I’d planned a completely different sermon for this morning’s Monday Chapel, but I’m going to save it for next week. Because over the weekend, something horrible happened to our family. And then something incredible happened.”
Dad paced the stage, stopped right in front of me, and looked down. The stage lights were dimmed so he could see me clearly.
Alyssa wrapped a supportive arm around my shoulder without taking her eyes off my dad. Jack and Logan were staring at him, too, waiting for him to continue. They’d already heard the story—it was all Dad could talk about at church the day before—but none of them seemed to mind hearing about the boy who died in front of our kitchen window again.
“It started with a glass of water.” Dad stopped in the center of the stage. “That’s it. One glass of water.” He let his words hang in the air. “Hannah had no reason to leave her bedroom that night, except for the small fact that she was thirsty.”
Dad went on. He told everyone how I’d bravely opened the car door, helped Luke sit up, checked his pulse, and lifted his shirt to see his injury. He told them how I’d run to get help and called 911, making me sound like a levelheaded heroine when I’d been racing around, panicked and shaking and freaking out the entire time. He went on to explain what happened when he got outside and saw Luke for himself, rapidly losing blood and oxygen, no pulse to be found.
I felt sick reliving the details. It was bad enough that I couldn’t get the image of Luke’s face that night out of my mind. How his skin turned blue, and his hands began to clench and stiffen. Because I had no newer image to replace it with, that was the one that stuck. The one I kept seeing when I closed my eyes. The one that woke me up several times a night.
“That boy died in my arms, with my daughter holding his hand. I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt. He was gone, well before the ambulance arrived.
“But then a miracle took place. In that ambulance, he took a breath, and his heart began to thump, and the color returned to his cheeks. And from what I understand, that was the easy part, because for the rest of the night, he fought with everything he had, through a blood transfusion and a three-hour surgery. The Lord decided not to take him. He decided to give him a second chance.
“He wouldn’t have had that second chance if Hannah hadn’t found him when she did.” Dad locked his eyes on me and smiled. “Luke is resting in the hospital, and they tell us he’s going to be fine.”
Scattered amens came from all around the sanctuary.
“That experience last Friday night has me thinking a lot about death, and what lies beyond this life right here,” he said, finger pointed sharply at the ground. “When our time here is over, we’ll each be face-to-face with God and we’ll have to decide what we believe. You in this room…you’re the lucky ones. Because you know this isn’t the end.
“I’m going to heaven someday.” Dad sat on the step, nodding slowly, meeting eyes with the kids in the audience. “Raise your hand if you are, too.”
I didn’t turn around to look, but I was pretty sure every hand in the room was up. But mine was right where it had been the whole time, flat on my leg, my palm pressed into my thigh, trying to stay quiet and still. I thought about everything I’d been told growing up, and everything I’d read the other night. The world’s leading scientists didn’t believe heaven existed. The major religions of the world couldn’t even agree that it did. Some believed in reincarnation, others believed in an opulent afterlife, and some never even addressed heaven because their focus was entirely on life, not death.
I wanted to raise my hand like I would have so readily done just a week earlier, clinging to the easiest answer, the one I’d believed all my life, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what I believed anymore.
Dad was so certain that everything that happened that night was meant to be. He was so certain that Luke had pulled up to the front of my house and God had led me to the kitchen sink at that exact moment. He was so certain that if Luke hadn’t drawn those breaths in the ambulance, he’d be in heaven right now, looking down at us, and thanking us for saving his soul.
Where did all Dad’s certainty come from? Where had all mine gone? I didn’t want to doubt anymore—not after what happened to Luke—it was simply too much to take on. More than my brain could process. I wanted to know again. I wanted the questions to disappear so I could throw my arm in the air and believe again. But it was as if my hand was glued to my leg.
I couldn’t sit there a second longer. I reached for my backpack and stepped into the aisle, walking fast for the double doors. When I was out in the empty foyer, I spun a slow three-sixty, trying to figure out how I’d gotten there and where I could go. All the classrooms were off-limits during Monday Chapel. The library wouldn’t be open yet. The car was locked. And then I looked over my shoulder and saw the stairs that led to the balcony, and I went straight for them, taking them two at a time.
When I reached the top, I collapsed into the back pew. I could still hear Dad talking, so I grabbed my earbuds from the side pocket on my backpack, jammed the connector into my phone, and turned it on.
It was still open to the meditation session I’d been listening to as I fell asleep the night before. “Focus on the breath,” it said. And so I did. I placed my hands to my sides, palms up, and let my head fall forward. I followed the instructions, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, noticing each inhale and exhale.