Category Archives: Disease and dying

Camaraderie over a Cross

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Yesterday while at Walmart, I was on my way to the check-out through the seasonal aisle when something made me stop. Though the shelves were loaded with flags, red-white-and-blue merchandise, ice chests on wheels, and patriotic novelties, at the end stood a woman inspecting something that wasn’t festive at all: a wooden cross decorated with silk flowers.

Memorial Day had just passed, and the crosses had all been marked down for quick sale. But what did they have to do with Memorial Day?

When I was growing up, the name most frequently used for this holiday was Decoration Day. Families made time for a trip to the cemetery before the last Monday of the month, putting flowers, crosses, or flags on their family graves. Picnicking would come on that Monday, but serious thoughts of loved ones who’d already died came ahead of that.

The Walmart cross display let me know there were still people who followed the grave-decorating tradition, and apparently I was standing down the aisle from one of them. A woman studied the crosses, and I studied her, wondering what was going through her head. She picked one up, gently running her hand across the artificial white flowers.

Who had she buried? And how long ago? Was her heart still hurting as she held the cross? More importantly, did she have a relationship with God? Did she know he had gained victory over death?

As rambunctious kids a few feet from us begged their mothers to buy fireworks, I thought about how serious life becomes after death hits a family. When we were children, we didn’t think about death until a grandpa or great auntie died. Then we watched adults struggle with tears and became aware that death was a big deal, something unusual, unpleasant, and severe.

But of course it doesn’t have to be. In my prayer group this morning, one of the ladies asked the Lord to “take” a woman on our list who was in physical pain and a slow decline. If death was only unpleasant and severe, we couldn’t have justified praying like that. But because our friend was sure of her heavenly destination, asking God for her death was a way to bless her life.

As I stood and watched a stranger struggle over what to do with a Walmart cross, I felt a certain camaraderie with her. I, too, often thought of several important family graves. Eventually the woman gently put the cross back in its place on the shelf and then covered her mouth with her hand, an outward sign of inward turmoil.

In the end, she just walked away.

I hoped she knew about the cross, the one on Calvary, where Jesus’ blasted the power of death like a flame explodes a firecracker. Boom! Gone! Calvary’s cross had no decorative flowers, but what happened there is the one and only reason we could sincerely pray for our dying friend, “Lord, please take her.”

“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)

Emergency on Board

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Although I haven’t flown in planes too much, I’ve done enough to be at ease during take-off and landing, and nothing unusual has ever occurred.

Until today, that is.

Flying to Florida to spend time with Linnea and her active family of 5, I settled into an aisle seat bound for Orlando. About an hour before our destination, as beverages were being served, flight attendants began scurrying up and down the aisle with uncharacteristic urgency. Then suddenly the drinks were aborted, and one of them made a plea on the P.A. “Is there a doctor on board? Or a nurse? Maybe an EMT?”

We were in the middle of a medical emergency.

Toward the back of the plane a young woman had been reading when without warning she’d slumped into unconsciousness. Her seatmate, a stranger, alerted flight attendants, and she received quick attention. Staff rushed to the front of the plane and opened the overhead compartment closest to the cockpit, exposing a veritable hospital: an oxygen tank, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, defibrillator, first aid kit, and more.

Grabbing all she could hold, an attendant raced back to the patient as a nurse-passenger cleared out the adjoining seats to make a bed on which the woman could lie down. Passengers became quiet except for one observer who said, “She turned an awful shade of green.”

None of us knows what’s right around the corner. When this woman dressed for her travel day, she had no idea she’d end up sprawled across 3 airline seats strapped into an oxygen mask. When we leave home each day, none of us knows if we’ll return.

Scripture says God watches over our comings and goings. I think that means from home to work to shopping to school to anyplace else. I also think it means coming and going on an eternal scale: we go from earth and come to paradise. We come to death but go through to new life.

It might also mean coming and going in and out of relationships, emotions, circumstances. In all cases, God is watching over us, and not just watching but guiding and guarding, too.

And how about the airline patient? Did he watch her sink into unconsciousness and do nothing about it?

He did watch her, yes, and he sent a nurse, made sure the proper equipment was on board, and had paramedics waiting at the open end of the jet-way when we landed. I watched 5 of them kneel in front of her ministering medically and encouraging emotionally. As the rest of us paraded past, headed for baggage claim, she was hedged in by protective care: a team of paramedics, plus God.

And just before we exited the plane, the flight attendant made one more announcement: “Sorry about the beverages, but thanks for understanding. We hope you fly with us again soon.”

“The Lord himself watches over you! The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.” (Psalm 121:5,8)

 

 

God’s Cooperation

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Although I’ve been back in Michigan for a week now, a piece of my heart stayed behind with my Florida grandchildren. What they said and did will be on my mind for quite a while. For example, one day I was complimenting Skylar on a stick figure she’d drawn when she said, “Both of his legs are broken, Midgee.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“But they’re fixed now,” she said.

“Oh, that’s good,” I said. “So, he went to the hospital?”

“Oh no! Jesus fixed ‘em. Jesus fixes everything.”

It’s wonderful that Skylar credits Jesus with being the Great Fixer of all things, but from an adult perspective we might think, “Does he really fix everything? Not in my experience. My spouse is ill. Or my job was eliminated, my teen is rebelling, my 401K is shrinking, my parents are infirm.”

Since Skylar and I were already into a theological discussion, I asked for her opinion on that dilemma.  “What if the man’s legs stayed broken? What if Jesus decided not to fix them?”

Without even looking up from her crayon work, she shrugged and said, “Well, he would just fix ’em later.”

I’ve thought about that statement since being home and whether or not adults can trust Jesus to come through as readily as Skylar does. But of course there’s one big problem she didn’t address: the lame man’s point of view.

If a lame man’s legs don’t get healed when he expects they will, how is he supposed to cope during that frustrating time between no-not-now and for-sure-later? What if that period spans his whole life and healing doesn’t occur until heaven? How can he handle it?

Although broken legs do eventually mend, we’ve all known people who became ill and stayed that way for many years, despite our intense prayers for healing. Some have even prayed for God to let them die. Why does God often allow people to suffer long-term like that? What benefit could there be? If he’s not going to heal them on this earth, then why not pluck them from their agony sooner rather than later?

Here are 4 possibilities:

  • Soul-work might need to occur. Putting people in hospital beds is an effective way to arrest their attention and get the work done.
  • God might want to teach a person to graciously accept charity, uncomfortable for most of us since it involves a self-humbling process.
  • Maybe he wants to develop an attitude of servanthood in healthy people toward those who are ailing, giving them an opportunity to help for the long haul.
  • And of course those who are sick can teach the rest of us a great deal about how to manage suffering, by their example.

When God answers our prayers for healing with “no” or “maybe later,” just like Skylar we should remain confident he’ll say “yes” eventually, even if, as she says, it’s much later. But while we wait, we can be certain God is delaying for some very compelling reasons.

“Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’” (Mark 9:35)