I’m not sure what it will be like meeting God, face to face, after I die, but I can only assume that it will be something like meeting my baby for the first time. I was so tired, my body had been utterly exhausted after 43 hours of labor and I couldn’t stop crying, though I wasn’t even sure why I was crying — yet I remember none of that mattering because the only thing that I wanted in the whole world was to hold her in my arms and to see her for the first time. I already knew her — that I understood almost intuitively. But, I wanted to see her. And when she was with me, everything was all right and there was only her and me and she was so beautiful that I cried all the more. The pain and stress of pregnancy, the difficulties and labor pains, all the suffering that I had endured seemed so little and petty in comparison to be able to hold my baby. Later, my husband told me that there were at least twenty people in the room all around us, all doing something. Didn’t notice them. It was just her and me, and I could have watched her forever out of pure love and adoration.

Perhaps death will be a little bit like labor. When I was first pregnant, I feared labor for I heard it was so painful, and there was no backing out of it once it started. And it was — labor was the most difficult thing I have endured so far. But as soon as it was over, it didn’t matter because I had my baby.

Right now, I fear death because it sounds so painful. But, perhaps when it is over, it won’t matter because I will have the Lord of Love Himself, Christ Jesus. And, like my daughter, whom I already knew before she was born, I will have known Him before I died, and embrace Him all the more for it out of pure love and adoration.