“You Can’t Go Where I’m Going, Not Yet…”

by Donna Kupferschmidt

March 7, 2006

This year, I went to Ash Wednesday service for the first time in a very long time. I walked in looking at my shoes, slightly annoyed I’d absentmindedly put on my walking shoes rather than my nicer dress clogs. The usher handed me a copy of the Scripture. Hurrying, I sat down in the back, took off my coat and scarf, then began to read quickly about the Lord’s Last Supper before service started. As I read on about how Jesus was telling His disciples that He was going away, the words suddenly flashed from the page: “Where I am going, you cannot come” (John 13:33). I remembered those words, spoken through somebody else years ago….

My sister Jean was diagnosed with breast cancer in September of 1994, only 34 years old. She was married to her best friend and had a seven-year-old daughter who went everywhere and did everything with her. She fought the cancer how she felt was best for her and her family, staying outwardly well for a couple of years.

By the summer of 1997, despite recent chemo and radiation treatments, cancer invaded Jean’s body and brain. Mom and I went to see her. At that time, she lay in her living room. While Mom and I visited with her, she fidgeted. I asked her if she needed to use the bathroom. Relieved yet apologetic, she nodded yes. Mom and I practically had to carry her, as she had no strength left by that time. For weeks, she had her husband, Kent, take her to the bathroom before he left for work, then she would wait until he came home, too weak to go by herself, too proud to ask anyone for help. The entire time Mom and I helped Jean, she apologized, thinking she was a burden. One of the most basic solo functions we take for granted had been stripped from her. I told her how much we all loved her and would do what we could to help her. The rest of the family kept my promise.

From that day on, Mom and the rest of my sisters stayed with Jean while Kent worked. Dad and my four brothers stopped in when they could. She was never alone. Late in September, sister Janet made Jean a salad just the way Jean instructed her to. Jean ate every bite, after not eating much for weeks. I stayed away until the first weekend in October, making excuses why I couldn’t make the 5-hour trip, unable to cope with Jean dying. Sister Dianne asked me about my faith in God that weekend. I lied (I meant to get to the business of religion someday, still sure I was in control) and said I was a Christian who had strong faith. At that time, I understood nothing of the Christian joy and feared it. I was thoroughly jaded, self-righteously superior, and emotionally turned off. Yet I knew Jean’s faith was strong and she would go to Heaven when the time came. That final weekend, Jean had a steady stream of visitors, mostly family. Sister Dorothy brought a large bag of apples, as apple picking was a fall event she and Jean shared through the years. Dianne stayed Friday and Saturday night; I stayed Friday night through Monday morning. By late Sunday evening, Jean drifted off to sleep and sister Jo, the last visitor, said good-bye. Kent sat with his friend, Phil, talking in the kitchen. Daughter Chelsea was staying with friends all weekend. I was going to go sleep upstairs in Chelsea’s room, but tripped up the stairs. I felt uneasy and didn’t know why. I felt totally inadequate about the appropriate behavior during this entire business of dying. I was doing a horrible job, unsure of how to make Jean’s passing easier. What could I do? I couldn’t “fix” this situation. I decided to stay down on the couch by Jean, in case she needed me during the night. As I had Friday and Saturday, I slept fitfully Sunday night.

Towards morning, however, I slept and had a dream, a very vivid dream. Jean, a healthy, vibrant, joyous, whole, with-a-full-head-of-hair Jean, was running in a field with me alongside her. We used to run like that when we were young girls on the farm. As in our youth, we now felt wonderful and free and more incredibly happy than ever! Jean was running fast, laughing and absolutely radiant! Suddenly aware of my presence, she stopped and turned to me, the joyous expression replaced with perplexed concern. She sternly grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye (reminiscent of the times she scolded me as an older sister) and said, “Donna, you can’t go where I’m going, not yet.”

I woke up with a start, afraid to look at Jean. I lay still for what seemed like hours, calming down with the even sucking sound of her oxygen tank. Slowly, I got up and crept the 2 steps to her bed from the couch. She was still breathing, but the rhythm had changed. She had slipped into a coma. She breathed her last later that day.

At the time, I selfishly kept that dream to myself, feeling pretty special she’d singled me out to say good-bye to. Jean and I had been so close when we were younger, but as an adult I didn’t understand the depth of her love for Jesus any more than she appreciated my wild partying ways I’d not grown out of. I really didn’t understand God, who would take her, not me! “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).

A couple of months after Jean died, my cousin Gary (another Jesus lover!) sent me some letters Jean had sent him and a tape called, “My Glimpse of Eternity,” by Betty Malz. Jean’s death, at that time, was all about my grief and my anger towards God. Her death was all about me! I angrily threw the tape in a file and promptly forgot about it until last summer, when I was cleaning out files.

By this time, I realized that I really wasn’t in control and all of the things I’d thought were important left me empty. I had already journeyed through the search for something with meaning, exploring many religions, but the Holy Spirit always led me back to Christianity. Yet, I was still reluctant and afraid to read God’s Word or even listen to that tape. Sighing, I threw the tape in the deck. Here goes, I thought. I started listening to the tape. I listened to Betty’s account of her 28 minutes of death with detached politeness. Then, as Betty described her approach to Heaven’s Gates, her words crashed around me. Betty had my full attention now! Suddenly, I found myself leaning into the tape deck, eager to hear more. Betty described a “meadow” that she and a big, strapping Angel walked and ran through before reaching the inner city of Heaven. She described the beauty and the peace and the radiance and the absolute joy and freedom. I saw that “meadow” years before but called it a field! Jean had run to meet her Savior and I couldn’t come. Betty’s description and my memory of the dream were so similar; it could not be a coincidence! The dream, though precious with the simple meaning I saw years before, that Jean was merely saying good-bye, had much deeper meaning. I realized then that the dream contained the message that I could not go to Heaven, as I was not ready. But, was the message from Jean or from God? Why did I get the message? I still felt smugly special, but I didn’t know who singled me out or why.

Then on Ash Wednesday, I read the Words of Jesus to His disciples at the Last Supper: “Where I am going, you cannot come” (John 13:33). Early that morning of October 6, 1997, Jean turned to me and said the same. Suddenly, everything made sense and the full impact of that dream rushed through me! The dream had been a message from God, lovingly given through Jean. Yet, until I read those words from John 13:33, I hadn’t been sure who had sent the message or why I’d been chosen to receive it. Before this, it had still been all about me. Those few simple words put glory where it belonged, to God. He gave me the dream because He knew I was the one who needed to hear His message. When I didn’t grasp His message through Jean, He sent a second message through Gary with Betty’s story. When I still didn’t get it, He patiently and lovingly spelled it out for me through His Word on Ash Wednesday. God loves all of us and wants all of us to call Heaven Home. “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30).

In Isaiah 42:5-7, God promises: “I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” For so long, I was in darkness. I was blind and deaf to God’s patient and loving messages. Over eight years later, God’s message to me through Jean became abundantly clear. “I will search for the lost and bring back the strays” (Ezekiel 34:16).