God of My Storms: Grief and Healing

By Catherine Mullins-Beaver

God is sovereign! Sometimes, we wonder where God is when we are struggling through one calamity after another. And the only clouds we see when we look up are the dark, black ones hurling around our head. We often wonder within ourselves, “Does God love me?” The answer is a resounding yes! Although God permits painful tragedies to come into our lives, He also will provide grace to get to the other side of it when we finally trust in His love. Yes, it may be painful, but you will get through it! This book, God of My Storms, is filled with my personal testimonies of God’s faithfulness to do just that in my life. According to Romans 8:28, we know that God will work all things for our good when we love and trust him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638855361

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God of My Storms

Grief and Healing

Catherine Mullins-Beaver

ISBN 978-1-63885-535-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-536-1 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Catherine Mullins-Beaver

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

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Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Unforgettable

The Lady Called Mom

Beloved Wife

When Humility Turns the Tides of Life

Caring for Aging Parents

Knowledge Is Power

Healing Thoughts vs. Spiritual Beliefs

How Caring for Aging Parents Was Changing My Life

When the Weight Becomes Unbearable

My Mother’s Last Hospital Stay

Rosie Lee’s Final Days of Her Journey

The Night Before

The Day My Mother Died

The Aftershock Emotions

A Lady Always Knows When to Leave a Room

A Time to Be Strengthened

Life After

Becoming One with the Grief

Introduction

Have you ever wondered what a dying person’s final thoughts envision? Sometimes I often wonder what thoughts they actually experience. I believe they feel their soul leaking from the body that once occupied it. Maybe they even feel their breathing gets labored as they give way to a greater rest. I personally believe that they can still hear even in the final moments before death. In my own experience of losing a loved one, I believe it brings them such peace when they feel that we are at peace with them leaving. By speaking soft words of love to them enables them to complete the dying process with a sense of calmness and dignity.

According to God’s word, I truly believe that a true believer never truly dies. Yes, their bodies return to their original form to the dust, but our soul is eternal so therefore our spirit lives on. As I note what Jesus mentioned in John 11:25 as he talked with Martha who was Lazarus’s sister, Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?

Therefore, I believe that dying is only the evolvement of our spirit making its transition into eternity. Only God is the giver of life, and only he has the appointed moment of death and the ascending flight time. Since God alone controls those precise moments of our lives, it still remains a mystery to us what our loved ones who are dying envisions or their thoughts before making their transition.

We are God-like in spirit, incarnated here on earth in a physical human form. Therefore, our spirit never dies; it only leaves this human body. Moreover, dying is only the transition of spirit from earth into eternity. We, who are believers, will never know in the fullness of life what one person’s final moments before death appears to be. But we can find peace in knowing that their awaited joys of the after death is eternally breathtaking.

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth (Arthur Schopenhauer).

To be totally honest, I knew about six years ago that I was to write a book. I have been journaling for more than ten years because I enjoy writing and putting my thoughts on paper. One morning in my devotional and meditation time with the Lord, I became persuaded by the Holy Spirit that I was to write a book. Little did I understand that the book had already been birth in the spiritual realm and God wanted it to become truth in the nature realm.

At the time, God revealed this about me writing a book my faith would not allow me to fully conceive or envisioned his truth. And although I didn’t act on what God spoke into my spirit that day, I never let it go! At different seasons of my life, the Holy Spirit would remind me about what was spoken over my life that day. And he would challenge me to increase my faith to walk it out into completion. It may have taken years to manifest, but today, you are reading my book.

We never understand the purpose of a thing at the beginning stages. But when its fullness has manifested into reality, only then can we realize that God never does anything without purpose. And when that purpose has finished its work, it will ultimately bring God’s name glory.

Years ago, God knew my book was going to be titled long before my momma’s death. I didn’t know at the time that I would be privileged to write about Rosie Lee Mullins’s life and death and my own personal journey from grief to restoration, not realizing that everything I was experiencing was planting spiritual nuggets of wisdom into the soil of my soul. And at the appointed time, God’s purpose gave way to the vision of my book coming into materialization.

On, Friday, November 13, 2015, something happened that will forever be edged upon the canvas of my mind and the tables of my heart. As if an artist had skillfully painted it there, never to be erased. In a sense, it’s the same artist skills that are at work as I release and rehearse intimate emotions and feelings upon each page of this book. Endless memories from a lifetime can never be erased or undone. In some ways, I compare my vivid memories and details to those of the great artist Leonardo da Vinci in his masterpiece the Mona Lisa.

Leonardo da Vinci was a true genius who was one of the most influential artists in history, having left a significant legacy in the world of art. Even today, his painting symbolizes a breathtaking gradation of tones and captures human emotions, expressions, and gestures in unforgettable ways.

