Peace in Loss
Some losses tear deeper than the heart can fathom—reaching into the very fabric of one’s soul. Yet in the darkest valleys, the veil between worlds can grow whisper-thin. This is Amber's story: a woman who heard God's voice in a barn filled with hay and horses, who witnessed her son's face formed in clouds and smelled heaven's fragrance when her father passed. Her journey reveals that grief isn't always the final word; sometimes it's the doorway through which extraordinary love flows, proving that the connections we cherish most aren't severed by death but transformed into bridges between worlds we once thought hopelessly far apart.
The phone call came in January 2018. Amber's oldest son, Adam, just 37 years old, had died of what was later confirmed as fentanyl poisoning. When news like this arrives, the world stops spinning. Everything becomes a blur of emotion and impossible logistics. Parents should never have to bury their children.
"Are you sure?" Those were her first words as the phone calls kept coming in. She collapsed to the floor in a fetal position, sobbing uncontrollably. Her husband Greg was busy on the phone handling practical details, but Amber needed to be alone with God. She made her way to the barn—her sanctuary among the chickens and horses—where she could pour out her questions.
"Where is he?" she asked, looking up toward heaven.
Sitting there in her grief, she heard God's voice—not just in her heart, but audibly, as if He were right beside her in that barn with the smell of hay and the gentle sounds of animals around them.
God answered, "I've got him, and I'll take care of him until you get here." His voice was warm, comforting, like a father reassuring a frightened child.
Still in disbelief of the clear voice, she asked, "Are you sure?"
The Lord chuckled. "Yes, Amber, I'm sure."
She realized then she had just questioned God's certainty, which seemed absurd even in that moment of deep grief. "I believe I just asked God if he was sure," she recounts with a hint of embarrassment.
She said out loud, much to her surprise, "I'm okay with that."
The presence of God was so overwhelming in that barn that Amber didn't want to leave. "I just wanted to stay there."
Then came a vision of Adam sitting in Jesus's lap, looking surprisingly small against the vastness of His embrace. Amber explains, "I felt the Lord say, 'He was so innocent here, and he's innocent again now.'" In that moment, she understood her son was freed from the labels he'd carried throughout his struggle with addiction. "So all the guilt is over, all the accusations, all of that was over. It was almost like He was holding a newborn, born again."
Adam had battled addiction since he was 13, complicated by untreated ADHD in an era when people didn't fully understand what that meant. Despite being incredibly smart, he couldn't focus in school.
Amber remembers looking out the kitchen window one day to see his math tutor—a high school student—walking away. When she asked where he was going, the tutor replied, "I won't come back." Amber went into her son's room where she found him sitting proudly on his bed, arms crossed, one leg over the other.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I threw him out the window," her son replied matter-of-factly. "He keeps handing me this paper full of math problems. There's just numbers scattered all over. I can't do this stuff."
His mind simply worked differently. Amber had studied it since then, learning that children who can't get help often self-medicate. "He never felt normal," she reflects. “These children learn to cause trouble because when they disrupt, they get kicked out of the classroom—it becomes an escape.”
Yet through all his struggles, Adam had such a beautiful heart. As a little boy, he would stand on library tables asking loudly if anyone knew Jesus, with absolutely no concept of an indoor voice. "He didn't know quiet," Amber says, "And he always wanted everyone to know who Jesus was."
He grew to be 6'2", covered in tattoos that Amber secretly disliked, but his hugs were enormous, almost choking her with their intensity and love. He was street-smart, holding steady jobs between his disappearances. "There were months we couldn't find him because he was on the run, and then he'd appear again," Amber recalls. "The drugs created a chaotic pattern to his life. They become the best liars you can ever imagine. But to live with that torment for so long and now be able to be in heaven and not have any of that..."
Later, Adam hung rain gutters for a living. "He loved heights. He wasn't afraid of anything.” His fearlessness was both a strength and a liability.
On the last day of his life, Adam had used his tax refund to feed homeless people and buy them shoes—he loved shoes and made sure everyone else had them too.
Planning the funeral tested Amber in ways she never imagined. Adam lived in another state, so they had to bring him home. During those weeks of planning, they also had their wedding anniversary and a couple of grandkids' birthdays. Life continued its relentless pace even as they grieved. "It was just a whirl," she recalls of that period.
