{"id":888,"date":"2013-02-20T15:59:08","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T20:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/?p=888"},"modified":"2013-02-20T16:10:12","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T21:10:12","slug":"part-4-the-angel-at-coach-wrights-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/?p=888","title":{"rendered":"Part 4: The Angel at Coach Wright’s Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a continuation of a series of entries describing those times in my life when I have felt the presence of God in a powerful way, and when I knew, without a doubt, there is a God…<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There have been several times when God revealed His presence to me while I was going through the experience of losing someone through death.\u00a0 My first experience with this was the death of my dad.\u00a0 I had been taking care of him while he recovered from heart surgery.\u00a0 His prognosis was good, so it never occurred to me that he would die when he did.\u00a0 In retrospect, there were so many signs that God was getting him ready to go to the other side.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, when he was recovering in the hospital after surgery, Dad was telling me that his father and best friend had visited with him.\u00a0 Since I knew both of them had passed away many years ago, I thought maybe Dad was going to say that it was a dream.\u00a0 But he kept telling me about their visit.\u00a0 Probably 20 minutes later, Dad said \u201cThey died a long time ago, didn’t they?\u201d\u00a0 I told him they had, but reassured him that I had enjoyed hearing about the visit.\u00a0 He laughed and said the\u00a0doctors\u00a0must have him on some pretty strong painkillers.<\/p>\n

The night Dad died, our devotional was about I Corinthians 13.\u00a0 We talked about the verse that says \u201cfor now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.\u201d\u00a0 I remember telling him that I did not realize this verse was part of the love chapter in the Bible.\u00a0 We talked about whether or not we would all recognize each other in heaven (I shared some of this in an earlier entry).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, earlier that night, Dad had spent some time with an estranged loved one, and it was a great experience for both of them.\u00a0 Because of this, he talked to me about many of the people and events in his life, some that seemed difficult at the time, and how he saw them now that the years had passed.\u00a0 It gave both of us the opportunity to say what we normally would not have said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later that night, I woke up and heard Dad calling my name.\u00a0 He was holding his chest and said he felt cold.\u00a0 I called 911 and the nurse who lived next door.\u00a0 She was there in less than a minute.\u00a0 I remember her saying his pulse was fine\u2014that nothing seemed to be wrong.\u00a0 And just like that, Dad began gazing upward and left this earth.\u00a0 I was telling him to hold on, but he was already gone.<\/p>\n

The ambulance took him to the hospital, and everyone gathered to hear an outcome we already knew.\u00a0 Arrangements were made, and many hours passed until it was morning.\u00a0 My mom was with me when we returned to Dad\u2019s place, and I remember uncontrollably wailing in grief as I walked into the house where, just hours ago, we were together and laughing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I entered the room where he had died, my eyes were\"\"<\/a> immediately directed to Dad\u2019s piano.\u00a0 Right in the center of it was the sheet music for a song called “He\u2019s Alive”.\u00a0 I had bought the sheet music years ago and had not seen it since high school.\u00a0 But there it was, right in the middle of\u00a0Dad’s piano. I knew that God was telling me that Dad is alive on the other side and that all is well.\u00a0 I don’t know how to describe it, but\u00a0this one heavenly message completely changed the way I dealt with losing my dad.\u00a0 An excerpt from “He’s Alive” may explain it best:<\/p>\n

Light that came from everywhere
\nDrove the shadows from the room…
\nGuilt\u00a0and my confusion
\nDisappeared\u00a0in sweet release
\nAnd every fear I’d ever had
\nJust melted into peace…<\/em><\/p>\n

He’s alive…Heaven’s gates are open wide.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of a series of entries describing those times in my life when I have felt the presence of God in a powerful way, and when I knew, without a doubt, there is a God…\u00a0\u00a0 There have been several times when God revealed His presence to me while I was going through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=888"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":918,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888\/revisions\/918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jdouglaswright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}