Only God could gift a person to display such an amazing talent. Da Vinci’s historical pieces of art have never lost their worth. Just as da Vinci painted his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, with pride, I, too, take pride as I relive each memory in detail of my momma’s life and death. I, too, wanted to capture every human emotion related to her life. With pen in hand, I have painted a beautiful unforgettable masterpiece of Mrs. Rosie Lee Mullins-Rollison’s life story.

Unforgettable

On Friday, November 13, 2015, at approximately 12:09 p.m., it was a beautiful sunny afternoon, when my momma, Rosie Lee Mullins, went from her labor to eternal rest. Nothing could have prepared me for the life-changing experience that had just unfolded before my eyes. My momma was my greatest teacher of wisdom; her life was a lesson taught in the classroom of each of our lives. She leaves a Christian legacy to all of us who remain. Her death that gave way to her eternal life with Christ, which is her long-awaited reward. Believing this truth has given me the courage and strength to face the reality of death, loss, love, sacrifices, struggles, and restoration.

This book is my personal account of the many phases of the circle of love, life, and death journey I have taken with my mother, Rosie Lee Mullins, as well some memories of my father-in-law and mother-in-law, Elizie Beaver and Marie Beaver-Towery. Losing one parent to the complication related to diseases Alzheimer’s and dementia is within itself devastating, but to lose three loved ones to this illness is almost beyond catastrophic to survive through.

Both diseases untimely steal and destroy their golden memories and moments of life. The diseases manage to twist their personality into a grotesque mask of the person they once were and completely rob them of their joyful and meaningful senior years by making them an innocent prisoner in their mind and body.

We never like to think of our parents dying and leaving our broken lives behind. But it happens all too soon, and we are left wondering, What just happened? The thought of any child, doesn’t matter the age, having to bury their parent is so horrific and traumatizing. It is an unforeseen emotional Ferris wheel ride that we will undoubtedly never forget for the rest of our life. My husband’s father, Elizie Beaver, died on April 10, 2009, and his wife of sixty-seven years, Maire Beaver, died a short time later on September 3, 2011.

However, the Bible certainly does indicate that when we die, we enter immediately into God’s presence if we belong to Christ. From our humanly point of view, death looks somewhat like being in an unconscious state of sleep; but seeing it through God’s eyes, Paul declared, We are confident (of eternal life), I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). Also, I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far (Phil. 1:23).

Through dying, a person is birthed into eternity in an instant. Dying is a process of the circle of life; though also painful, likewise, it contains benefits for the dying person. Only to be experienced through the passage of time, embraced by time itself, joyful thoughts enlightened precisely at the precipice of death. Perhaps a person’s entire life flashes before their face. We cannot know with certainty the exact thoughts inside another person’s mind, especially during death. But they are fully in touch consciously with their emotions as to how they need to process life’s end.

Death is nothing but our spirit being release to go home to God there his bond of love will never be unbroken for all eternity, as illustrated by Mother Teresa.

The feeling of bereavement was so intense that it’s virtually unbearable. Joe and I had been their caregivers for the last eight years of their lives. We walked alongside them as they suffered hugely before death. You would think death would have been easier, knowing that their pain has ended. But it doesn’t. Instead, all we could feel in the moment was sadness. In short, the cruel aspect of things was that his mother’s death was in too many ways a protracted replay of his father’s.

In this book, I capitalize the story of my walk as a caregiver for those I loved. And how God carried me through not one intense crisis but three heart-wrenching losses. I share the tremendous burden and yet the greater joys of walking alongside my mother before and after her diagnosis of aggressive dementia, daily trusting God for grace for her healing and restoration from this ugly memory-robbing disease. Although I loved her and would have done anything for her, it wouldn’t be enough to stop her suffering. Every day I had to watch as the disease gradually and silently stole from her many previous moments, activity, independence, laughter, and identity.

In the course of this book, you are invited to witness my struggles spiritually and emotionally as I coped with my painful heartaches of loss. Imagine the devastating pain of losing not only one parent but three in the space of six years, desperately determined to faithfully walk alongside each of them until the day they took their last breath.

It warms my heart whenever I think back on those precious last days. How each one of our parents somehow knew the time for leaving was near and shared with us loving and comforting words. Talking softly just above a whisper as they endured suffering greatly, yet they each took the moment left in their lives to say, It had been so wonderful to have love and be loved. Yes, those moments live on in our hearts. And on days when it’s a struggle to bear the longing of missing them, still I am able to smile knowing that we gave love and were loved so profoundly.

Throughout the scriptures, we are reminded that heaven is a glorious place where God abides. My heart smiles when I think of those I love who are now rejoicing in the presence of our loving God. According to how Moses prayed in Deuteronomy 26:15, Look down from heaven, your holy dwelling place, we find assured promises concerning our souls, or as some call, our eternal spirit. The scriptures speak authoritatively about life, death, and eternity. Obviously, as Paul so wisely explores the reasoning according to 2 Corinthians 5:8, We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Assuredly, we have the spirit of eternity within us now! This human house that housed our spirit will die and return to the ground. Hence, our spirit returns to the one who gave it, God. Moreover, we continue to live. Without a doubt, I believe that every child of God envisions this promise in their final moments of dying. Therefore, with great courage and pure confidence, they welcome life in eternity.