Amber went to Walgreens to create a memorial card with his photo. When she explained what she was doing to the woman behind the counter, the employee broke down crying. "You shouldn't have to do this," she said. Soon the entire store staff gathered around, sharing their own stories of loss. One employee had to leave because she was crying too hard to help. They refused to charge Amber for the materials. In moments like that, Amber knew to step back and let the Holy Spirit work in ways she couldn't predict in bringing people together.
The funeral held at their home became a celebration of Adam's life. "Everyone shared so many fun stories, so many funny things about him because he was quite a character," Amber says with a smile.
Grief manifested differently in each family member. Their third son disappeared for a day after Adam's death, processing his loss in isolation. He had sat beneath a partially frozen waterfall in January. As icicles crashed down around him, he looked up and saw his older brother jumping across the top of the waterfall.
"Bro, it is so cool here!" Adam called down. "I can't wait for you to come. You can do whatever you want."
Amazed, his brother picked up rocks and threw them upward.
"You can't hit me," Adam laughed.
"I looked around," the son later shared, "and thought if anyone was here, they'd think I'd lost my mind. But it was as clear as could be." That vision was God's way of helping him through his grieving time.
Amber found herself looking for more signs. "After the funeral was over and everybody had left, you go back to normal life—but what's normal?" she questions.
One evening, watching the sunset from their driveway as she always did, she experienced something extraordinary. "I love sunsets and God knew that’s where I’d watch them," she explained. "He knew 'she'll be out here in a minute.'"
Amber looked up and gasped. There, formed in the clouds, was her son's face—his toddler face, holding a huge sword, with an eagle sitting on his head and a lion down at his feet. She quickly took pictures because clouds move so fast.
When she compared the cloud formation to Adam's baby photos later, the resemblance was unmistakable. "I ran in the house because I had to find a picture of that face. And I went to his baby book and it was exactly the same face."
She called her best friend first because she thought she might be losing her mind. Her friend, who had known Adam since he was born, confirmed what Amber saw in those pictures. "That's his face," she agreed, "and I see an eagle sitting on his head." The sword was clear, and the lion, while "taking a little more imagination than the rest," was definitely sitting by his feet.
When she showed Greg the pictures, he said, "As his mom, God knew you needed to see that."
Around Mother's Day—the first after his death and undoubtedly one of the hardest days for any mother who has lost a child—while sitting on the couch, Amber felt the cushion suddenly dip beside her. Turning to look, there was Adam, with no tattoos, smiling with perfect, gleaming teeth—so different from the damaged ones that drugs had left him with.
"You got new teeth!" she exclaimed in surprise.
"I did, Mom! I did. I got new teeth," he replied, beaming with pride.
"And look at your skin," she started to say as she reached toward him. His skin looked beautiful too, almost translucent with an angelic glow. But as she moved to touch him, he vanished—there one moment, gone the next. The experience was as real as anything she'd ever known.
Doubts tried to creep in. "The enemy comes in and tries to say, 'Boy, you have a great imagination. You think God would show you these things?'" But she immediately countered: "Oh yes, He does! He cares that much and even more." She imagined Adam in heaven saying, "Hey God, I need to go show my mom my teeth," because he had always been so self-conscious about how drugs had damaged his smile.
As part of her healing journey, Amber choreographed a dance with her palomino horse to "I Can Only Imagine" by MercyMe. She decorated her horse with sparkles to make her look like an angel while Amber wore all black.
The first time she performed it publicly, the whole audience was in tears. This performance has brought comfort to many others who've lost loved ones, especially in women's Bible studies for mothers who have lost sons.
Her horse now recognizes the song immediately. "To this day, whenever that song comes on, she's all, 'Oh, okay. Are we doing it now?'" Amber says with a laugh.
Her marriage survived this loss when many don't. "A lot of people have said, 'I can't believe you stayed married after the death of a child,'" she shares, "because everybody responds differently."
When someone asked how she managed to reconcile her significant spiritual experience with the worldly grief she was experiencing, Amber had a surprising answer: "I felt almost all grief left that night in the barn with Jesus. I didn't really grieve that much. Not like I've seen other people grieve. Some of our kids really struggled," she explains. "I didn't feel grief like I've seen it on others because once God showed me the visions of Adam being safe. I had such a peace."
