Heaven’s Soldier
My mother was an evangelist. For eighteen years she traveled the country, speaking in tent meetings and starting new churches.
As she went from state to state, local newspapers touted her as an evangelist God “called from the kitchen to the pulpit.” She attracted hundreds of people to her meetings. Reporters said Mrs. A. A. Carpenter’s preaching was “powerful” and “under forceful anointing.” And they described her as “fearless and dynamic.”
The event that led to her call into the ministry, however, was not something any woman would want to face.
I was a curly-haired blonde of seven when it all happened. My brother, Wallace, was nineteen. World War I had just begun, and being a fine, brave, patriotic young man, Wallace enlisted in the Army, as so many others did at that time.
Wallace went off to be a soldier, but before he fought one battle, and after barely trying on his uniform, he was confronted by a private war of his own. Stationed in Iowa City, Iowa, he fell victim to pneumonia. After a week in the Army, my older brother, a fine young man so admired by the people of his hometown of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, died.
Wallace’s death devastated my mother. He had been the perfect young man: an outstanding student, active in the local Methodist Church, highly respected in the community, and an attentive son. Every evening after dinner, before picking up his fiancée, Letha, he had brought the car around and took Mother on a ride through town. They rode around the square where friends would wave to her, then they drove up and down the streets of the neighborhood.
She was the envy of every other mother in Mount Pleasant, partly because they had one of the first cars in town, but mostly because she had such a thoughtful son. Mother loved him dearly.
The day after Wallace died was traumatic for my family. My parents and Letha were grief-stricken and decided to drive to Iowa City, where he had died. They arrived late and checked into a hotel for the night. Mother and Letha went to their rooms to go to bed, but Daddy knew he could not sleep, so he decided to sit up alone for a while in another room.
Overcome with grief, my mother wrestled sleeplessly in her bed that night, tossing and turning, crying and praying. Suddenly, she looked up and saw Wallace standing at the foot of her bed. He was leaning on Jesus. He looked radiant.
“Over here everything is love,” he said reassuringly. “Everything is love.”
Then he was gone.
Mother was amazed at what she’d seen and was filled with a peace she couldn’t explain. What did this mean? How could this be? Should she tell the others what she’d experienced?
The next morning when Mother joined my father and Letha for breakfast, she hesitated to mention her vision to them. Surely they would think she was hallucinating. While they were sitting around the breakfast table, Daddy, my rational, realistic, unimaginative father, cleared his throat. He spoke cautiously but resolutely.
“I had the strangest experience last night,” he said.
As he spoke, Mother and Letha stared at him in amazement. With his typically calm demeanor, he described seeing Wallace leaning on Jesus and saying, “Over here everything is love. Everything is love.”
“Why, I saw the very same thing!” Mother cried.
“So did I!” Letha echoed with a look of wonder on her face.
When they returned home, they told the story to the rest of us. It seemed God in His mercy and love had sent Wallace to comfort his loved ones.
That event catapulted Mother into more encounters with the Lord that year and a close, vibrant relationship with Him. She became a changed woman and felt God calling her to become an evangelist. Shortly afterward, she began traveling around the country, sharing her testimony, helping start churches, and often telling the story of Wallace’s appearance to his loved ones after his death. While Wallace never fought a battle as a soldier in the U.S. Army, in the battle over people’s souls, Wallace joined with the soldiers of heaven to bring the victory of eternal life to many.
I was only seven then, but it changed my life as well. Whenever I was tempted to doubt, I remembered this story told by three people I knew and trusted. My faith became cemented in the knowledge that heaven is real and that love is what matters most. I knew from the age of seven years old that this is what Jesus came to tell us.
Now as I sit at the doorstep of heaven waiting for the day I, too, shall walk into eternity, I find comfort in the promise of God’s all-encompassing and everlasting love that my brother brought from heaven so long ago.
For like the apostle Paul, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).