Death in the Family

When it comes to the subject of suicide, I don't think christians should be supporting laws that restrict other's right to die. Graveyards will be filled whether we do or no. ( As my son told me yesterday, the big "secret" of life is that we're all going to die.) I think, instead, that we should be telling people about Christ so that they will have something to look forward to when they inevitably do die. In the meantime, Christ will not fail to have compassion on the suffering of His people.

In the space of three years, I have had four family members pass away. When I say family, I mean the next of kin of the man I was married to before, and the man I am with now.

The gentle person who lights up my life right now, has lost his father, brother, and then his mother in a short period of time. The crazy thing is, that each time that each one of them was so sick, and out of compassion we prayed for them, the next thing that happened was that they left us and passed on.

First it was the father, stricken with cancer of the throat. After devastating and debilitating surgery, the doctor found it had come back again and the prognosis was terminal. The father asked the doctor if there was any way that things could be hurried along to get it over with. When I was told (I did not really know him, because at the time I had only met him once, after he was very ill) I began to fast and pray that the Lord would honor his request. I found out later that he passed away the same day of my prayer.

A few months later, the brother became ill. We spent a lot of time with him in the hospital, feeding him, reading the bible to him, and praying for him. He continued to deteriorate. We found out, from the doctor, that he would not recover. Anguish over seeing such a kind person brought to this state led me to lay hands on him and plead with the Lord to heal him. Three days later, on Sunday morning, we got the phone call that he had passed on.

The mother starting becoming ill about a year and a half later. Her son was angry with her for not fighting or trying to recover. I told him to let God do what was best for her, and that is what we prayed for. Three or four nights later, when I arrived home from school, they told me she had gone to be with the Lord.

The story of these three contrasts strangely with the father of my exhusband. Papa was a beautiful, gentle minister of the Word. He was sick for three years and his family was agonized to see him suffering. He was bedridden for months after having his legs amputated. Many (myself included) were praying that the Lord would take him and spare him further distress, but He did not.

Papa did not want to leave. He wanted to see his family healed before he had to make his final report to his Lord. Nothing happened the way that he thought it should have. Now that he is with his precious savior, he knows that that blessed healing has taken a different form from what he expected, and actually was experienced directly as a result of the trauma that he felt so guilty about.