Light in the Midst of Darkness

"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with Him, and he with Me." Revelation 3:20

“Honey!”
“What?” I moaned, covering my head with my pillow. Right now I just wanted to go back to sleep. Why did school start so early?
“Honey, get up right now. We have to go. It’s Grandma. She had a heart attack, and she’s in the hospital. Get up, we have to go now!”“
What?” I practically screamed, and I immediately jumped out of bed, but getting caught in a bundle of covers, I fell to the floor.
“Becky, please get up right now! We have to leave now!” My mom’s voice sounded impatient, so I quickly untangled myself from the covers.
“Just let me get dressed,” I said. I wasn’t a big fan in walking around in my pajamas.
“Becky!” by the sound of my mom’s voice, I knew we needed to leave right then, me being in pajamas or not. I quickly slipped on a pair of flip flops and ran out the door with my parents. As I stumbled inside our little gray car, I caught my glance in the rearview mirror. My hair was a mess, I was still in my pajamas, and my face looked like something out of an old horror movie. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. I looked at the digital clock. 2:04, I thought. Wow, no wonder I’m so tired. For some reason I had just noticed that the sky was dark, with the moon illuminating the night - or morning. Or whatever you want to call it. Then a sudden thought occurred to me. Grandma was going to be ok, wasn’t she? She wasn’t going to… I pushed the thought away. No, Grandma would be fine. As we neared the hospital, I started to get butterflies in my stomach. I started to really worry about Grandma and what might happen to her. After all, with her bubbly spirit and kind heart, I’d never thought about having to see her in the hospital.
“Becky, are you coming?” Dad looked half asleep as he opened the door.
“Yeah.” I wasn’t excited about this visit, and all I wanted to do was to get home and go back to bed and not think about Grandma or her heart attack ever again. I just wanted her to be okay.As Dad went to the main desk to ask what room Grandma was in, Mom and I started walking toward the elevator.
“Mom,” I said, almost whispering around the lump that was quickly growing in my throat, “Do you think Grandma will be okay?”
My mom looked at me with a sympathetic face, “Oh, Becky, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” By the look on her face, though, I could tell she wasn’t so sure.
“Room 208,” my dad said as he pressed the “up” arrow on the elevator. With every step I grew more and more worried about Grandma. Was she really going to be okay? I quickly bit my lip, trying to control the tears that were trying to fall.When we found her room, I let Dad and Mom ahead of me, and then slowly walked in behind them. What I saw next really bothered and worried me. Grandma was lying in her white hospital gown on the bed, her eyes droopy and her face pale. Her usually active, healthy body was lying motionless on the bed. “Mom,” my mom went up to her and gently shook her. Grandma’s old smile came back, but just for a split second as she looked up at my mom. “How are you feeling?”
Grandma just nodded, and her eyes quickly went shut again. I couldn’t take what I was seeing. I ran out of the room and down the hall to the waiting area, and falling into one of the chairs I knew what I had to do. “Lord,” I started, “I know I haven’t been too loyal to You and I haven’t been paying much attention to You. I’m really sorry. Please forgive me and help me through this. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Grandma, and I want to ask you to help me through this.” Then Mom rushed in and put her arms around me.
“Are you okay, Honey? I know this is hard on you, considering you’ve never really went through anything like this before.” Then she stopped as tears ran down her cheeks. “The doctors say that it was a pretty bad heart attack, and she’s lucky she even made it here when she did. Good thing Aunt Rebecca lives with her -” Her voice trailed off as she hugged me tighter. “Honey, the doctors don’t think she’ll make it…”
I immediately broke free from my mother’s hug and ran down the hall into Grandma’s room. “Grandma,” I said as tears began falling uncontrollably down my cheeks. “You can’t go, please, you can’t leave me.” My words were muffled as I tried to talk through the tears.
“Becky,” Grandma looked at me. The spark to her eyes came back and she looked me in the eyes. “Becky, I’m going to be fine. I’m going to go home with Jesus; I’m going to go see Grandpa now. I’ll get to tell your grandpa all about you and what he missed when the Good Lord took him at such an early age.”
“But Grandma,” I couldn’t believe how much she had perked up since I had started talking to her. “You’ll be fine, won’t you? You don’t have to leave us yet… you look fine.” The tears wouldn’t stop falling, and instantly after I said the words I knew they weren’t true.
“It’s my time to go, Becky. You’ll be fine here without me. You might miss me, but you’ll just have something more to look forward to when you die.” She winked at me.
I grabbed her in a tight hug. This would be the last time I’d hug her, talk to her, and look at her. I could’ve stayed like that forever, hugging her and telling her how much I loved her, but the nurses came in and needed me out.
“Wait, one more thing,” my grandma told the nurses. “Becky, don’t you worry about me, okay? I want you to live your life to its fullest, and even though you’ll miss me, I don’t want you to cry, Honey. When you get home tonight, I want you to look up Revelation 3:20. I love you.” Then her eyes went shut again.
And with that, the nurses made me leave the room. I ran to my mother’s arms and we just stood there in the hall, crying and hugging, until I felt like there were no more tears. But there were, because on the way home I cried even more. I felt like I couldn’t stop. When we got home, I quickly went to my room and got out my Bible. I looked up Revelation 3:20, and when I found it I just started crying even more. It said, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” That was the exact verse Grandma had told me about before. She explained to me that Jesus wasn’t talking about us actually sitting down at a table and eating with Him, but that if we accepted Him as our Savior and turned to Him, He would open the door to our heart and come in. I wrote the verse down and tacked it to my bulletin board, all the while crying and remembering the day when Grandma told me about Jesus. I was only about ten years old, but the memory is still vivid in my mind. “Jesus, forgive me. I want to accept You as my personal Savior and I want You to come into my life. I’m sorry for all the wrong I’ve done in my life, and I want to turn to You. Getting through Grandma’s death isn’t going to be easy,” I started crying once again, “but I know that You’ll help me through it. I was really close to her, and seeing her like that and then watching her go was really hard. I love you, Jesus, and thanks for helping me.”
From now on, I’m going to try to live my life like Grandma did. She will forever be my role model (other than Jesus Christ). And my favorite verse will always be Revelation 3:20. Jesus really is amazing.