Grief
"For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but to all those who love his appearing."
--II Timothy 4:6-8
I'm sitting at home this Sunday morning, trying to collect my thoughts. Skipping church is not something I make a habit of doing, because I love my people and I love God's command to assemble. But for two and a half days I've been entertaining visitors and well-wishers, and I need time to think and grieve. It's the first chance I've had to be alone since Marie's passing.
She had cancer, but was beating it--just a few months away from an anticipated full recovery. But the future is never certain. Tuesday she developed difficulty breathing and began to run a fever. Fearing infection, we took her to the emergency room, where they found fluid on her right lung. It wasn't serious, but it was a situation they had to address. The hospital admitted her and scheduled a shunt Thursday morning. The procedure, they said, was nearly as straightforward as doing an IV, a rote process. Yet when the technicians sat her up she went into cardiac arrest. A blood clot in her pulmonary artery caused her to flat-line three times. In the end they had to let her go.
Over the next couple days, as we fitted the pieces together, we discovered what she understood already. She knew her body's signals, and knew she would not survive the hospital visit. She wanted us to remember her in life rather than in dying, though, and committed each of us to other arrangements so we wouldn't be there when her life ended.
This is what we know from gathering the pieces. Marie's mother was with her Wednesday morning when a chaplain visited her room. He asked her if she knew the Lord, and she gave an articulate and ready testimony regarding her faith. The chaplain turned to Marie's mother and said, "I guess we don't have to worry about this one."
I visited her that evening after work, and she was radiant. Her words to me--which I didn't yet understand would be her last--were full of the grace that typified her life. I'll never forget the confidence in her smile.
It was Friday when a friend related to us what Marie told her in confidence earlier in the week, the puzzle piece that let us know Marie was aware of her destiny with eternity. In words that were cryptic at the time, Marie mentioned a commitment both had made a covenant to keep, and told Vaughn to remember it for her. Vaughn didn't understand what she meant until after Marie died.
Marie displayed more than bravado. She radiated joy. What gives a person the ability to face death with such confidence?
Obviously it's faith, but what kind of faith? Is it the foamy, puffed-up meringue pie topping--all bubbles and no substance? Those who see this kind of faith as the norm fail to understand the difference between our own subjective feelings and objective truth, what the Bible calls "the faith." Without the latter, the former is worthless. My subjective faith, as important as it is, works only in the present tense. It's what I have at any particular moment, and it's as mercurial as the desert day and night.
The faith, the one that Paul displayed in the valedictory address above, when he wrote these last words to Timothy, encompasses the past, present and future. It is faith in three tenses, objectively true for all time. Paul wrote concerning his present situation at the very beginning. "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand." Yet he didn't pen these words in despair. They were confident, because they encompassed the past and future as well as the present.
Concerning the past Paul said, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."
His future was just as certain. "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but to all those who love his appearing."
He could assert these things with such conviction because he understood the relationship between the two kinds of faith. His own subjective faith lay on the firm foundation of God's promises, and not the other way around. He knew his Lord was faithful above all else. He honestly could say concerning himself, "Wretched man that I am!" (Romans 7:24), but trust his destiny to the God who was eternally faithful when his life was about to come to its end.
Marie expressed similar misgivings at times. She often told me she thought others' outward expressions of faith were much more sincere than her own. Hers, she felt, were superficial and lifeless. But those were her lean times, when she pressed forward despite her feelings. They were the times when the Lord stretched her limits and prepared her for her final task.
In the end His work was good. A note in one of the sympathy cards told of a fellow believer who attended her during the last frantic moments when the medical staff tried to revive her. This person risked a breach of confidence to give us word that would cause our grieving hearts to soar.
She was smiling when her Lord took her Home.
Copyright (c) 2003
Doug Knox
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