HOPALONG CATHI
                                                                T. Wieland Allen
       I know, I know, the old cowboy hero was named Hopalong Cassidy but my friend who just went to heaven to live with God will, from now on, be referred to by the name Hopalong Cathi.  It's quite a story and one worth putting in black and white to memorialize her wonderful life and the sunshine she brought to so many people.
      It begins with a ladies prayer group who began meeting many years ago, over 30.  We are from different denominations, Baptists, Catholics, Assemblies of God, Episcopalians and Methodists.  We were supernaturally gathered together by God in various ways, each one unique in its orchestration.  We don't have any doctrine because doctrine separates people rather than gathering them together.We get together every week to study to get to know God better and to pray for the problems of people.  I got to know Cathi and her many talents in the group called the Prayer Posse.  All of us became close friends, more like sisters.
     Years later a terrible tragedy struck Cathi's family.  She had a massive stroke, a terrible thing to happen to a person.  Later on in the week Cathi had a series of other strokes.  Until hearing about the last series of small strokes, we were planning on her recovering completely and going home to live with her loyal and loving husband Steve. So, rather than getting her flowers for her return home, it came to me one day that her prayer partners, her spiritual sisters, should get her some form of yard art since she was a constant gardener of flowers and small patches of veggies.  Most of her days previous to the stroke had been spent outside with her hands in dirt.
   Yes, I surmised, yard art would please her more than a hothouse plant.  Our praying friends agreed wholeheartedly.  Fortunately a large display of Mexican style yard art was located close to our city.  I ventured to the area outside of town where a man had set up quite a large display of brightly colored and very intricately designed tin yard art.  As I stepped out of my car my eyes landed on a huge grasshopper, very realistic in its design and painted a dark green on the underbelly, the legs and the antennae and bright green/dark green on the upper belly and back. It was over three feet long.  The thing that caught my eyes at first were the bright red eyes.  Cathi had to have it.  To tell the truth, I wrestled with the decision for a few minutes; then, yes, I knew that it was something that she would enjoy.  I gleefully purchased it for our precious friend who was having difficulty holding on to life at the time.

    I genuinely thought that I had purchased the large tin green grasshopper with the bright red eyes to give to Cathi from her prayer sisters, expecting to take it to her house and leave it on her front  porch so that she would notice it when she returned home from the hospital.  I took it to my house to keep it until I heard good news that she was going home.  As I placed the large grasshopper along my front walk in a flower bed at my house to show our friends when they came for Bible study and intercessory prayers, I looked up in a tree bordering the flower bed and there, perched on a lower branch, were two giant green live grasshoppers.  They were four inches long.  They were so big they looked fake.  They had large red eyes, also, just like the tin one I had been drawn to buy.  I had never seen such huge live grasshoppers in my life as the ones who were perched in my crepe myrtle tree.  For some reason I immediately said to the grasshoppers, "Well, hello, Cathi."  Those large grasshoppers stayed in the tree for a long time, as if it was their tree and I had better get used to it. 
     I texted a note to the Bible study/prayer posse ladies and sent them a picture of the grasshopper that I had bought.  They were in agreement that it was a perfect gift from us to Cathi.  That evening as I was reading the local paper I noticed in the computer section an article about a new online business whose name was The Happy Grasshopper.  I was beginning to sense a theme, as is often said when similar things happen in succession.  Later I found out that one of our prayer posse members who lives in another town, and who had not been privy to the news about our buying the tin grasshopper for Cathi, had had two huge dark green grasshoppers come onto her patio every day for a short time.  Not knowing about the grasshopper that we had bought for Cathi, she had swept them off of her patio every day, but they kept coming back.  It's as if Cathi was sending the grasshoppers to check on her friends.  
     Do I really think that Cathi was in those large live grasshoppers?  Of course not, but I know that they can be symbols of something sent by God into our lives to encourage us to pray and to pay attention to those miraculous happenings.  To prove that to us, Marcia, one of our ladies in the prayer posse, consulted Google and found that grasshoppers are a symbol of complete freedom.  Oh, my word.  That discovery gave me God chills.  The reason for the grasshopper in our lives was to prepare us for Cathi's complete freedom from earthly sorrows and her entrance into heaven. 
     After Marcia's discovery that grasshoppers symbolize freedom, I decided to find out more about them so I went to a different website and found that grasshoppers in African folklore symbolize having one foot in the earth and one foot in the breezes of heaven.  That was another "wow" discovery.  Cathi at the time was partially conscious and then for periods of time she was unconscious.  Having heard many testimonies about out of body experiences when a person is very ill or about to die, I knew that she was, for sure, part of earth for a while and then part of heaven for a while.  Often, that is a gift from God, allowing people to choose which they wish at that time, whether to stay on earth or whether to move on eternally into heaven.
