Healing, Suffering & Thorns

As often happens, a very random thought struck me while I was in the middle of listening to an audio-book. I'm currently listening to "The Visitation" by Frank Peretti. (By the way, while this is not not my favorite by Peretti, still a good book.)

In the story, a stranger appears in a small town and begins to convince the residents that he is Jesus. One of the ways he wins over "even the elect" is by healing people.

As I listened to the story unfold, I kept thinking of all the reasons the town people should recognize a false Christ. I thought about how, even if such a man had come around before my sister died and could have healed her, I would not have wanted that. Neither would she, by the way.

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I know that people are always eager to be miraculously healed. It's why so many people travel to various places with "healing" waters and weeping statues, etcetera. What I don't understand about this is why we think that we should be healed. 

Of course, like just about everyone struggling with a disease, I take every advantage of modern medicine. I use to pray all the time for this disease to be taken from my body. I used to wish it had never even touched my life. But I also know that dying is a part of life. Sickness is a part of life. The minute Adam and Eve sinned, they were touched with the gradual death of the physical body.

Every one of us is born to die - even people who never suffer a cancer or any other kind of illness - unless we are still alive when Jesus calls us home in the Rapture. Methuselah lived hundreds of years, but he did eventually die. I have a grandfather who lived to be over 100 years old, but he did die.

I no longer even pray for my sickness to be taken away from me. I often try to give thanks that it hasn't killed me yet. I am even thankful that I got the disease. The reason is, this disease and everything in my life that has resulted from it brought me to my knees. I needed to be brought to just where I am today because, otherwise, I might never have learned to lean entirely on God.

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Everything I once was caused me to focus away from God. I was too young, cute, healthy and financially independent to ever think that I would be otherwise. At the time, I thought I'd never had to think about my health going bad or where my next paycheck or meal was coming from. Like most young people, I couldn't imagine not being young.

Life is for learning and growing. Health is a daily and sometimes very temporary blessing. For anyone who allows themselves to love others, suffering and grieving will eventually come. 

So, I don't want to ask God to relieve me of all suffering. I think of any of the things I have gone through as things to keep me from becoming conceited. Paul said it in a passage of the Bible:

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So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. (2 Corinthians 12:7 ESV)

Ten years ago - even 5 years ago - I would not have truly understood that message. Every time I get too confident in my own abilities, I am tempted to forget all that God does for me. What I am still learning every day is to "count it all joy" - every struggle is a reminder of what I won't have to deal with one day. 

Peace

--Free

Joy in Place of Grief

I'm dealing with my grief much better this week. I believe that's because of two things:

1. I went to church Sunday
2. I realized how selfish my grief is

The sermon Sunday wasn't directly related to grief, but it did affect my thoughts about death. The current sermon series is on the Bible book of Daniel. Daniel is a book of prophecy. All Bible prophecy is about the promise we Christians hold for our salvation. 

While the pastor talked on various verses, I kept reflecting on the fact that we are living in the "end times", and that no matter how long those times might last, every person - saved or not - lives their own end times because of our mortality.

My sister believed on the blood of Jesus Christ. The last hours she was alive, she called out His name and prayed, even though she was in so much discomfort. I believe now that she was praying and yearning for rest. I believe her rest was granted.

Yesterday, while I was going through some of her things, I prayed to God to help ease my sense of loss. I'm not breaking down at every memory of my sister like I was earlier on. I still have moments of pain at the "gone-ness" of her, but I feel more relief and joy as every hour passes. I think of what we all have been promised as Christians. I think of the Henry Van Dyke poem that my dear friend +Sandy Sandmeyer shared with me: 

Gone From My Sight (by Henry Van Dyke)

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,

spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts

for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck

of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,

hull and spar as she was when she left my side.

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"

there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices

ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

So now, when I think of my sister (and my mother and father and my brother), I think of their gain more than I think of my loss. While I realize, as my little brother just told me in a recent phone call, that our grief is normal, I know that it can also be selfish.

