Loving Deeply and Holding Loosely: For When You Need Peace & Hope in Death

She had called me on a brutally cold Thursday night in February 2006. My little sister, “Kathy, Peter died. He was in an accident.”


I shook my head as if to erase what I’d heard, “NOOOO!!!”


Immediately the recollection of a call I’d received three years prior. Two of my nieces had been in a collision, memories flashed through my mind. They’d been taken to ICU. I had called my only nearby sister and she drove us the hour long trip to the hospital where we learned that just after celebrating her 20th birthday, Nicole had been pronounced brain-dead. And a strangling rope of grief choked our family.


Then the call on that cold night. Peter, he’d been picking corn and the corn picker was plugged. Like so many who’ve made the mistake before and lost hands, he’d left the power-take-off running on the picker. The power that moved the rollers which removed the husks from the corn still going around. Its rubber stubs like fat fingers. The roller had grabbed his Carhart coat sleeve and choked him. He had just celebrated his 27th birthday, and was the eighth-born in our family of twelve.


I’d gone myself that night. Upon entering the house, I see Dad sitting there in the living room, heavy with the cloud of grief. His face in his hands, elbows resting on his knees. The tears, the pain, sorrow.


And then I heard him say it, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” And I finished the verse, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” It had seemed appropriate and inappropriate at the same time. I knew saying it was good, right and true. Just the timing. It stung as it must’ve stung Job who had lost all of his children at the same time. {Job 1:21}


And this June, the call from little sister came. And the tone, I listened for it – relieved it was not with finality, but hope.
“Kathy, Mom and Dad have been in an accident. Dad was trapped in the truck, and his leg is gashed, he is now being air lifted. Mom is okay.”


We had celebrated his 79th birthday a few months earlier. I didn’t think he was going to die.


God had already kept him alive through a 90% blocked artery a few years back, and then a blood infection last fall. Surely this is not his time. So I get dressed and make the hour long trip. I wonder on the way how ever he will recover from such a large injury when his type 2 diabetes has prevented a wound on the front of his lower leg from healing for over three years.


I considered the possibilities of a long hospital stay. The challenges ahead.

As I arrived, I still did not expect it. Even clues on the nurses faces didn’t cause me to doubt he was going to make it. Not until I was ushered back and saw eyes swollen red on the tear-stained faces of my sister and niece, did I realize that we had lost him.


We are all seeking to manage our shock and sorrow from our loss.


A Father is an anchor of hearts; the hub in a home.


And his words that night in 2006, they come again, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” and I bless His name once again, for I know it.


I cry.


Two months have passed.


Mom texts me at midnight. “Are you awake?”
“Yes mama, what do you need?”
“I need
prayer.”


Leaving my spot next to my snoring husband, I’m headed down the stairs and the phone rings.


We spent an hour and a half talking and praying on the phone in the middle of the night. And we are once again comforted and reassured. Reminded of her Heavenly Bridegroom and how He will never leave her. How He has always provided and He has all she needs.


She rests between His shoulders then. {Deuteronomy 33:12}



Mom, her hands had been serving him daily-putting his socks on for him, and at his direction, readying the boat for fishing; her hands now void. There is a cavern-a gaping hole she must learn to move about without his strength in decisions, without his greeting, without hurrying home to her man if he was waiting.


And we’re all left here in this temporary ‘dry and weary land’. How do we go on? How do we manage?

We embrace the higher, broader perspective. We remember we have a future home purchased for us by Jesus. That He came down to break away the former barrier between Him and us. Hanging there, He took on our guilt, and now we have the promise: we will be ushered up.


Jesus came down to bring us up. We who trust Him will be raised because He was.


Up. From. The. Grave. YES!


We don’t grieve like those that have no hope. {1 Thessalonians 4:13-14}


With our eyes set on Eternity, we can love deeply here because we have eternity “There”! We can hold loosely here because we can cling tightly to Him there! Even our dearest beloved family members we can hold loosely. Because.


With Jesus holding us, we can trust the Hand that has reached down to also take us up.

CLICK TO TWEET


And we know the word that sustains the weary: Hope.
Assured hope, not hope that has a question mark, but hope with a period. As He said, “It is finished” His mission. To conquer the grave was complete through the cross.


{
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18}


Joining Jennifer Dukes Lee for Tell His Story today.

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