The Bumblebee

This morning, my best friend of 30 years went to be with the Lord, and I’m still trying to understand a world where she’s not in it.

Even typing that doesn’t feel real.

I’m in Baltimore for a work trip, in the middle of a team building exercise…a scavenger hunt. We were running around the city, checking boxes, staying engaged, keeping up with the pace of everything going on. On the outside, I was participating. But internally, she was all I could think about.

Grief doesn’t wait for a quiet moment. It shows up in the middle of movement, in the noise, in the middle of things that are supposed to keep you distracted.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I found myself talking to her. Not out loud, but in that way you do when your heart is reaching for someone it can’t quite reach anymore. And I said, “If you made it to heaven… send me a bumblebee.”

Melissa literally means “bumblebee” in Greek. It’s always been hers.

I didn’t stop what I was doing or pause the activity. I just kept moving with everyone else. But a few steps later, I turned the corner, and a bumblebee flew straight into my face.

Not nearby or something I had to search for or interpret, but directly, unmistakably, right into me. In the middle of downtown Baltimore, during a scavenger hunt, surrounded by people and noise and movement.

I actually stopped walking, because in that moment, everything in me knew how specific that was.

In a city of concrete and glass and traffic, at the exact moment I asked, without even slowing down long enough to sit in the weight of it… there it was.

You can call it coincidence if you want, but I don’t.

Because I believe in a God who is personal, a God who sees and cares about the details, even the ones that might seem small or insignificant to anyone else. I believe in a God who knows that sometimes what we need most in grief isn’t an explanation, it’s a reminder.

A reminder that heaven is real.
A reminder that she made it.
A reminder that love doesn’t end here.

Scripture says that God is near to the brokenhearted, not distant or removed, but near. And today, in the middle of a city that felt so far from everything that mattered, He felt near to me.

Not because my circumstances changed, but because He met me in them.

She fought cancer with the same attitude and strength that defined her, and now she’s whole. There’s no pain, no fear, no fighting left to do. Just peace, just joy, just Jesus.

And somehow, in His kindness, I think He let her say hello.