As I stood there at my mother’s bedside that day, it felt as if I was having some type of out-of-body illusion, simultaneously wishing someone would shock me back into consciousness. My most memorable moments had centered around Rosie Lee Mullins, my mother for fifty-eight years of my life. Then in one quiet second, my whole world changed. Without a doubt, death and grief are the two most momentous episodes anyone could ever face.

How is it that I never saw your wings when you were here with me? When you closed your eyes and soared to the heavens, I could hear the faint flutter of your wings as you left (Diamond Johnson, I Never Saw Your Wings).

That unforgettable moment of impact when the hospice nurse’s words echoed through the still atmosphere, She has expired. It’s amazing how, when two hearts beating as one and one stops beating, the other wants to stop as well, so say much research from scientists. Standing there in that moment, my heart didn’t want to keep beating because hers had stopped. In fact, my lungs seemly wanted to refuse its inhale and exhale rhythm. And somehow, I knew that my whole world as I once knew it had changed forever!

The pain in my heart was unbearable as I stood over my mother, crying a flood of tears as if someone had opened a dam’s gates behind my eyeballs. She was lying there in a sweet, peaceful rest as I squeezed her hand ever so tightly. Then leaning over to softly kiss her on the cheek, wishing it had only been to say good night instead of goodbye.

As a person that understands about the love of God and how our spirit reunited with Him in eternity after death, in that moment, God’s light of comfort made its entrance into my soul, with a calm assurance that I, in fact, had just kissed my mother good night! Truth being, she closed her eyes to go to sleep on this side of glory, only to open them in eternity.

Grief is totally and profoundly unexplainable. Many people avoid the topic of dying simply to stay clear of their deepest fears of the unknown. Death is something we have no control over. The pain of death and grief is a real life-shaking emotion even Christ himself experienced. As a result, he has given us tender compassion whenever we experience grief.

The shortest scripture in the Bible is Jesus wept. Here, we see that Jesus experienced the pain of death and grief at his friend Lazarus’s tomb. Although Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus up again, he still expressed sorrow. So one could serve to reason that, Jesus should have felt joyful at his tomb. Instead, Jesus is overcome with grief and he wept. According to John 11:33 and 35, Jesus was greatly troubled and wept.

Jesus’s sorrow wasn’t just about the loss of his dear friend, but the deep compassion he felt for Lazarus’s sisters and all those who were left suffering. The tears that fell from Jesus’s eyes is an expression of his heart when we are hurt or when we experience any kind of pain. God is love, and his heart is full of compassion, which he richly pours over us in those dark days of our grieving process.

This can be seen in the vivid details of my story in how this book will unfold. No doubt to even try to pack the whole story of the life and memories of my mother and those her life touched would be a formidable accomplishment. Within the pages of this book, you will experience the many facets of my untold story on my tremendous journey. I invite you to walk along with me on this journey as we discuss candidly the highs and lows I faced dealing with many sides to death, dying, and grief.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven (Eccles. 3:1 KJV).

It’s funny what our minds will reflect on out of the blue without even thinking of certain things. Thinking back on those moments following mother’s transition into eternity, I stood with weeping siblings and family members as we watched the mortician carry her lifeless body from the room. In an instant, a line from one of my favorite movies Fried Green Tomatoes burst into my mind. Simply this, A lady always knows when to leave. Even in the midst of hardly being able to breathe, suddenly a huge smile erupted from the darkness of my sadness. With this thought in mind, those words rolled cheerly off my trembling lips, A lady always knows when to leave. Without a doubt, Rosie Lee was a lady!"

While writing this book, an overwhelming sense of humility came over me. Admittedly, I almost felt obligated to share my numerous trials and struggles on this journey. I concur that it is my God-given divine purpose to write this book with precise and detailed words, hoping to encourage and inspire you along the way. Since every book tells a story of some kind, you may be asking yourself, What makes her story different from others I have read?

Namely, it’s my own personal untold story of how God has taken me through every phase of love, death, dying, grief, depression, and heartbreak as he ushered me into his amazing presence, so I could receive his loving, healing, and restoration, allowing God’s presence to enter each cracked place in my broken heart. Likewise, I invite you to receive the same love, healing, and peace as we walk together. My prayer is for you to feel the loving grace of God encamp around. May his spirit encourage and strengthen you as you rest in his presence. Allow his light to shine upon our face.

Come unto me, all you that are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28–30).

In this book, I will share very transparently the many truths that held me together at my lowest points of this journey.