Over five years ago my aunt Stacy contacted me and said that my cousin Joshua Polson was not doing well and wasn’t expected to live much longer.  Josh was born with cerebral palsy and had been fighting the good fight for nearly 27 years when she called.  Stacy wanted to do something nice for her sister, Danene (Josh’s mom) and asked if I’d be able to draw a picture of Jesus holding Josh in Heaven that she’d be able to give to her when he passed away, as a way to offer comfort.

She had something in mind similar to this image by Danny Hahlbohm.

  Suffer the Children – By Danny Hahlbom 

I told her I’d do my best.  I didn’t have a lot of images to work with so I needed a little help with a model and asked a close neighbor and friend, TJ Haws if I could come take pictures of him and his son Jaxson that was also born with cerebral palsy.  On September 24th, 2014 I had a great time at the Haws’ house snapping photos I was hoping to use for reference.

I got together a number of different references to work with, taking screenshots from the Bible Videos produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, some other artwork and a few pictures of Josh.  While I was doing so, I also discovered it was pretty neat how similar the names Joshua and Jehovah are in Hebrew.

Two days later on September 26th, 2014, Josh passed away.

I don’t recall the exact time frames on everything, but interestingly enough Danene had also gotten ahold of me herself and said she really wanted me to draw a picture of Joshua for her.  She had in mind a picture of him standing in his wheelchair reaching toward Heaven.  She had seen a photo of a bronze sculpture for Matthew Robison and asked if there was any way to do something similar for Josh’s headstone, but she didn’t want it to be exactly like this statue as Josh’s wheelchair was different.

She sent me family photos and a picture of his wheelchair to work from.

I put the request from Stacy on hold and started working on Danene’s picture first.  Chronologically it made more sense to me that Joshua would be standing in his chair reaching for Heaven before he actually got there and was able to meet the Savior, so I figured Stacy would understand.

After an incredibly personal experience involving many late nights, text messages and e-mails to Danene I finished the drawing.  I actually used his brother as a reference for his lower body, and an image I’d found online as reference for the hand of Christ:

I really wanted to be able to go personally to the funeral and deliver the drawing but for one reason or another I wasn’t able to so I scanned it and sent the file to my brother Brendon to have printed in Texas.  Brendon saved the day and was able to deliver the picture to Danene in Austin in time for the funeral as he was living in Waco at the time.

I had told Danene that if she really wanted a bronze statue it would likely cost as much as a new car so I gave her a different option for engraving on granite and Brendon was later able to use the pencil sketch to have it laser-etched on Josh’s headstone.  The base is extra long so his headstone can be between his parents’ in the future (but Danene was not ready to see her name in a cemetery!).

After I got that finished up I started again on the picture of Josh with Jesus, but it just didn’t seem right to me that Christ would be holding him.  At 27-years-old I figured their meeting would be much more “adult” and would be more of a conversation between friends than anything else.  I asked Danene if it would be okay to draw them up sitting together on a bench.  We spoke of what he’d likely be wearing and decided in all of the accounts we’ve read about angelic visits they’ve been clothed in white robes.

For my reference of Christ I used one of my favorites images by Del Parson of Christ with Mary and Martha.

For Joshua, I did a number of different versions of his head and face, not ever getting it quite right.  Originally Danene requested that we draw Josh to look like his perfected body will look like.  There were a number of times that I thought I had finished, especially this version. 

I was so excited to deliver this to Danene and just happened to be taking a business trip to Dallas so I schedule a detour to Austin.  Unfortunately, upon arriving at DFW I realized I had left my drawing pad in Denver waiting at the gate at DIA.  LUCKILY they were able to find it and ship it back to me, but by then I had missed my chance to deliver this in person.  I took it as a sign that it wasn’t quite right and still needed some work.  I can only imagine the journey the picture had to take to find its way back to me, and who must have seen it along the way?

Not knowing exactly what he should look like, it took me WAY TOO LONG to get this done, but here we are, five years later and I finally finished.

