Chapter 5

(1980)

My father was not a Christian and he died in 1976. He had just come out of the hospital with chest pains. It was Saturday night; the night before Halloween. Since Halloween was on a Sunday, the neighborhood kids were trick-or-treating on Saturday.

Mama and Daddy raised German Shepherds and had only three at the time. Mama let the dogs out before bedtime and when she went to let them in, only one came in and she saw two dark lumps out in the yard. She called to Daddy and said, "Bill, I think the dogs are dead!"

Daddy went out to check and they were dead. They thought maybe some kids gave them something that killed them. He called the vet who told him to bring them (and the live dog) to the office and he'd meet him there. So Daddy went out and lifted the dogs, one at a time, and carried them to the car. When he came in to get Val, the one dog left alive, Mama said he had a pain hit him so bad he couldn't speak for a few minutes.

He drove to the vet's office and again lifted each dog out of the car. The car wouldn't start so he pushed it to try to get it to start. Evidently he got it started because when the police found him, he had pulled over into a parking space and the car was running, but he was lying over in the seat, dead from a heart attack.

A few years later, my mother and I were talking and I said, "I'm only sad that Daddy didn't know the Lord before he died."

She said, "You don't know that. He had time to pull the car into a parking space; you don't know what could have happened in those few minutes before he died."

"You're right. I never thought about that before."

So I began praying asking the Lord to reveal to me if Daddy was saved before he died.

One night I had a dream. I dreamed that I was at my sister's house and Daddy was there sitting in his recliner chair. Outside my sister's house, by the street, was a ditch. I was looking out the window and there was a baby lying in the ditch. An ambulance pulled up and the attendants picked up the baby and put it on a stretcher. Its head was covered with blood. As they put the stretcher into the ambulance, the baby moved its head from facing forward to facing sideways, looking toward me. When I saw that, I said, "The child's not dead. The child's not dead!"

Usually I forget my dreams, or at least most of the dream. This one stayed with me. I could relate it - and did - over and over. I asked several of my Christian friends if they could interpret my dream.

One night we were having a prayer gathering at my house and I asked several people about the dream. No one could tell me anything about it - until I asked Tim.

Tim said, "Maybe your dad's not dead."

"Of course he's dead," I answered. "I was at his funeral."

"No," he replied, "I mean, maybe he's not dead spiritually."

When he said that, I felt the Spirit in me agreeing with him and I knew then that my father is in Heaven with The Father.