For several days now I haven’t had a Nate-Nonreality and hoped I was over the hump. I hadn’t “heard” his voice or thought he was driving in the driveway. I hadn’t planned to ask him “about that” when I saw him next and hadn’t dialed his office number to see how his day was going.

Then I drove past Walgreens.

It wasn’t just any Walgreens. It was “our” Walgreens, the one we passed driving home from every appointment, treatment and test during Nate’s weeks of cancer. We had to stop there often with our fistful of prescriptions, and our last visit was on Thursday, October 15. It had been an especially trying day for both of us, and Nate was at his limit. We needed to stop, though, to renew a prescription for pain meds, or he wouldn’t have made it through the night.

As we approached the drive-through pharmacy window, there was no one ahead of us, and the parking lot was nearly empty. The clock read 5:50 PM, and people were probably at dinner. Although Nate had lost his appetite, he was anxious to get home. His back was killing him, the cancer had delivered a raw belly ache and the day’s radiation had drained his last ounce of energy.

I handed our prescription to the pharmacist who said, “You can’t wait in this lane. Pull up into the lot.”

“Can’t I wait here?” I asked, hoping the visual of our car outside the window would make them hurry. “If someone drives up behind me, I’ll go around.”

“No,” she repeated. “You can’t wait here. Pull up.”

Nate sat with his passenger seat pushed all the way back in an effort to take weight off his spine, his face pulled into a pained expression. I drove forward, made four slow left turns around the building and arrived back at the pharmacy window.

“We’re calling your insurance company,” she said. “Pull away from the window.”

We went around a second time and were greeted with the news that our insurance company wouldn’t approve any more pain pills.

“Call the doctor,” I said, trying to keep my frustration from bubbling over. “He said if there was trouble, you should call him.”

“Pull forward,” she said again. “You can’t wait here.”

Our ordeal turned into a battle of two hours and twenty minutes, accompanied by unnumbered left turns around the building and repeated commands to “Pull forward.” By this time Nate was groaning in pain, not a shred of medication left in him. Since the only two pain pills we owned were 27 miles away at home, it became urgent to secure the new prescription. In the end, three pharmacists and an insurance phoner were all on the project. Eventaully we had the meds in hand, but not before I’d written a check for over $700.00 for pain pills that would last just one week.

As the pharmacist handed me the bag she said, “This is the last. They said absolutely no more, even if you pay full price again.”

Thankfully, Hospice arrived the next afternoon, medical angels with sign-up forms and a hospital bed. Nate never even used all the Walgreens pills, because our at-home nurses initiated a parade of daily FedEx drug deliveries without us even lifting a finger.

Today as I passed that Walgreens, I felt a chill. If I ponder how much pain Nate felt, I cry hard, anytime, anywhere. So today I asked the Lord to replace sadness with gratitude. Before the Walgreens had disappeared in the rear view mirror, he gave me five reasons to be thankful:

1. I’m glad Hospice removed the need to fight any more pill battles.
2. I’m glad there actually are medicines that can overwhelm severe pain.
3. I’m glad that all pain is ancient history for Nate.
4. I’m glad we don’t need a pharmacy for any reason today.
5. I’m glad Nate accepted his incurable cancer and finished well.

I still like Walgreens, but I sure hate cancer.

“I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own. It is not for man to direct his steps. Woe to me because of my injury! My wound is incurable! Yet I said to myself, ‘This is my sickness, and I must endure it’.” (Jeremiah 10:23,19)

We’ve all heard preachers tell us we ought not to use the word “awesome” about anything but God. We ought not to be “in awe of” or “awe stricken by” anything but him. That’s because the accurate definition of awe is “reverent wonder, tinged with fear, inspired by deity.”

Nate had a strong reverence for God, but I don’t think I ever heard him use the word “awesome”, not in any sentence about anything or anyone. He wasn’t an emotionally expressive guy; he was a lawyer, and for lawyers, it’s all about facts.

What would it look like to “stand in awe” of someone or something? It might mean gazing with the mouth hanging open, trance-like, speechless, amazed, maybe followed by an immediate crumple to the ground, being overwhelmed. When does any of us look like that? If we ever do, what is it we’re looking at? And that’s the point. Not much in our experience can elicit that response.

Not much unless it would be a brush with deity. I felt a blip of awe today, and it was definitely linked with God, and also with Nate. I think often about both of them, dwelling near each other in paradise. My touch of awe was realizing that now Nate knows true awe.

He may never have used the word on earth, but surely he’s using it now on a frequent, if not constant, basis. He’s adoring, worshiping, possibly standing with his mouth hanging open and maybe falling in a heap after gazing at the only real definition of awesome, the Lord himself. And the minute I thought of it, I shouted, “Awesome!”

