“THE JACK CONNECTION”

By Ana Fields

In the early morning hours, when I was somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, I had a dream that seemed to be more than a dream—more like an experience. I was in Heaven, and I was with people from my mother’s side of the family who had passed on. I didn’t actually see my mother, who had died not long before, but I could sense that she was there too. I was semi-reclined on a couch, and my relatives were gathered around in a circle, having a discussion. I didn’t seem to be privy to what they were discussing, but was more like an observer viewing the interaction between them. They interacted so well and there was such an air of peace and harmony about it all that I took that as a further indication we were in Heaven.

The focus of this experience—at least what I was focused on—was a young man who was leading the discussion and seemed to be the others’ spiritual elder, despite the fact that he was younger than some of them. He appeared to be in his late 20s and was quite handsome. Occasionally he would look over at me and smile, and once he winked at me, which made me blush. I was in a spiritual realm, but still had human responses.

That’s about all there was to the dream or experience. The whole time I kept wondering who the young man was. I’d never seen him before, yet he was definitely a member of my mother’s side of our family. Then right as the experience ended, I heard someone say, “This is Jack.”

I was so sure that this had been more than a dream that I wrote to my father and asked if he knew of anyone by the name of Jack on my mother’s side of the family.

He wrote back saying that he’d been investigating the “Jack connection,” as he put it, and found that mother’s mother—my grandmother—had a younger brother who was killed in World War II. His name was John, but everyone had affectionately called him Jack. “The others say he was the best one in the family,” my father wrote.

So it seems I really did “see” my grandmother’s brother Jack, and I think the Lord may have let that happen for my father’s encouragement, to reinforce the reality of the spirit world and the next life. 