When I Get Where I'm Going

On December 21st, 2009 at approximately 7:25am, in a room on the 4th floor of St. Vincent’s East Hospital in Birmingham, AL, I watched as my grandmother passed over to the other side. This was the first time I have ever seen anyone die. The moment was something that I never want to experience again, but there was something very surreal about it. As the tears came, I turned my back to everything else in the room and looked out the window at the rising sun. It was beautiful as the colors cascaded over the mountain tops. I tried to see through the tears and look as far as my eyes could see over the horizon as I imagined my grandmother arriving at Heaven’s gates. Knowing she was here on earth with her loved ones one second and in a perfect place the next was bitter-sweet, to say the least. God put a song in my head to ease the pain and to make me think even deeper about what I had witnessed. The chorus of that song played over and over in my head before I even left the hospital that day, on my way home and for the next few days to come. It is a beautiful song sung by Brad Paisley & Dolly Parton called ‘When I Get Where I’m Going.’ The chorus of that song is: “When I get where I'm going, There'll be only happy tears. I will shed the sins and struggles I have carried all these years. And I'll leave my heart wide open. I will love and have no fear. Yeah when I get where I'm going, Don't cry for me down here.” I thought about how wonderful that will be to “shed the sins and struggles I have carried all these years.” How wonderful it will be to have no more pain, no more suffering, no more hate, no more pride, no more fear, to have no one treat me mean or talk hateful to me ever again, to have no one lie to me, to have no one misunderstand me, to have no one falsely accuse me, to have no one see me any less than how Jesus sees me. And best of all, I will be in the presents of The Most High. How wonderful that will be! The more I ponder these things, the more I long to be at my Savior’s feet. I am very thankful for the time I got to spend with my grandmother the last year of her life. I did not have a job all of 2009, but time is so much more precious than money ever will be and no one can tell me any different. A couple of days later, the day of my grandmother’s funeral, another part of the song played through my head: “So much pain and so much darkness, In this world we stumble through. All these questions I can't answer, So much work to do. But when I get where I'm going, And I see my Maker's face, I'll stand forever in the light of His amazing grace.” I can’t wait to stand forever in that light. And I can’t wait to see my grandmother once again. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surly I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” ~ Rev. 22:20