My sister would be heartbroken to think of any of us wallowing in our misery at her death. She would want us to think of her with love and laughter, not regret and pain. She would want us to go on. Mostly, she would want us to know that her death was not an end for her but a beginning.

I still miss her, but I am better now. Now when I think of her, I try to imagine the joy of those who were calling out to her as she arrived on the other shore. 

We have been promised that there is no weeping in Heaven and, if I believe in that promise, I must put away my time of weeping here on earth for those who are now Home. I'll save my sorrow for those who don't yet believe in life everlasting.

If you are in pain from the loss of a loved one, here are some of God's promises that may help comfort you as they did me:

In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14:2)

And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1)

My favorite right now is Luke 23:43 because it reminds me that my sister went immediately into Paradise. Immediately. And it reminds me that my brother who, like the thief beside Jesus on the cross, was accepted into Heaven even though he found Jesus very shortly before death. Praise God.

Peace

--Free

Alone to Die?

A cousin of mine passed away on Thursday. We only stayed in touch sporadically - often through other family members - so the news about her death reached me this morning.

"Yogi's" nickname became the only one that most people knew her by. Somehow, it suited her. Picture a smiling (and always slightly mischievous) young woman who radiated an attitude of "Let's just have fun!"

When we were kids, Yogi and her two sisters were my closest buddies for the two years I lived in Big Spring. I was born there in my mother's hometown on the military base where my father was stationed. My cousins were born there, raised there and damn near defined the meaning of living there.

Those months between my twelfth and fourteenth years really were my formative ones. For Yogi and her sisters, it was just the life they were born to live.

We girls played "church", mimicking what we saw in services we attended at least three times a week. We danced to Jackson Five music and had serious arguments over which of us would end up marrying Marlon instead of Michael - though my cousin Candy preferred Jermaine. One time, my other cousin, Rene, and I performed a dance routine for the other girls. The song we used was "Island Girls" with Elton John and Kiki Dee. (Why did I just remember that? And why did it make me cry so hard?)

A couple of things happened during my time in Big Spring that haunted our lives - my cousins and mine - for so many years. First, I fell in puppy-love with a certain young man. Second, my Uncle "Hotshot" died.

Love and death have things in common.

My uncle's death brought some of us closer together. It gave some of us reasons to build chasms of pain and anger between each other. One of the girls did not attend her father's funeral. She didn't want that to be her last and lasting memory of him. One of the girls followed in the steps of the alcoholism that killed my uncle. One of them started marking time for the day she could leave the town and never come back.

Years later, I married that boy I had loved so much as a child. He broke my grown-up heart and I let it shatter me in a lot of ways. While I was with him, I briefly returned to Big Spring. Maybe I was trying too hard to go back in time.

Big Spring had changed but it hadn't. It seemed so much smaller to me.

Yogi was there, but battling demons of her past just like I was trying to recreate mine. Rene had made it out and Candy had just wandered away. As far as I know, Candy never did attend another funeral. Some of the chasms built in the past had widened from either intent or neglect.

A few years ago, I gave up trying to summon the ghosts of my youth.

My aunt died last year. Yogi, having grown stronger and wiser and more peaceful with her life, handled everything beautifully and on her own. She was doing well.

When my sister called me with the news that Yogi was gone (I hate using the word "dead" because dead means nothing ever anymore), I felt so strange. It was as though something from this side of life shed from my being and shifted to another side.

Yogi died (as another cousin of mine had) during an asthma attack. Someone had come to visit her and found her on the floor.

The first thing I said to my sister is that I hated so much that Yogi had died alone. Think about that, though. Death is a lonely thing. Even if we die in a room of other people dying at the same time, we leave this life on our own. No matter who we are, what we are or do or own, dying is going to be a solo experience.

As a Christian, I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I believe there is a Heaven, Hell and an Eternity. I want to believe something I was taught as a child: that, as we are dying, angels will come to us.

What was Yogi thinking as she was dying? Was she afraid? I hope not. I hope God sent someone to take her hand and let her know that she was was going to be okay.

R.I. P. Yogi