I was able to send the picture off to Danene and was so excited to receive her reply:

“I received my mail about 15 minutes ago. I had two packages that came today. One was for Russ and the other one I thought might be a game that I bought for the grands. I thought, wow, this is a bigger game then I thought it was going to be. As I opened it up, I was so surprised to see it was a package from you. I didn’t think it would come this early so I was somewhat taken back. As I opened up the envelope, just praying that they didn’t bend it. As I pulled away the paper to find the picture, I was almost holding my breathe as to finally see the final product of your God given talent. When I finally saw the picture the tears just came without realizing what this picture would mean to me. I am not even sure that I can put into words how this makes me feel, Cameron. I truly don’t expect anyone really to understand the meaning of what the two pictures mean to me. It almost gives me some sense of closure to some degree. Just by seeing the picture of Joshua sitting with our Savior just brings tears to my eyes. Oh yes, as I am typing this up the tears are just flowing down my cheeks. My heart is so full and the happiness that you have given me can not even be put into words. These pictures are a priceless gift and I will NEVER be able to thank you enough for what you have done. I have probably caused you a lot of stress for making it more difficult for you when a few times you thought you had it and I kept telling you to make a few changes. However, I think I am glad I did that because this is the Joshua I know. I don’t know the one who is now perfect and I had no right to ask you to do something that is just impossible to do since none of us know what we will truly be like once we get to Heaven. I just wish that I could truly explain to you how my heart feels right now. I wish Russ was home so that he could hang this up for me so that the two pictures can now be placed together where they belong. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart. I love you with all my heart. Thank you for just doing something for me that no one else could have done for me.”

It made me smile when she mentioned the size and praying it didn’t get bent, because while I was at the shipping company I had the very thought that I needed to protect it even more.  After I’d already packaged it in a bubble mailer I then put it in a larger box to protect it from bending.  It amazes me that God knows us well enough to answer our prayers often before we even ask them!  He’s always listening, it’s often up to us to do the same thing.

Danene was later able to send me pictures of the drawings framed on her wall.  When we had gone to visit her (hoping originally to deliver the drawing in person) she showed us the first drawing I’d done and where the other one would end up.  It’s nice to see that they are finally paired together.

When I was asking Danene for her permission to post this she asked, “Did I ever tell you why I called and asked you to do this picture for us? There is a little story behind it.”

So, again with her permission I share with you the story she related to me.  I hope it can help build your faith in a loving Heavenly Father that knows each of His children by name and uses a heavenly host of angels to minister to us personally.

“I had many wonderful experiences before Joshua died. I felt as though the Lord was truly very much aware of me and I knew without any doubt that He was aware of the pain I was going through. One day I was leaving my craft room to go into the family room where Joshua lay in his hospital bed. I had only taken a few steps and I felt this presence on my left side, it was like someone was walking with me. There was no doubt in my mind that my guardian angel was right there by me. I knew better then to look over to my left side because I knew that if I did that they would leave and even though I didn’t look, that wonderful feeling left me and that disappointed me but if for no other reason, it made me realize that the Lord knew He needed to send me my guardian angel that day.

You see, I was told in a blessing by our stake Patriarch, (Justin’s father-in-law) that while we went through those last several weeks with Joshua, that the Lord would send me guardian angels to help me. I had this feeling one day during this time that we needed to go and make arrangements for Joshua’s death. When I told Russ about this he said that he didn’t think that we needed to do this yet but I told him that I just had this feeling that we needed to do it now. I didn’t want to wait until it got closer to Joshua’s death. I had heard too many stories of people waiting and the problems they had. I learned a long time ago that I don’t do well with procrastinating so I decided to do it now and get that very difficult day out of the way. I made arrangements with two of my friends to come and sit with Joshua so we could go.

As we began to talk to the person at the funeral home, he was talking about headstones. I told him that I already had an idea of what I wanted but I didn’t know if it was possible. I had told him of a picture I had come across of a headstone that was in the Salt Lake City cemetery. I showed him a picture of it. He looked at it and then looked at me and he said that this would be very expensive to do and the guesstimate he gave me made my eyes pop out. Right then I knew that what I wanted would never be realized for Joshua’s headstone. He told me, however, if you give me a picture of Joshua, he could have the man that worked there sandblast it on the headstone for us. Right then, I heard this voice in my head, it was as clear as anyone talking to me directly say, “call Cameron”. I thought to myself, “why would I call Cameron?” Then it dawned on me, Cameron is an artist. I told the man helping us that I had a nephew that was an artist and I would contact him to see if he could draw a picture for us and I would get back to him. I think it was that night after Joshua went to bed and things were quite in the house I sent you my request. I had no idea what that phone call would do for me. You know the rest of the story.”

Danene, thank you for letting me be a part of this journey, and Stacy, I really hope you like the result =)