Makenah's Calendar

Sometimes, when life is so unbearable that no words can comfort us, no amount of tears can heal us, and there is no logical conclusion to come to on this side of Heaven, we just need a hug from God.  One of my many hugs from God came when I returned home from my family's funeral.  As God used my daughter's heart to reach across the distance from this earth to Heaven, and God put both His arms around me and held me. 

Shortly after we arrived home, I headed straight for bed.  I was wiped out and needed to rest.  I chose the boys' room and curled up on Zachary's bed.  Janet came and knelt on the floor by my side.  As I lay in Zachary's bed in a fetal position, my world suddenly came crashing down.  "What do I do?  Where do I go?  How do I move on?"  The tears just wouldn't stop.  The pain in the pit of my stomach would not cease.  All I could do was cry myself to sleep. 

A few hours later, I woke and stumbled downstairs.  I felt a measure of relief after that cleansing cry and much-needed rest.  I found my sister Anne.  As we passed through the laundry room with Janet, we were drawn to the calendar hanging on the door to the cleaning supplies.  It was a 12-month calendar Makenah had made more than a year before in her first-grade class.  It was still turned to the month of August.  The calendar resembled a coloring book, with 12 blank outlines to color.  Each one matched the monthly season or holiday; fireworks in July, a snowman in December, a valentine in February, and so on.  On each month, Makenah had carefully colored in the picture and added extra creativity.  As we turned the page to September, we couldn't believe our eyes.  We noticed that the original picture was an outline of a school bus with a woman driving and two boys and a girl on board.  Makenah had colored the bus yellow.  But she had also added several things: green grass, green bushes, a blue sky, a house with a chimney (much like ours), and a traffic signal colored red.  Then, of all things, right next to where she printed her name, she drew a picture of herself flying up to heaven-with a great big smile on her face!  She portrayed herself floating above the bus with her feet off the ground, holding six balloons.  It was the only month of the entire year she had added a person to the existing picture.  The symbolism was both deeply comforting and very uncanny.  Makenah was holding six balloons.  Six people died the night of the flood: Al Larsen plus my family.  I had released balloons to heaven at the cemetery only a few hours earlier.  The stoplight was red, as if that was the end of the line for the bus-our van.  A woman was driving the bus, just as Melissa had been driving our van when we hit the flash flood.   A girl and two boys were still in the bus, just as Zachary, Nicholas, and Alenah were still strapped in their car seats when they found the van.  Plus, I was nowhere in the picture-only the five of them were shown. 

"Robert, stay right there!"  Janet exclaimed.  She ran to the dining room where boxes of pictures were stacked on the tables.  All week long, my siblings had been assembling scrapbooks using my family pictures.  Earlier in the week, Janet and Kirk had taken the last two rolls of film that were found in the van wreckage-one in a plastic canister, and the other still in the camera-to a special photo lab.  The photo lab was able to salvage most of the pictures, including priceless pictures from Makenah's birthday just three weeks earlier, a picture of all four children eating Popsicles on our front porch step, and a nearly perfect family picture taken at the wedding reception-with all four kids looking at the camera!  It was our last family picture ever taken, just hours before the flash flood. 

One picture in particular caught Janet's attention now.  She ran back to Anne and me with it pinched between her fingers, shouting, "You guys!  Look!  Look!"  She placed it next to Makenah's calendar picture so we could see them side by side.  We could barely believe our eyes.  Janet held up the last picture taken of our children, just outside the church after the wedding.  The bride and groom had driven away from the reception, leaving all the balloons that we had stuffed into their car floating and bouncing around the pavement under the protection of the valet car covering. While our children and their cousins were playing with balloons, we snapped a picture of them holding the balloons.  All four kids were standing on a picnic bench next to each other in a row.  Zachary, his bare feet, was holding the back of the bench with both hands.  Alenah was holding a blue balloon and was looking up at Makenah.  Nicholas was sporting a big smile and holding an orange balloon.  Makenah was holding a pink balloon in one hand and an orange balloon in the other, with both arms fully extended up toward heaven, smiling so wide she could have eaten a banana sideways.  She looked as happy as could be-just like in the calendar picture she had drawn more than a year earlier, with the balloons in her hands.  And behind Makenah in the photo was a stoplight, situated the same way as the one she intentionally added to her calendar. 

Now, I've never been superstitious, but I also don't believe in coincidences.  I believe in "God-incidences".  To me, this was no accident.  These two pictures side by side were nothing short of a gift from God.  Makenah's calendar was truly prophetic.  I believe that God entered the heart of my oldest daughter in 2002 when she was only seven years old to plant a message for her daddy to read on September 6, 2003 as if to say, "I am fine.  We all went to heaven and are as happy as can be.  You don't need to cry any longer, daddy."  God had not failed me.  I felt as though He had just wrapped His big-daddy arms around me and reminded me, "It's all right, Robert.  I divinely ordained this event.  I knew about this before you were born.  Your family is fine and safe with me in heaven-where there are no tears, no sadness, no dying."

I no longer felt disappointed with God.  My trust was refreshed and emboldened.  I realized that when I fully trust God's plan, I will never be disappointed.  I may feel  disappointed when my trust is tested, but I don't have to constantly be disappointed because I know that God and all His plans for me are still good (Jeremiah 29:11).  He is truly the God of all comfort. 

Thank you, Jesus, for Makenah's gift, I prayed.  Thank you, Makenah, for following the inspiration to draw such a prophetic picture.  Because of her picture and our children's last photo, I was able to sleep peacefully that night.