This is it! she thought and sang out and beamed out from the core of her soul. This is it! The rapture! Countless in celebration, diverse people, millions upon millions of minds of individual thought...all of us knowing that we aren't of our own, but belonging to Him!
"It's not the rapture," Ranwell said over her shoulder, smiling. "You're filling with joy and light. You're becoming what you've meant to become since the first breaths of time. You are, you have always been His. What you feel in your heart? That's just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg. No, an iceberg doesn't even compare. It's only the small speck at the top of eternity."
They danced and praised Him. Dolly shut her eyes and lost herself in the overwhelming joy, spinning in her dance. Shouting with her soul. Crying tears of redemption that weren't coming from her eyes...but from her very spirit.
When Dolly opened her eyes again, she had no idea where Bill was in the crowd of people. Usually, this would worry her. But for now, for some reason, it didn't worry her at all.
Bill was here, somewhere. In the millions. So were people that she knew - people she had smiled at on the streets when she was a young girl. There was Derek, the old butcher that her mother used to tease about the prices of his products when Dolly was only a small girl. There was Viola, who Dolly hadn't seen since...oh, the second grade?
They smiled at her, lost in their own dance. "It's all starting to make sense," Dolly said to a person next to her. He turned around, a cleancut American boy, and replied to her: "One."
What did that mean? She didn't know. But at the same time, thoughts were beginning to enter into her. Thoughts that took no brain to imagine and bring to understanding. One.
"It's too big for us to understand," Dolly told a small girl.
Four people around her replied to her at the same time and in the same tone of voice that it almost sounded like an echo of one voice: "And at the same time, we're beginning."
While Dolly spoke this time, eight other people around her spoke out the same thought: "We're made for His joy."
Sixteen other people responded: "We're made to love Him and to be loved by Him."
Dolly and 150 others spoke out: "The Beginning and the End."
"The Alpha...and the Omega."
The rumbling around them continued...it shook every molecule in the air, trembled every spirit. It shook loose any doubt, and it splashed refreshing water over any weakness. Shells around the last few doubts cracked and fell away.
"No eye has seen," a thousand people spoke at once.
"No ear has heard," two-thousand responded in unison.
"And no mind can conceive," tens of thousands called out together.
Dolly spun and danced and sang out. She felt herself coming apart at the very threads of physical existence. She felt that it was right, that there was nothing to fear here at all. She knew that it was a return to where she belonged, a place that she had forgotten about completely during her time alive.
The universe, it seemed suspended around them and it pounded with rhythm and song. Angels and man danced and praised Him. Every cell of every being in every corner of this place vibrated with His love and grace.
"It's too much!" Dolly screamed out in laughter, her eyes squeezed shut. "It's too much!"
Dolly, who had known nothing but the existence of her own physical body for so long that she had forgotten all else, suddenly felt her human body come apart and separate into a dust; from which exploded the real Dolly. The rough skin and calluses of existence had been pulled back to reveal the child, Dolly, refreshed and new.
Dolly collapsed under her own weight, under the intense beauty of the event, and wept in a joy so complete and perfect that she was sure it would never end.
When she came to, she found herself hunkered over, weeping, panting, refreshed, and new, repeating over and over: "God...God...God."
She opened her eyes and found herself in light. From all sides, there was nothing but light.
Ranwell stepped out of the light and gently grabbed her by the hand. She wanted to ask him where Bill was, she wanted to ask him what had just happened. But immediately, before those thoughts could complete themselves in her mind, the answers came and she knew.
Ranwell nodded his head at her, grinning. "There's Someone that I want you to meet, Dolly," he told her.
(Sorry for being late...I was out in the field yesterday and then had to serve my civic duty this morning...
This is a gift you have, Fluffy! Given to you by God above. A talent. Go with it, use it for His glory. You are so blessed!)