She had a smile that would light up a room....and she was always smiling. She was kind, tenderhearted, loving and gentle to EVERYONE she knew. She made everyone feel important...special. She was a nurse...the kind of nurse everyone longs for. She was an only child....an only grandchild....and she was adored by her parents and her grandparents. She had more friends than you could count. Everyone loved her.
She could play the piano beautifully...taught by her mother. She had the voice of an angel and when she signed, it was almost as if her hands sang. I've never seen anyone who could do sign language as beautifully as she did! The last time I heard her sing was at our daughter's wedding. She sang the song I shared yesterday, HE'S BEEN FAITHFUL TO ME. I'm so thankful I have it on video.
The last time I saw her was a little over a month ago. She was standing beside her Daddy at her mother's casket. Her mother had fought a terrible battle with cancer and lost. Now all her Daddy had left was her....his baby girl.
Today she is gone. She, too, last lost a battle with cancer and has joined her Mother in Heaven, leaving behind a heart-broken Daddy and grandmother and a host of family and friends who loved her. I know where she is for she loved the Lord. II Corinthians 5:8 tells us that to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. "
For her there will be no more pain, no more sadness, no more heartache, no more fear, no more loneliness, no more struggles with the sin nature, no more worry, no more tears. But...for her family....especially for her Daddy and her grandmother.....there is GREAT grief, pain and heartache today.
How do you bury your wife of almost 40 years...your high school sweetheart....your best friend one month and 2 months later bury your only child? How do you bury your husband, then a few years later watch your only child suffer like no one should have to suffer, then watch her die and in 2 months, bury your only grandchild? How can one heart hold that much sorrow and pain?
There is only ONE way....GOD. Only God can get you through that kind of pain and bring you out on the other side. Only God can help you go on....or even want to go on. And HE is who they are relying on....believing in...and trusting. The KNOW Him. No, they don't just know about Him....they KNOW Him. Just knowing about Him would not get your through this. They know Him personally. How? They have walked with Him throughout their lives and have a relationship with Him. They have seen Him work time and time again. They have experienced His faithfulness and KNOW that He can be trusted.
These circumstances would make a lot of hearts hard, some would turn against the Lord, saying "How could a loving God do such a thing?" A few years ago, I had the privilege of being on an email list of a young wife and mother who was dying with cancer. As she would send updates she would ask for prayer requests and explain what she was going through, but she would always turn it back to God before the end of the post. Her condition worsened and with each bad report, she would STILL be trusting in the Lord. After one particularly bad report, this is part of what she wrote:
"Finally, I'm praying that those who are in my life who do not know Jesus
Christ as their Saviour, would not be discouraged by this news, but rather,
would come to trust Him as I do.
I know many of you are amazed at that statement. But the fact is,
regardless of the outcome, I trust my God to do what is absolutely best all
around. Whether or not He is capable of healing me is not at all in
question! Of course He can.....so I'm asking that if it be in His will for
me to have many more years on this earth, that He would grant it to me.
If He chooses to take me off this earth, well, I'll be in paradise, so don't
you worry about me. Then my prayer will be that my family will be comforted
and that those of you who are so, so, special to me (as you all are), will
come to trust God as I do.
It occurs to me that some of you may think that God is this big meanie who
won't heal me. That's not it at all. God is a wonderful, loving God who
created us for fellowship with Him. Our time spent on this earth is merely
a speck in the larger scale of time that is eternity. Those who have
trusted Him as their Saviour will spend eternity in fellowship with Him and
with the other believers. When God chooses not to heal one of His children,
it is because He sees the entire Big Picture. We just cannot know
everything that is going on in God's Kingdom to know why some people are
healed and others are not. But rest assured that I know that whatever God
chooses, it will be the best possible outcome, on the grander scale of
things."
Two months later, Wendy was with the Lord. How could she write that? Because she KNEW the Lord, she trusted Him. She trusted Him in life and was not disappointed. She trusted Him in death and I KNOW that when she saw Him as she walked through Heaven's gates, she was not disappointed!
God will get this grieving family through this painful, heartbreaking ordeal. They will see His hand of mercy, they will hear His voice of cheer, and just the time they need Him, He'll be there. Like Job, their testimony will be "though He slay me, yet will I trust Him". One day they will see their loved ones again. Until then God will sustain them. He is the only one who can.
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