What Does God Have Prepared for You?

Posted on Mar 07, 2019 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional
Posted by : Mike Nappa

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." —1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)

Lately I find myself thinking “Amy would've” and “Amy used to” a lot. I mean, A LOT.

For instance, after my wife, Amy, died, I stood one night in the street. in the freezing cold, watching our preschool granddaughter perform a sweet little ballet at a local tree-lighting event downtown.

“Amy would've just loved this,” I thought almost instantly. “She would've cheered and teared up and been full of joy.” I looked over at Amy's sister Jody, standing next to me, weeping like I was, and knew I wasn't the only one thinking those thoughts.

That first Christmas without my girl, I kept a stack of Christmas movies in my basement waiting for their annual escape from DVD purgatory. One day during that season I saw Love Actually in that stack and thought, “Amy used to love watching this movie. It made her cry every time.” And I remembered…

Once, in springtime, my girl was having a really bad day. I hurriedly took a cue from one of the characters in Love Actually and scribbled a little sign for her. “To me, you are perfect” it said. I stood in a doorway and held it up to my chest for her the next time she walked by. She burst into tears and hugged me for a long time. Then she felt better, and I forgot about it.

After she died, I found that scrap-paper sign in a keepsake box of Amy’s. She'd saved it, treasured it for years, and I never knew.

Amy would've ... Amy used to ...

As soon as these thoughts appear in my brain, they're almost always followed by, “I would've” and “I used to.” As in, “I would've loved this with Amy” or “I used to love being that with Amy...”

My girl is dead and gone. I know this. She is safe, happy, free. But I am none of those things. So I find that sometimes I sit in my own moments of suffering, thinking: I would've loved tonight’s preschool ballet with Amy at my side. And I used love watching Love Actually with her, being the one who got to hold Amy’s hand when it was time for her to cry. No more I guess. I find this unbelievably hard.

Still...

In the weeks before she died, I hand-wrote one last note for our girl:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).”

It was black, fine-point Sharpie on a pink index card (no, I don't know why I had a pink index card; I just did). I hung it at her eye level, on the table next to her hospice bed, so she would see it whenever she woke up. It was a promise, I thought, of what she would soon find in Heaven. I still believe that. But lately I've also been wondering:

What if this promise is meant for me too, for right now?

Amy is experiencing 1 Corinthians 2:9 fully in the presence of joy. But what if God intends for me to experience it too—at least in part—in ways I don't yet understand, here in this thirsty, heartbreaking journey on my way to join her?

I don't know if that theology is correct given the context of this particular Scripture (I'll have to study it a bit more), but I do know that if it is...

Amy would've liked that.