      Cathi's daughter Melissa and I had been texting back and forth every day since the first stroke.  In fact, Melissa had originally informed me about the stroke.  Knowing that Melissa is also a spiritual young lady who loves God, I had clued her in on the grasshopper that we had bought for Cathi and the two huge live  grasshoppers which had appeared in my tree.  Melissa informed me that she has a small grasshopper statue in her house to which her mom, Cathi, was always attracted, often picking the grasshopper up and caressing it.  Melissa texted to me a picture of her grasshopper statute.  It is very dark green in color.  A coincidence?  No.  We choose to think of it as a God-incident.
      God told us to welcome strangers because they are often angels in disguise.  Jesus entertained guests from heaven, Moses and Elijah, when he walked in the earth.  His disciples saw them and tried to build a tent for them.  When John the Baptist baptized Jesus in water, a descending dove appeared above the head of Jesus signifying the Holy Spirit's help in His life.   God is not limited to anything.  So the grasshopper being an image to us of our sister Cathi who has gone on to live with God is no small coincidence.  It's a personal symbol to us that she is part of the cloud of witnesses in heaven around us that is spoken of in the Bible.  It says all of the spirits of our loved ones are in that heavenly dimension, along with God and Jesus.   They have access to the earth and they have access to heaven.  They are one with God as He works with us to improve our earthly lives.  Their desires for us continue when they enter heaven and they are "as the angels", meaning spiritual beings, is what Jesus said.  I figure He ought to know.
     The more we know about the spiritual dimension of heaven that surrounds us the more faith we have.  Our loved one, Cathi, will always be known to me as Hopalong Cathi from now on, able to leap from heaven to earth with God's permission and orchestration to help her family and us in our daily lives.   If that were not true, God would not have influenced Me to buy the grasshopper yard art while being ignorant of Cathi's being fascinated with the grasshopper statue in her daughter's home.
     Since Cathi joined the saints in heaven, there have been other instances of grasshoppers becoming highlighted in the lives of her family.  Her daughter had a live grasshopper appear on the steering wheel of her car after she stopped her car.  Her daughter's boyfriend saw one on the wheel of his car and later on the white wall of his building.  Those were not normal grasshoppers.  They were huge green ones about four inches long.  Cathi is making calls from heaven to check on everybody before she goes on to complete rest in heaven.  On a tombstone next to where Cathi's ashes were to be scattered, a huge grasshopper perched itself so close as to be noticed by everyone in the family.   After being recognized, it flew off into the sky.  Upon seeing it, her granddaughter  immediately said, "Hi, Ma'am."  They are everywhere, but not in large groups, only one at a time or a pair.  We joked that Cathi was always late at Bible study so as to make her grand entrance.  We loved it.  
     Hop along, Cathi, my love.  Enjoy complete, everlasting peace.  We won't forget you.  We know you will never forget us.  You have manifested your heavenly life to all of your earthly family.
     God never ceases to amaze us.  He used a grasshopper to give peace to her family and her friends before her exit from this world.  That tin, brightly colored yard art grasshopper is a symbol to us of the magnificence of God's orchestrated plans and that He cares enough to use His supernatural abilities to send grasshoppers to symbolize Cathi's entrance into complete freedom, which is God's promise to us after the death of our worn out earthly bodies. 
     We are keeping our eyes open to God's other messages that bring peace to us. They will come hop, hop, hopping into our lives when we least expect them, much like Cathi's grasshoppers which were sent to calm our fears and give us joy.  Those grasshoppers that symbolize complete freedom caused us to concentrate  on God's promise to us of complete peace by keeping our minds on being happy for the new life of the real Cathi, as her spirit is happy in heaven, rather than our thoughts focusing on the death of her temporal body.  We were, and still are, focused on her freedom in Our Loving Father's presence. Can you imagine what she is experiencing?  She is being engulfed in pure unconditional love.  Cathi spread love while in the world.  Now she is the recipient of all of God's love, the Ultimate Love!                 
     Knowing her, the minute she saw the Lover of her soul, she hopped right up into His loving arms.  Yeah, that's Cathi.  First off, she probably asked Him, "Heavenly Dad, please explain to me about quantum physics.  It's always intrigued me."   Yes, that was definitely her first question to the Creator of the Universe.  I know for sure that's what happened because I heard her musing about that question many times,  
     Get ready, Heavenly Father.  She's full of questions but You can handle it.  She will be picking your magnificent brain for a long time!  Oh, yeah, there's no time in heaven.  That's fine.  She has enough questions for eternity.   It might be better if You just flood her mind with all of Your knowledge first thing.   Then you can get on with gracing the lives of others of your children with gifts from heaven which give them peace, faith and joy. 
    Thank you, Father, for the grasshopper gifts.  They fulfilled their intended purpose of making your spiritual dimension called heaven a thrilling reality to us.  You always do things perfectly. That's why your children love you so much.  Your love is powerful and overcomes everything, even the death of the earth suit of a loved one, sending beautiful green grasshoppers to cause us to focus on a person's spirit and her complete freedom from earth.  You keep life exciting and thrilling!  You are so clever! Cathi was kind of quirky in a good way.  Of course you would use grasshoppers to comfort us.   They have hers and Your signatures on all of them.