Transfigured

By: Candice Irion Spake
January 10, 2024

I wonder what it would be like to witness a transfiguration.  To literally stand alongside and watch the external, the physical, ebb away while the internal, the soul, is renewed into the eternal.

I got to thinking about the day my puppy Daisy, who for 16.5 years was my baby Daisy, crested the rainbow bridge… and I saw it…. six years ago today, January 10, 2019.

Earlier that afternoon we were together on the back deck.  She laid nestled in her puppy pad in between the layers.  As she lay there, it was about 3:10 p.m. CST and the sun was at the point in the horizon where it was about to set.  It was January.

I, of course, was taking pictures… likely the thousandth one that day as Daisy lay there… still. But, still with me.  I angled the camera just slightly.  Light illuminated my frame.

Through my very exhausted and teary, swollen eyes, I saw it.  
Crescendos of bursts of the sun’s rays beamed surrounding my Daisy.  Flares of exuberant colors cascaded; abounding… and lifting upward.
And upward…
And upward.

Into a realm of glory of the Eternal.  Into a moment where a prism surrounded my beloved; almost lifting her.  

In those very seconds, where time was suspended… it was like her impending passing had lost its sting.  I felt…

I felt like I saw Heaven bringing her into its grasp.  Like the time had come for my sweet dog to pass on and here I was caught up and in this realm of limbo between Heaven and earth with her. 

——
I sat back, crying different tears now.  Tears of incredible wonder of the beauty I just beheld.  

Just three short hours later, my Daisy, gave me one last kiss.  Gave her one last battle cry bark.  I felt her heart beat its last.  

Then I grieved.  Grieved hard.  And wept.  

Tears fill my eyes now.
It is hard to put these moments together, even now.  Whereas 6:10 p.m. January 10, 2019 wrenches my being into sorrow, 3:10 p.m. is the joy that comes in the morning.

The book of Isaiah writes how God tells us the end from the beginning.  

"For I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come," (Isaiah 46:10).

I like that.  I do the same with kids when I tell them a story; especially one that has emotional ups and downs because there is a comfort when you know the end.

There is also the comfort when the Creator is near saying: 

"I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go...", (Genesis 28:15).

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord you God will be with you wherever you go," (Joshua 1:9)

"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of this age," (Matthew 28:20).

1 Peter says that because of Christ’s resurrection those who are in Christ will be raised up to newness of life.  That there is power in the hope of His resurrection.  We know the end.  

"In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time... 

...In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire -- may genuine any result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed," (1 Peter 1:3-7).

I think of a friend’s wife who when about to pass said one of the most profound things I have heard.

“I could be shaking my fist at God, saying why?!  WHY!?  But how can I?  He has given me 28 years with her.”

This man was truly grateful.  Grateful for the time he had even though her passing came within a year of her prognosis.  

I have had a different destruction in my life. I shook the figurative gates of Heaven and the hell I was in, begging beyond every ounce I had for God to stop things.  

And He didn’t.  

I’ll never understand why… why I had to go through that.  And now this.  How could Daisy’s time be at hand?

3:10 opened a different dynamic to this question.  While I was amidst the splendor of all the colors and the light, all I could say was: Whoa.  

It was so amazing.  I remember weeping then too just enraptured of the safety, the warmth, the this will be ok moment even though I was losing “my little best friend” as she was.  

It was like I had a glimpse of what else was actually happening.  The chasm of the exchange of the external pressing into the eternal and giving way into magnificence.  

All I could then say was thank you.  Thank you for giving me this miracle of envisioning this resurrection. 

Furthermore, of the hope of His resurrection for us who want Christ, the Savior, in our lives.  

"...Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls", (1 Peter 1: 8-9).

The end to to us from the beginning.

I hang onto this and the figurative warm blanket of 3:10 p.m.  Because when the toll of her death rang, my mind retrieves the visceral experience of 3:10 which overwhelms the sorrow.  The sorrow itself then passes away a little at a time.  For, it too, is transfixed and transformed from the witness of Daisy’s rainbow…

Many of you are facing your own excruciating hell.  So unspeakable.  So unbearable.  So paradoxically severing… like you are dying inside - physically, emotionally, mentally, yet still physically living.   No description using words will EVER describe the full expression of suffering you are enduring.

Thus, I offer my deepest sympathies and empathies.. I offer this story, as an attempt to open up the door to the questions you maybe asking.  To the miracles you are begging God to receive.  To the unreal, unbelievable waiting you are just holding onto God for, but like Lazarus’s people said to Jesus in their times of trial:  “Where were you?”

" "Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died", " (John 11: 21).

I don’t know these answers but wish I did because I have asked, wept, and wailed these questions too.  But… Here’s what I do know.

I know what I saw that day at 3:10 p.m.  I know what I experienced.  I know what I felt.  And I know what I have carried with me that has helped me get to the now. That’s it.

I know that through faith, I try to know the God who wants to be known.  To the God who shows up alongside of us and carries these figurative thorns and whips across our backs cross for us.  

I don’t know your answers.  I don’t fully know my own although I try to understand that...

What I do know is Who was there.  Who carried me through.  Who held the answers, all of them, to my questions… Who heard all my cries.  His answer was through His presence.  

That… what I held dear was passing…. but this, this right here, this 3:10 in the afternoon…. Was His presence filling my soul with renewal.  Surging my strength to mount up.  To fix my gaze upon the author and perfecter of life and to trust His answer.

That answer is the light of His resurrection.

It is there that we can run and not be weary… that we can walk and not faint.

It was there, at that moment, at 3:10… where I felt I witnessed my sweet Daisy being transformed into glory, where I now see at 11:15pm six years later, that it was in fact, I, who was transformed.

For I could say, “death where for art thou sting” because I felt no sting.  No cross.  Just wonder.

It is my hope that these words bring a breath of renewal for you too.

"But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint", (Isaiah 40:31).

———


**Snarky disclaimer.  Read at your own Risk (; **

So, for all you theologians… look.  I know that you may feel a compelled diatribe over diatribe about the souls of animals and if, they, in fact, do go to Heaven. I worked in children’s theater ministry with puppets and such.  I get it.
Here’s my disclaimer.  Folks. This article is an experience that I, the author, literally had. While I realize there is an Ivory Tower of semantic type discourse about whether the allegory about Daisy is absolutely on par or not… that is aside the essence of my offering to those suffering.
I write this with the notion that the greater installation of this story is what it did for my faith.  How the rainbow ushered Christ's beauty into my heart, restoring my distraught soul.  It is my hope to encourage the reader’s as well.   There are people out there who could relate and who need to relate to get to that next moment. So. It is for their sake I write.  We can Ivory Tower it up later… say when my calendar is not full (:  .**

"Transfigured" By Candice Irion Spake. @2024, All Rights Reserved.

All Scripture Quotations are from the New International Version.