Today was a beautiful beach day, something special for Michigan in mid-October. Though the water was cold, the sand was warm, and I had no trouble setting aside my chores for an hour at my favorite place.

Arriving without my beach-buddy of 70+ years, I missed Mary more than ever. But the rhythm of the waves brought comfort, and as I sat in the sun with my eyes closed, my mind drifted back to February of 2014. When Mary received her diagnosis, we heard the word “pancreatic” and jumped to the conclusion she had only 42 days to live…. as Nate had.

But God did it differently this time. We were blessed with three more summers with Mary.

I’m deeply grateful for those bonus beach days next to my sister and for all the words that passed between us during those months – hundreds of conversations we didn’t anticipate having. And as I thought about that today, I knew God was nudging me to feel grateful rather than gloomy.

So I got up and did something Mary and I had done every summer of our lives. I walked the shoreline hunting for pretty stones, filling a small bag in no time. The way we viewed it, certain rocks were as stunning as jewels, and we have stone-laden shelves, drawers, and closet floors to prove it.

About a week before Mary began her rapid decline, she texted me one morning. “Want to come over and glue some stones?”

When I arrived she was struggling to create a stone-covered votive candle holder.  The challenge was to glue the narrow sides of the rocks to the glass rather than their flat sides. But the stones kept sliding away, ending in one gooey mess after another.

Finally we decided to turn the holder upside-down and start backwards, letting the stones rest on each other as we built them from bottom to the top – which was actually top to bottom. And it worked!

After making two votives, we celebrated by consuming half a watermelon between us. Neither of us knew this would be our last stoning project, because in less than a month Mary would be gone.

Today, as I walked along, all I could think about was my sister, who was far, far away. While I was picking up rocks, what was she doing?

Then God reminded me that Scripture mentions a “sea like crystal” in heaven, which means there’s probably a beach there, too. Is it possible that every stone on that beach, every grain of celestial sand, is an actual jewel, sparkling in the light of the Son? If that’s true, then I think I can safely say I know what Mary was doing today.

“In front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” (Revelation 4:6)