[Image Description: "AND THIS IS THE PROMISE WHICH HE HIMSELF MADE TO US: ETERNAL LIFE. -1 JOHN 2:25" in center-aligned white letters on a black letter board with beige wooden bordering. The size of "1 JOHN 2:25" is bigger than the rest of the words and the letter board is also laying on a gray blanket as the background.]
CONTENT WARNING: The religious/spiritual opinions on this blog post are mine based on my own experiences and do not reflect the opinions and experiences of everyone. Commentaries published on my First Former Buddy Club President influencer page represent diverse viewpoints. If you would like to submit a commentary, please contact me for more information. All perspectives and experiences are welcome here.
In my first trimester at Bryn Athyn College, I was required to take a religion course along with eventually some other religion courses since it is a religious school. Bryn Athyn practices the New Church religion of Swedenborg so the required religion course that I took this trimester was Intro to the New Church Doctrines. For the class, one of the required assignments was to write daily journals based on readings from "You Can Believe!: An Introduction to the New Christianity" written by Grant Schnarr (The author was actually my professor for the class! He is a minister in the church!) and we students had to apply what we read to our lives. So, since some of the content mentioned in this short essay that I wrote is related to the content that I post on my disability advocacy influencer page, I have decided to upload it is a blog post. Here is Journal #13.
TRIGGER WARNING: In addition, if you are affected by the death of any loved ones, this blog post may be triggering. If you need support right now, please seek help from a therapist or other mental health professional or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "HOME" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 if you live in the USA or text "CONNECT" to the Crisis Text Line at 686868 if you live in Canada.
Prompt: "Read You Can Believe! Chapter 7 - Is There an Afterlife?. Show me you read, thought deeply about what you read, and apply it to your life."
There are multiple theories about the afterlife of Heaven. When people go to Heaven, it is sometimes referred to as "they died"; from my perspective, however, this is not completely true because "we will never die. Certainly, our bodies will die, but we are more than a body. We are spirit and life from God, created to live forever" (pg. 63, Schnarr 2006). This means that everyone's bodies die, but their spirits and influences live on and stay with people. People remember the person and how they made them feel.
Two years before I was born, my dad's mother passed away from organ failure. When I was four years old, my Nanny passed away from Parkinson's Disease. Then, when I was in first grade, my Pop-Pop passed away from natural causes. Eleven years later, my Pop also passed away from dementia. My maternal great-grandparents' deaths were sad, but I honestly did not show any emotions because I was too young to understand fully. My Pop was my paternal grandparent who I had a closer relationship with and I was seventeen years old at the time; so, I cried that time because I had stronger awareness for my development. In regards to my grandmother that I never met, my dad often talks to me about her to keep the memory of her life alive. Each time I celebrate their lives and remember all of the positive things about them along with realizing that it is okay not to be okay.
I definitely believe in the afterlife and have seen plenty of signs that my great-grandparents and paternal grandfather and grandmother are watching over me. As a religious Christian, I definitely believe that certain little things are signs to let people know that their loved ones in Heaven are watching over them. For example, I believe in the sunlight shining down when it looks holy symbolizing the presence of a heavenly loved one. So, right after my Pop's death to present, this repetitive sign of sun shining down looking holy has led me to truly believe that it is him shining down watching over me. In addition, the summer after I graduated high school, my brother was taking music lessons at St. Dominic's Church in northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the cemetery where my Nanny and Pop-Pop were buried was coincidentally behind this church. I would come with my mother to bring my brother there and we would wait inside until the end of his lessons. It had been twelve years since we last saw our Nanny and Pop-Pop's graves, so I suggested the idea that we find both of them again. We did find their graves and as soon as I looked up at the sky, I knew that the sun shining so brightly over the cemetery was definitely them saying hello from Heaven.
[Image Description: This is the real life picture that I took of the sun shining over the St. Dominic's Cemetery in northeast Philadelphia, PA when I visited my Nanny and Pop-Pop's graves in summer 2016. The sun is yellow and shining bright through white-light grayish clouds over lots of gray, pink, and brown graves in the grass. There is also a fence behind the graves with three white and black houses behind it.]
When it comes to grieving the passing of loved ones, there can be a variety of emotions. "For some who find it difficult to believe in the afterlife, the experience of another's death can be a very sad time because they feel that the departed has dissipated out of existence, never to be seen again. But this doesn't make sense. Since we were created by an eternal God, we can sense deep within ourselves that we will never die. Many people instinctively know that there is life after death, not because they desire it to be so but deep within, at the core of their being, they sense it" (pg. 63, Schnarr 2006). The individuals who do believe in the afterlife grieve their loved one's cause of death and the prolonged separation. Instead of never seeing those loved ones again, we do reunite in the afterlife.
If you are affected by the death of any loved ones, you are not alone and there is hope. If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "HOME" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 if you live in the USA or text "CONNECT" to the Crisis Text Line at 686868 if you live in Canada.
If you or someone you love is affected by living with dementia or being a caregiver, family, etc. of someone with dementia, you are not alone and there is hope. If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Alzheimer's Association 24/7 Helpline at 1-800-272-3900. If deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired, dial 711 to connect with a telecommunications relay service (TRS) or use the "Live Chat" green button in the bottom corner of the "Helpline" webpage on the Alzheimer's Association's website at https://www.alz.org/help-support/resources/helpline (available from 7am to 7pm CT).
You can also visit The Mighty's hotline resources page by clicking on this link: https://themighty.com/suicide-prevention-resources/
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Citations
1. Schnarr, Grant. You Can Believe!: An Introduction to the New Christianity. 2006.
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