Adam's passing transformed how Amber viewed death. Heaven was no longer an abstract promise—it had become tangible. This transformation deepened the following year when her 92-year-old father was dying.
In the dim light of a hospice-darkened bedroom, Amber and her mother had kept vigil for ten long days, watching helplessly as morphine dulled her father’s pain but couldn't ease their own. They had prayed over him, sung familiar hymns, their voices sometimes breaking with emotion. His eyes had remained closed for days, his breathing shallow and labored.
"Please, God," Amber had whispered during a moment alone, "just take him home. This is getting too hard."
Without warning, her father's eyes fluttered open, focusing directly on her face with unexpected clarity.
"Oh, hi," Amber stammered, surprised by the sudden connection. "Hi, Dad."
Something in his gaze told her this was a moment of farewell. She leaned close, her hand covering his.
"You know what? It's okay if you go," she told him softly. "I'll take care of Mom. We'll be fine. You go ahead and go."
His eyes drifted closed again. Sensing the change, Amber whispered to her mother, "I don't think he's—I think he's probably gonna go." Needing a moment to compose herself, she stepped outside into the cool night air.
That's when it happened. A fragrance enveloped her, so sudden and powerful it stopped her in her tracks. It wasn't the scent of a single flower, but a symphony of blossoms—roses, carnations, apple blooms—every beautiful fragrance imaginable woven together in impossible harmony.
Amber glanced toward their apple trees, momentarily wondering if they could be blooming, before remembering it was May, weeks past blossom time. The scent intensified, surrounding her completely, transporting her into an almost trance-like state. Though she stood alone in the darkness, she felt immersed in something beyond description—something holy.
When she finally returned inside, her mother looked up with tears in her eyes. "I think he's gone. Will you check?"
Amber confirmed what they both already knew. Her father had slipped away while she stood beneath the stars, bathed in heaven's perfume.
It wasn't until several hours later, with her father's body taken away and the first pale light of dawn appearing, that her mother broke the silence with an unexpected question.
"I need to tell you about this smell," she began hesitantly.
Amber felt goosebumps rise on her arms. "I already know what you're going to say."
Her mother's eyes widened. "Did you smell it too?"
"Yes."
"Every flower," her mother whispered in wonder. "It came at that moment when you were outside."
They sat together, two generations of women bound by loss and by something miraculous neither could fully explain.
"We smelled heaven," Amber said with quiet certainty. "When Dad went into heaven, the gates opened just enough, and we got to smell it."
Instead of weeping, they found themselves excited, even joyful—not despite their loss but because of what it had revealed.
Through these experiences, Amber developed a perspective on the afterlife that brought her comfort. The boundary between this world and the next, she came to believe, isn't the impenetrable barrier most imagine, but something far more permeable.
"The veil is see-through," she insists, her voice gaining intensity. "It is see-through. Sometimes I'm thinking it's like a shower curtain. Does that make sense?"
She leans forward, trying to articulate something felt more than understood. "Everything of heaven is right here. We're never truly separated from it or from those we've lost. I believe we can pull down what heaven has and experience heaven on earth in certain moments, certain situations. But so many of us run from that possibility. I guess God's presence feels scary to people." She pauses, then adds with quiet certainty, "Not anymore. Not to me."
Through this journey, Amber learned to stay alert to what God was doing in every circumstance. "Just pay attention. He wants us to hear his voice. He wants us to see Him, feel Him, and get comforted by Him.”
In the years since, Amber has found herself uniquely equipped to comfort others in their losses. "Now I'm able to tell others, 'Look for signs. Ask God to show you a sign. Where is he? Are you sure? Ask him.'"
Amber knows without a doubt that Adam is in heaven. "There are going to be people there that we as humans would have judged and said, 'You don't belong here,' and they do. We don't have the same heart that God has. We don't love like He does."
She discovered a deeper kind of love—with God, with her family, and even with her son who had passed beyond this life. There's hope in knowing that love transcends death, that healing comes in unexpected ways, and that one day, we'll be reunited.
She carries his memory in her heart, finding peace in the promise that love never ends and that nothing—not even death—can separate us from those we love or from the God who holds us all.
