Hendersonhome Chronicles

We still update our CaringBridge site from time to time, typically with thoughts and memories about Ian.  The most recent post was a story written by one of Ian’s friends, Ella.  In her fertile imagination, she pictures Ian meeting some friendly mice in Heaven.  Something she wrote in her story jumped out at me today:

There was a boy named Ian well there used to be a boy named Ian I know… He is in Heaven.  Now is where the real story of Ian begins.

(I added the bolding.)

Every so often, Deb and I have to look into each other’s eyes and remind ourselves that our story isn’t over, and neither is Ian’s.  Sometimes, it feels like we have suffered a dramatic ending, and the only thing left to do is to spend our remaining years picking up the pieces.  It can seem to be a wretched, drawn-out denouement after our worst nightmare.

I think that Ella nailed it, though.  For all the time that we spent with Ian and focused on him, his story didn’t really start until February 19, 2009, the moment he stepped into eternity.  And, for all that Deb and I worry about, sweat over and rejoice for, our story hasn’t begun yet…not really.

I like the way C.S. Lewis described it at the end of The Last Battle, the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, when the Pevenses are ushered into Aslan’s country:

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion, but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.  And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.  But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

It’s not just that the best is yet to come; our time with our Lord, and with Ian, hasn’t even really begun yet.