Category Archives: Saying Goodbye

Mary’s Thoughts on Fear

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The last couple of days we’ve been listening to a patient’s view of living with deadly cancer. Tonight Mary shares what works for her in fending off fear:

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Whenever fear creeps into my thoughts, I know it hasn’t come from God. The Bible flat-out says, “God has not given us the spirit of fear.” (2 Timothy 1:7) So if it doesn’t come from him, it’s coming from my enemy, Satan. Because of that, I need to quickly reject it, making sure fear doesn’t take hold of me. The honest truth, though, is that I’ve had to struggle hard against it.

One fear that’s assaulted me multiple times this year centers around my grandchildren. When they first heard I had cancer, they began praying God would heal me. So my concern is that after I die, these trusting children might be angry with God for not answering their prayers, and turn against him.

With ten grandsRight now they’re praying in the no-holds-barred way children do, which is why I worry. After I’m gone, I envision them asking, “If God loves me, why did he let my grandma die?” I want them all to love him no matter what happens with me, but that isn’t always easy for a child. Though I know I can’t control their lives, I have to fight fear over this issue.

I have to repeatedly remember that their relationships with the Lord are in his capable hands. My continual prayer is for their faith to hold and even somehow grow as a result of my death. I’m thankful for God’s reminder that he’s caring for them now and will care for them then, especially where faith issues are concerned.

One day a while back, our daughter Julia gave me a plaque that sits on my kitchen counter. It simply says, “Trust in the Lord.” God has used that short message to bring me back to reality many times by dispelling fear. Of course I don’t want to leave my grandchildren any time soon, but that decision isn’t up to me.

Trust in the Lord

The most effective antidote to fear is Scripture. It has the power to settle me and show me what’s true and what isn’t. God’s Word is an anchor that holds when storms come, because it has a power no other book has. It’s alive and active. It acts toward me in a way nothing else can, pointing me to the Lord and reminding me I’m not alone in my anxiety. He’s there battling the enemy alongside me, and his Word is a weapon against fear that never fails.

I don’t know how I could manage without the Lord accompanying me through this cancer. There isn’t a day that I don’t sense his closeness, and I’ll never stop thanking him for it. He has promised to be my ever-ready help whenever I need him and guarantees that my future is secure with him in heaven.

[ Tomorrow Mary will talk about you, blog readers. ]

“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.” (Psalm 37:5)

Letting Go

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Most parents face a bit of angst when it comes time to let a child go. The first really big “go” is off to college, a tough goodbye for most of us. But it helps to recognize we’ve been letting go in small ways during the 18 years leading up to that, each one a bit of training for the bigger go-moments.

The first is letting go of our babe-in-arms, encouraging him/her to grow into a toddler who prefers to walk. Little by little they go – to the church nursery, preschool, kindergarten, summer camp, and we find ourselves on the outside looking in. As time passes, they go farther and farther from us, the natural order of things. But they aren’t the only ones we have to let go of.

We also say goodbye to parents, mentors, friends, pastors and others. Each positive relationship that ends includes a negative go-moment. But the old expression, “When God closes a door, he opens a window,” is true. Again and again he shows us that letting go of one thing brings us to something new.

Two Ton BakerWhen I was a grade-schooler in the 1950’s, I loved a 350-pound TV personality who called himself Two-Ton Baker. We became friends through a tiny, round screen, because Two-Ton loved kids. Occasionally he’d have one on his show, and the child was always invited to grab a handful of candy from a giant glass jar. But a clenched fist of goodies could never fit back through the small opening, requiring him/her to let some of the candy go to pull out of the jar.

The same thing happens when we hold onto someone or something after it’s time to let go. Our loss seems greater the tighter we cling. By hanging on, we lose the chance for a positive send-off, which is like losing all the candy, not just a bit of it.

There are some go-moments, though, that just never go well: when they’re next to a casket. The slam of that closed door really hurts. A window may be opening, but we can’t see it through our tears.

Lonely JesusGod knows how difficult it is to let go. He let go of Jesus for 33 years after they’d been joined in a closeness we can’t comprehend. And Jesus let go of his Father while simultaneously imposing human limitations on himself. He also let go of royalty and riches to live in poverty. The reason? Love for us.

Letting go is always emotionally draining. For a Christian who lets go of a loved one through death, however, the emotional pain will one day abruptly end.  The separation is only temporary, just as it was for God the Father and God the Son.

They endured. We can endure.

Because some day all our go-moments will be gathered into one eternal coming-together.

“God blesses you who weep now, for in due time you will laugh.” (Luke 6:21)

Praising and Praying with Mary

  1. Thanks for prayers about tomorrow’s chemo infusion, for a good vein and no nausea.
  2. Praise God this will be #16 of 18 infusions!

When Healing Comes

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After the death of a husband, how long does it take to heal? When is grieving finished?

Getting Through ThisFourteen months after Nate died, as I looked back over that year’s blog posts, I was surprised to realize not every one of them had been about him. At first I was appalled but later realized it was a sign of a broken heart being mended.

C. S. Lewis published a small book of journal entries penned during deep sorrow over losing his wife to cancer. A Grief Observed was so personal, he wouldn’t allow his name on the cover but instead ghost-published as N. W. Clerk. After Lewis died several years later, his stepson republished it revealing his true identity.

A Grief ObservedLewis went through raw grief, doubting God’s love and availability to him, wondering whether there was an afterlife at all. But by the end of the book, his relationship with the Lord had been restored, and his grief was beginning to heal. He wrote:

“There was no sudden, striking emotion. Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight when you first notice them, they have already been going on for a long time.”

That year after Nate died I was encouraged to realize my healing had already been going on for a long time. It wasn’t that I was “finished,” but just as Lewis learned, raw emotion  slowly mellows. Instead of labeling Nate as “missing”, as having left a big, empty hole in our family, I began to think of him as our larger-than-life husband and father, the lively, loyal head of our family who was full of personality and loved each of us wholeheartedly.

As one of our kids said somewhere during that first year, “Papa was a legend.” He wasn’t the kind of legend that made the cover of TIME, but a Nyman-legend to be sure. Grief has a way of wrapping what’s good with a negative shroud, but as time passes and we heal, the layers peel away, and the positives come shining through.

God has helped me see more and more of these positives as the years have passed, and I credit him with every bit of my healing. He’s been my constant companion, my shield from despair and, as the biblical David put it, “the lifter of my head.”

Nyman familyHad we known Nate would die at 64, leaving us after only 42 days of warning, we’d have still chosen him for our husband and father. He will always be our main man, the one we wanted then, the one we still love now, and the one for whom we thank God.

“You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and he answered me.” (Psalm 3:3-4)