Singing That Smells Like Roses

Yesterday I overheard Mr. Schrock muse out loud to the members of his Bible class that a life lived as Evie lived it–with a helpless body, and unable to communicate verbally–leaves us wondering about what happens in the spirit and soul while the body has life and breath. I couldn’t listen long enough to hear how he developed that thought, but today, after the funeral, he and I talked about it again.

I understand better now than I did before that when God gives life, it is always a gift to be treasured. No matter how poor the quality of life may seem outwardly, it is a life to be celebrated, especially when its prospect of heaven is as sure as Evie’s was and is. In matters of the spirit and soul, things may be proceeding undisturbed and tranquilly, blossoming and growing even, while physical life hangs on by a more and more slender thread. We fear the end, and yet find it always, in some sense at least, satisfactory, for, when the thread breaks, we discover it to have been a tether forbidding free flight, and we’re glad to see it gone for good. The real world of heaven is a far more welcoming place than even a devoted and loving family could ever provide for Evie in this world.

At her funeral today, I learned that Evie, who never spoke a word in her 22 years of life, loved to go to church. She also loved ice cream.

One day when she was unhappy in her uncle’s home while her parents were elsewhere, her tall and strong boy cousin held her and sang for her some of the few Spanish songs he knew, and she relaxed. Hearing one’s heart language affects all of us that way. (Evie was born in El Salvador and lived there nearly all her life.)

Stephen Hawking, a world-renowned British physicist, has Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS. It began to affect him when he was 21 years old and has steadily progressed. Now in his upper 60's, he has had a stellar career and reputation, but his body is nearly as helpless as Evie’s was. He is still able to communicate with the aid of advanced technology, but he no longer has speech capability. Some of what he “says” with great effort is so forward thinking that he is constantly revising his former conclusions, many of which others are only now catching up to.

What if someday Stephen Hawking could no longer communicate anything to anyone? What if, in that silent condition, his mind remained as cogent as it is today? He might have insights that no one has yet imagined, and no one would ever know, this side of heaven.

That’s the glimpse I had today of Evie–possessed of insights that no one will ever know until heaven reveals them. In fact, that’s what I see in all of us, potential that will forever be limited by our earthiness, and locked away until heaven commands it to life.

I doubt that Evie would want to tell us of big bangs and expanding universes and black holes as Stephen Hawking might. More likely, she would tell us how it feels to be cradled in the arms of her Creator, to have her sensitive ears filled with the sound of angelic singing, to be transported instantly, to know unmixed joy and unmarred beauty. Perhaps, in the imagery of the world as a person with synesthesia perceives it, she would say incomprehensible things like my father’s voice was blue and my mother’s was pink. My sister’s singing smelled like roses and my brother’s laughter was red. Who knows all the dimensions of reality and the synthesis of sense we may yet know, when sin is vanquished, and we are restored to the perfection God created us for? Who knows how many of these things Evie may have known, even before she left this world physically, in the sanctity of her innocent soul, enlivened by the spirit of God? Someday I’d like to ask her.