How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?…And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a bare seed of wheat or whatever you are planting…God gives it the new body he wants it to have…Similarly there are different kinds of flesh—one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish…There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies…The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory.
– Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers (Chapter 15:35-41, NLT)
Once upon a Sunday night, my little boy was staring out the passenger window and looking into the evening sky. He was silent for several minutes.
“What’cha thinking about, buddy?” I asked.
He turned to me and I saw the most serious expression on his sweet boyish face.
“Dad,” he began, “you know when the clouds go away they become stars?”
“They sure do, buddy.” I smiled at my prodigy.
My boy.
Sigh.
Oh, the insufferable ache!
Fifteen or so years later, give or take, I’d be looking into his casket; face, neck, hands and arms – every exposed place – just covered with tattoos. Innocence erased. Boyish wonder swallowed by a life that had stolen away too many spring-times and summer adventures and given only harsh winters in return. My little boy far afoot. A young man who tried to grow up way too fast and far too free.
Looking back, I’ve said some pretty hard words in my years of life and ministry…but nothing I’ve ever had to say compares to this:
My sweet boy died from a heroin overdose; cold, alone and homeless.
This is not the eulogy Sandy and I would have imagined on that morning we laid eyes on our little boy for the first time. Chattanooga seems so far away…
Surely not this tiny bundle?
This same little boy who, on the way home from church on Sunday, with family settled in for the quiet ride, begins singing “I Love You, Lord” word for word – and in perfect pitch – from his little fastened-in car seat? And, oh, did I mention he was only 18 months?…
This same little charmer who sidled up next to his mama and bravely watched a drama depicting the five missionaries who spilled their life-blood in Amazon sand and were added to the hallowed list of martyrs, at which he looked up at her with fiercely honest eyes and remarked, “that’s what I want to do with my life!”…?
My little third grader whose girlfriend Stasia ‘broke up’ with him, then later, on the playground, told her best friend he broke up with her, which led to that friend pushing him down and calling him a “stuck-up ***-hole”, then mocked him, saying, “aren’t you going to cuss back?” and our Gravy Train picking himself up, brushing himself off and replying with a sense of bravado, “Nope. I’m a christian”, to which she then called him a “stupid christian” and he just smiled…?
You mean, that brave little guy?
My precious seven-year old who told me he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up, and when I jokingly asked “you don’t want to be a preacher?” (I never pushed this on him), honestly replied, “I’ll be an astronaut who goes to church and loves the Lord”… Him?
Our darling first-grader, holding the ‘S’ sign for his Christmas program and standing ramrod-straight and belting out the all-too-famously encouraging Advent passage of Luke 2:10,11 loudly and proudly? Surely not him?…
The very Gra-Gra Scott who changed his “when I grow up” dream a year later and told us he wanted to be THREE THINGS: “a father, a ‘ski racer’, and a husband”, then proceeded to inform us with utter sincerity “I won’t even kiss a girl before I’m married, and if she asks me to dance, I’ll say ‘uh-uh, not until I get married!’”… Not, for the love of Pete, him?
Our little ‘Bubby’ who would not be silenced on McDonald’s playgrounds, telling other little boys and girls about his True Love Jesus, and Sandy getting a couple different stare-downs from appalled mothers, to which she could only smile and shrug, and the day our little guy actually “led a little African-American playmate named Terrance to Jesus”…?
Him? Dead of a heroin overdose at twenty-four, all alone in the back seat of a car?
Our precocious nine-year old who walked in on Mommy and Daddy one morning in Clearwater, Florida, then ran out giggling and telling Grandmother about what he saw?
Not my ten-year old little shadow who lamented to me one day he didn’t have a best friend, then me saying “sure you do, buddy, tell me who you’d rather spend your time with more than anyone else on earth” and hearing him say, “you, Dad”…?
Him?
Oh, dear God, no…please…
But…yes. The very same.
I have an entry in my journal, dated July 1, 1999, when Graham was not yet ten, where I’m crying out to the Father for the soul of my son who was struggling with his young faith. He was in an unsettling phase of questioning everything about God, along with a bent toward the far country. I find myself drawn to a single phrase that apparently reflected the fear I held for my child:
Dear God, I beg you, do not let my son run in rebellion…
The prayer was a daily plea until the end of his life. You’ll find it in every form all over my journals. I pled for the Lord to keep our son from drugs, pre-marital sex and a prodigal life. I wanted him to go to his wedding day a virgin. I begged God to make my son “a man You would write about.”
Over and over…
and over…
again.
How we wish for better endings. Sigh.
And yet…
December 16, 2013 was not the end of the story. While we were planning to see him at Christmas for a visit, the Lord gave us something worth eternally more. His body came home to us, but our son made it beyond the clouds. We gladly trade in our sorrows for the Father’s grander story for Graham.
Among those whom we shared a hug with in the five-and-a-half hour long receiving line at Graham’s viewing was a blind man who sees things mere mortals can never see, a friend, arm-in-arm with his wife who guided him to me. Tom handed me a note and told me to give it to Sandy later. He said it was “hefty and robust” and she needed to know what God spoke to him.
Later on that night, home and still reeling from the impending chore of burying our only child the next day, I unfolded the note, read its contents, and silently broke. The words told my wife that “one day you will see your son, running to you, skin gleaming.”
For all these stories and recollections of our Gra-Gra, Father, we thank you. Thank you for allowing us to be his on-loan parents. Each and every memory is its own separate “star” in an evening sky clouded right now by heartache, questions, grief and wish-fors. Even some regrets.
But, in the end, when the clouds roll away, there is nothing left but a brilliant galaxy of truth, lit by the unarguable proof from our Father that the same tattooed shell we saw in that casket is right now and forevermore adorned with everything his crying heart on earth hoped for: real peace, real hope, real answers, real freedom…real life.
You were right, son. When the clouds go away, they turn into stars. Tonight we’ll look up and ‘see’ you shining and feel you running toward us with skin gleaming.
And we’ll be okay.
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