My Mother

My mother, Doris Rocke, had the awesome privilege of being called home to her Lord early on the morning of Friday, August 5, 2013.  I would like to share with you some of the amazing ways that God worked during her homegoing and also at the memorial service afterward. 

Mom was in a deep sleep all day Thursday, from which we could not awaken her.  I sang to her, prayed with her, and read the Bible to her, even though she wasn’t responding.  The verse I read to Mom that day (in addition to Revelation 21 and 22) was Psalm 17:15, “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.”  (I had been reading through Psalms consecutively with Mom, and that was where we were in Psalms for that Thursday).  Since mom wasn’t struggling to breathe, we didn’t realize she was close to her homegoing, so late that evening, I left for a little sleep.  About 1:30am, one of the aids, Rhonda, kindly went in and sat with Mom for awhile.  (This was typical of the staff at the Pines Nursing Home.   They were not only unbelievably excellent caregivers to all the residents, but they were also “friends” to mom.  They loved her.)  While Rhonda was sitting quietly beside Mom’s bed, Mom suddenly awakened, looked Rhonda right in the eye, and smiled the biggest smile!  Not too long after that, the Lord called Mom home.  The wonderful thing about the situation is that Mom had not really smiled since her 2^nd stroke, around 3 months previously!  How beautiful of the Lord to have Rhonda sitting beside Mom just at that moment, to be able to see and tell us about that miraculous “homegoing” smile!

The other situation that I’d like to share concerns the memorial service for Mom at the Apostolic Christian Church.  It stormed ferociously during almost all of that service, with lots of thunder and lightning.  The winds blew hard and the rain came down in buckets.  Shortly after the service, we were told that there was a foot of water in the grave, so the burial would have to be delayed.  We postponed the graveside service until after the dinner, but the cemetery road was still badly flooded, and our cars barely made it through without stalling.  Consequently, the graveside service was changed to the mausoleum.  This was a blessing in disguise from the Lord.  We had a little choir of 8 or 10 people (pulled from visitors from up north because the normal funeral choir were mostly out of state that day). When they began to sing (A cappella and with no microphones), we were in for a glorious surprise.  Because of the acoustics of the mausoleum, it sounded like 10,000 angels singing!  The music seemed to be coming from everywhere – above us, below us, and all around us!!  I sat there enthralled, thinking that this must be a little taste of what heaven will sound like! 

What a blessing God gave us, through a storm.  It’s the same way with our lives; sometimes the most fearsome storms of life bring greater spiritual blessings than we could have imagined possible.