Dear Candace
Hello, my name is Mark. Perhaps you have heard that I am Wyatt’s newest grandfather? Though we have never met directly in person, I have come to know you through, Wyatt, and his adoptive parents Jen and Kevin and Wyatt’s grandmother, Sally. I have heard a lot about you over the past three years and consequently feel a deep and loving sense of connection with you.
A few days ago, we heard that you had unexpectedly completed your lifetime on our planet Earth and returned to Heaven. Your departure was considered early by many since your sojourn here had completed at an age of 25 years.
Though you have passed from physical life on planet Earth for the time being, I know that your eternal spirit is alive and well elsewhere where God takes all of us when we leave here. Though your physical presence is greatly missed by many, there is a sense of comfort in knowing that you are experiencing the intense healing that we all welcome when we complete the trying experience of life on Earth in physical form.
People pass from this life continually for we are all here but a little while anyway regardless of our age at our time of passing. When people pass at younger ages, as was your circumstance, it is frequently more difficult for those left behind to process and accept the return to Heaven of a loved one.
As with most passing’s, there is frequently the matter of guilt to deal with. Anyone connected with the passing person will raise questions within themselves regarding what they could have done differently and better to prevent this loved one’s early passing or how they could have treated them differently while they were here together? It’s commonly called “Survivors Guilt”. Some of your family members and friends may experience this regarding your passing
Life on this planet Earth can be a very difficult at times as most of us here have experienced and can attest. Life here can be more difficult for some than others. One author refers to our temporary residence here as attending “Earth School” and has written a book about the function of life in this place called Earth School. The book has helped me a lot as well as many other resources available to us for learning.
In the author’s book of Earth School, it is made clear that we come here (Earth) to learn how to love. As we know, learning is acquired best through experience. Our experiences here are commonly characterized as either positive or negative although in truth all experiences become positive in the end when God completes His work with them. We can learn to love by being loved by someone else. I like the axiom which states that “the role of a parent (or any caregiver) is to behold the beauty in a child and reflect it back to them”. We can also learn to love by seeing and feeling what it is like to be treated in an unloving manner. I’m sure in your lifetime you’ve experienced both the loving and unloving behaviors of others. We all experience and learn what it feels like to treat a person, including our self, in both a loving and unloving manner at various times and with different people.
During the past three years, I have been keenly aware of a great deed of love that has transpired in your life. Several years ago, a married couple, Jen and Kevin had decided to adopt a child. They were not able to have a child on their own and consequently decided to acquire a child through adoption. For a couple of years, I overheard many conversations between Jen and her mother Sally and Kevin regarding finding a child to adopt. Sometimes while crying, Jen would be gently reminded by her mother, Sally, to simply trust. Sally would tell Jen that God had just the right child for her and Kevin to adopt, love and nurture and that the birth mother and the child would appear when the right birth mother and child became available.
In time, the right birth mother and child did appear and that was you and your son. When Wyatt was born, April 6, 2009, you gave Jen and Kevin the greatest gift of love possible – another person. You were the person chosen to give Wyatt the gift of life and then you gave your great gift to Jen and Kevin. And when you gave up your son we realize you gave, along with Wyatt, a part of your heart and yourself as well. It’s like when God gave away a part of Himself when He created each of us.
My daughter, Amy, shares this same experience with you. Today I am the proud dad of a son named Garrett as a gift entrusted to me from Amy through adoption. Also like you, two years following Garrett’s arrival, Amy gave birth to another boy, Colin, under similar circumstances. Colin is now a high school senior in the family of John and Katherine McGuire in Round Rock, Texas where he is a star football player. I will give a copy of this letter to you to Amy also to keep. Although you have never met in person, I’m sure you and Amy will hold a mutual love in your hearts for each other knowing that you both have shared similar experiences.
There is a favorite passage of scripture from the Bible which I have personally used to share comfort for many years which I would like to share with you at this time. It is found in the Psalms. I memorized this passage when Garrett was born and recited it to him nightly for years as I rocked him to sleep at night.
Psalm 139: 1-18
1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.
Candace, as we release you back to Heaven, we want to let you know how much we love you and that you will remain in our thoughts. How could we not think about you with Wyatt here to remind us daily? We know that our true essence is Spirit. We are not a body though we have a body for a little while. We know that your Eternal Spirit is alive and well in a special place of healing, peace and indescribable beauty now with angels and other members of God’s heavenly host attending to you. When we leave here someday ourselves, we will join you for our healing too. In the meantime, we will love and nurture your birth son, Wyatt, and remember you for entrusting us with the care of his life.
Written for your family and friends by Mark Wilson…