Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

No time spent recording God’s faithful presence in our lives is ever a waste.  I want to share what happened this past year.  Last October my mom had a stroke.  I drove to the hospital to see her.  She was in a medically induced coma.  When they began to take her off the medicine, she was very restless and agitated.  I sang Chris Tomlin’s version of Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) to her softly as Dad stood on the other side of her bed.  It did seem to calm her.  When she finally woke, she began crying.  I thought the worst (that she was scared because her brain wasn’t functioning properly or that she was scared because she had no clue why she was in the hospital).  So I asked her what was wrong, and what she said shocked me, “I just feel so blessed.”  That was so not the response I was expecting.  I told her I felt blessed too, and I asked her why she felt that way.  She told me, “Amazing Grace.”  Later that evening my sister Kelli and I were in her room, and she asked us if she told us about the video the nurses showed her.  Well, I had been there all day, and the nurses never showed her a video, but we asked her to tell us about it.  She began to mention that there was the most beautiful music being sung, and she began to cry as she sat there remembering it.  Kelli then asked her to tell us what she saw in the video.  She began to describe images to us that sounded a lot like Heaven.  She talked about the colorful streets.  She mentioned horses and being carried around in a surrey to see all the sights.  She mentioned Cody and Dylan being there playing football.  Anna had on a cheerleader’s costume and was cheering them on.  I was there holding my niece, and there were other family members.  There were also Temple students that she taught over the years.  There was dancing she told us.  Then Kelli said, “Let’s get back to the music.  Were you rocking it with Chris Tomlin?”  She said, “No,” and thought about it a bit.  Then she sort of gasped and slowly turned to me and said, “It was you!  You were singing.”  And I was.  In her vision she heard me singing “Amazing Grace.”  We talked about that moment many times afterwards in the hospital room and on the phone later.  I only told Shawn about this moment.  Fast forward 7 months later….Mom had just received more discouraging news from the doctors.  I also had read something in my Bible reading of the Old Testament that disturbed me a little (Something about a man breaking the Sabbath and being stoned).  I began to question who my God really was.  I told Shawn, “For the first time in my life I feel like my faith has been shaken.”  Shawn told me he too doesn’t fully understand God and why things happen, BUT he can not deny the existence of Him and all His power and glory.  He gave me an article to read on Job.  Honestly, it didn’t help much.  I remember not praying at all those several days.  I just thought and thought.  Then as I lay in bed to go to sleep one night, I finally spoke, “God, I am starting to feel so abandoned.  Please show me You’re here in all of this.”  Those were my last words to God before I drifted off to sleep.  At 8:30 the next morning I was grading school papers.  Abigail came into my room and asked, “Mommy, when are we going to Heaven again?”  I told her we haven’t been to Heaven yet.  She kept insisting we had, and she mentioned a movie she saw.  I figured she was talking about a cartoon, so I tried to quickly end this questioning because I was busy grading.  She kept pressing.  Then she said something about the horses, and I stopped, time stood still, and my eyes filled with tears.  I asked her to tell me more of what she saw.  She said her, Cody, Dylan, and Anna were there playing together (the Hokey-Pokey).  She mentioned that the street had sparkles on it.  She said there was music and other people.  She told me Grandma was there.  I asked her what Grandma was doing, and she told me, “Grandma was dancing.”  She mentioned the “gentlemen” who had the horses, which Mom told me in her vision 7 months prior that she saw the men, as well, and their clothing, but could never see their faces (They were turned around.)  One thing that bothered me, though, was Abigail never mentioned a surrey.  She was 3 years old, at the time, so I never imagined she even heard of that word.  Later that morning I asked Abigail, “Abby, did you see Jesus when you were in Heaven?”  She simply said, “No, I think that’s because He was in His own carriage.”  Wow!  How could I deny that what she described was very much what Mom told me 7 months before?  Cody, Anna, Dylan, and Abigail had NEVER heard about Mom’s vision at the hospital.  Seven months later after I cried out to God to show me His presence, He revealed Himself to me in my 3 year old.  This brought great comfort to my mom.  She told me she was worried that we all wouldn’t be playing and laughing together in Heaven like on earth.  It was hard for her to picture that we would still be interacting the same again.  In both visions we were.  Mom chose to have this song sung at her funeral, and her pastor shared about her and Abigail’s visions.  The woman who sung it was Hope White, her son was one of the students in Mom’s vision who had a special place in Mom’s heart and she in his.  The song was greatly moving, and three people accepted Christ at Mom’s funeral.  Someone had delivered a music box the day before the funeral when no one had yet heard this story.  It played “Amazing Grace.” I can not deny God’s existence in my life.  We will celebrate with Mom again! “Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created MAY PRAISE THE LORD.”  Psalm 102:18