For having such a lofty definition, the word “awe” doesn’t sound very inspiring. It’s more like a random sound than a real word. “Awe” is only a hair away from “oh” or “ah” or “uh”, a few almost-words meaning next-to-nothing. A better word for “awe” might be “whamaz” or “bazang”, words with sparkle and flash. Or we could use supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

My thoughts wandered to Nate and the amazing life he’s now leading in the breathtaking presence of God. I’m wondering if heaven doesn’t have an entirely new word for awe, which led me to think about the language we’ll all speak there. Each of us will belong to the family of God, so surely we’ll understand one another. My guess is we’ll speak a language no one on earth knows.

Scripture says the citizens of heaven will come from every nation, tribe, people and tongue, but it doesn’t say we’ll actually speak our native tongues. But God is an expert at making old things new, or in this case maybe changing the newer languages back into the old original.  Or maybe there will be a brand new language altogether. No classes or language labs will be necessary, since he’ll just plunk it into our brains, and we’ll know it. Personally, I hope it involves clicks and clucks, because then our conversation will sparkle like glitter on a greeting card.

Whatever the new word for “awesome” is, I know we’ll be using it constantly in reference to God. “I’m in awe! You are awesome! I’m awe struck! You’re awe inspiring!”

When Nate left his cancer-battered body and went to be with God, he was physically changed. We know that for sure, because we buried his physical body while the living part of him went elsewhere. And it’s no wonder he had to be changed. The continuous-awesome that is his new life would have overwhelmed him completely on earth.

We all have such wonder to look forward to, provided we believe in Jesus as our way to God the Father. Nate believed, and found the way there, and now Nate knows true awe. And that’s a lawyer-approved fact.

“A great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, [stood] before the throne and before the Lamb… and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God.” (Revelation 7:9a, 11b)

My Uncle Edward had a wonderfully affirming statement each of us heard on our birthdays: “God was good to us on…. “ and he filled in the birth date. My morning Facebook comment to Nelson today continued that tradition: “God was good to us on January 26, 1973.” That’s when our firstborn came into the world, ushering Nate and I into parenthood and changing everything. Nelson turned 37 today in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he’s rehabbing a high-end condo with a friend. I text him pictures of icicles. He texts me pictures of palm trees.

This baby arrived weighing 10 pounds and suffering the intense pain of colic. Our entrance into parenting was accompanied by round-the-clock screaming and a newborn who grew skinnier each week for ten in a row. We were beside ourselves with worry until the morning he suddenly awoke smiling. The colic and crying were gone, and life with baby Nelson became a delight.

By the time he was three, his vocabulary was extensive and his thoughts deep. He said, “Why do I have to put the toilet seat down when half the people are boys? You should tell the girls to put it up when they’re done.”  Nelson has always had a good “thinker”.

In recent weeks when Nate was sick, the father-son roles reversed and it was Nelson’s turn to tend to Nate round-the-clock, which he willingly did. Since then, he and I have had many a fireside chat, round-tabling the harsher realities of life (and death). His deep roots in Scripture have kept us on truth’s track, and I’ve learned much from this son.

As a teen Nelson gave Nate and me a run for the money. Firstborns have a difficult assignment, being at the head of the pack, having to break all the new ground. It’s a burden to be defined as the good example for those following, not to mention the problem of having parents who don’t know what they’re doing.

Although Nelson and his father weren’t cut from the same cloth, they listened carefully to each other and grew to appreciate their differences. When Nelson was acting out in high school and continued with some bad choices for a time after that, I often grew frustrated and wanted to lash out in verbal judgment. Nate inevitably calmed me with “wait a minute” and became the father of second chances. Eventually Nelson surpassed our best expectations.

He has traveled the world, much of it in conjunction with Youth With A Mission, first as a student and later as a leader. He has friends everywhere and keeps current with each one, managing to be on hand for milestone events in many of their lives.

Last summer he felt it was important to sell his landscaping company in Tennessee, a business he’d pursued with vigor for 15 years. At the time, he said he felt like the biblical Abraham who was told to leave the familiar for the unknown. Nelson sensed it was God pushing him, so he moved forward in faith, knowing the reason for leaving landscaping would become clear in God’s time.

Within two weeks a buyer had stepped forward and the business was sold. After Nate and I learned of his pancreatic cancer, Nelson was the first one to walk through our door in Michigan, unencumbered by September’s busy landscaping season and free to be with us for the duration.

One of Nelson’s many talents is enabling others to use their gifts. He’s a pro at delegating responsibilities and releasing control so others can shine. He can also fix what’s broken, build up what’s broken down and minister to broken hearts.

His top priorities are to know more of God and his Word, to obey what he learns there and to be available to others. In Nate’s last days, he referred to Nelson as “a son with sterling character,” which is exactly what happens when someone strives to live like Christ. No parent could want more.

And once in a while I still find the toilet seat up, which proves he’s still promoting his equal opportunity program with consistency.

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.” (Psalm 91:14-16)