Last night was one of those nights that I was zapped. After spending the past three days keeping up with 10-year-olds at six Orlando theme parks, I was really looking forward to a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.
Unfortunately, a brother-in-law I love dearly is in the dying process. So I found myself taking a shift at his bedside while my ex helped coach our son’s baseball game. After seven years of battling cancer, Mike is at the end of his days here on earth. The doctors called us in Easter morning to say our final goodbyes, but somehow, he has managed to cling to this world with the same tenacity he has been so well known in life for.
Mike hasn’t been conscious for over a week now, and the process has been wearing on all concerned who just want to be sure that he isn’t suffering. So there I was last night, settling in for some quiet television and monitoring his breathing—my only task to hit the button to deliver more pain meds if he seemed uncomfortable.
After a few hours on my own, Mike’s friend Jeff came in from Georgia for a visit. I’ve never met Jeff before but had heard much about him from Mike’s wife, because Jeff was the one who led Mike to Christ one day at work a few years ago. Before we talked, I didn’t know exactly how all of this had come about, but I knew that it had because of Mike’s complete transformation. He went from surly and belligerent to genuinely sweet overnight. The kind underside of his personality surfaced as old fears, hurts, and regrets disappeared under the saving blood of the cross. It was something to behold.
As we sat there in the quiet of that hospital room last night, Jeff began to tell me stories of his time with Mike. Again, to truly appreciate the unexpected blessing of this conversation, you’ve got to know a bit of the background.
Mike was the third of eight children. He spent nearly two years in the Army fighting in Vietnam. It was a war that he never talked about but it has stayed with him throughout his life. My earliest family memory of him was of his diving under a car during a family reunion—a good 20 years after his Army service—after a low-flying military plane sparked a flashback of the conflict.
There were also tales of his marijuana deals in the heyday and confusion of the 70s and his exploits on various motorcycles that he owned over the years. By the time I knew him, he tended to stay pretty quiet and keep mainly to himself. He was an avid fisherman and seemed to be most happy and peaceful out on the water with a whiskey and 7Up listening to Jimmy Buffett, longish blond hair and bushy mustache blowing back in the wind. He wasn’t one to tolerate much foolishness out of anyone, but he’d give you the Hawaiian shirt off of his back if he thought that you needed it or particularly liked it.
We never really talked about God, because my ex’s family held to the notion that you didn’t talk sex, religion, or politics, but I had the distinct impression that Mike wasn’t very interested in anything to do with the Lord. I’m sorry to say that for the first 18 or so years of our relationship, the only times I ever discussed Christ with him were when he asked about the mission trips I was taking to Russia.
Mike was originally diagnosed with cancer in 2002. By the time the cancer returned after a couple of years in remission, I knew he had become a Christian, and I sent him a book and a CD of healing scriptures developed by John Hagee Ministries. That opened the door for us to talk about the Lord, and one of my most precious “Mike” memories was of the Lord pressing me to take communion to him while he was in the hospital last summer with a blockage that was causing him tremendous stomach pain. I went, fearing that I was intruding, and ended up serving several family members and praying and celebrating life and God’s goodness with them.
Last night as I sat with Jeff, I learned so many things about Mike’s faith that I had not known. Not only did Mike become a Christian a few years ago, he and Jeff began a daily morning prayer time at work. When co-workers had any concerns, they would come to Mike and Jeff for prayer, and they would stop what they were doing and pray with them.
As I sat on the opposite side of the bed, I listened to Jeff tell Mike about several prayers they’d had answered just in the past couple of weeks. It was so sweet to see Jeff’s love for Mike and to listen to Jeff recount Mike’s love for Jesus. Once again, it reminded me that God really doesn’t care what any of us thinks of someone else’s desire for him or chances for salvation. He is always at work. He honored the prayers of Mike’s Christian wife and family members who’d been praying for his salvation. He spent years wooing him and sustaining him after the damage done in the war, and out of the wreckage of Mike’s woundedness, he created a beautiful heart for Jesus and compassion to see others set free.
As Mike’s earthly life comes to an end, I’m comforted in knowing that this is but a blink of an eye to the eternity God has prepared for him. I’m so thankful that after years of struggle, Mike finally grasped God’s love for him and accepted his gift of salvation.
He understood that heaven is a free gift.(1) None of us can earn it or deserve it.(2) We’re all sinners and can’t save ourselves.(3) God is love and he is merciful,(4) and he doesn’t want to punish us, but he’s just and must punish sin.(5) However, because he loves us so much, he solved our problem through his son Jesus Christ who was fully human and fully God.(6) Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins, restore our broken relationship with God, and assure us of eternal life with him in heaven.(7) How? Through faith in Jesus alone and what he’s already done for us.(8)
It’s as easy as taking a minute to talk (pray) to God and say, “I know I’ve sinned. I’ve done things I shouldn’t and not done things that I should. But I know that you love me and that Jesus already paid for those sins when he died on the cross and defeated death. I ask Jesus to save me and be my Lord.” As soon as you’ve said that prayer—or something like it—you’ve started on that journey. In fact, John 6:47 tells us, “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life” (Jesus speaking, NIV).
Now to really grow in all that the Lord has for you, you’ve got to spend time with him. Sounds hard, but it’s not. Pray (talk to him) in your own words. Learn about him through reading and studying the bible—it will really help to get a more modern translation like the NIV that’s easier to understand than something like the King James version. Find other people to study about God and spend time with. Find a group such as a church or bible study that you can be a part of so that you can learn more and have others around you to support your growth.
God is so good. If you have a family member or friend you’ve been praying for, don’t stop. It’s never too late for the Lord. I had the privilege of watching my 87-year-old mother-in-law receive Christ just a few months ago. We don’t know or understand God’s timing. We don’t have to. His ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9).
We just need to keep bringing those petitions to him, and He will bless us in the most unusual ways and places. Sometimes he even blesses us in a hospice room. Only he can bring such life and joy in the midst of death. After all, once we have trusted him for salvation, this life is just a shadow of the blessings to come.
------------------------------------------
Footnotes of scripture references:
1) Romans 6:23
2) Ephesians 2:8–9
3) Romans 3:23
4) 1 John 4:8b
5) Exodus 34:7b
6) John 1:1, 14
7) Isaiah 53:6
8) Acts 16:31
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Crazy Comes Callin’
There comes a tipping point in every failed relationship when you know that it’s all over but the final judgment. You may have wondered before that, weighed your options, and considered what you should do, but when the tipping point happens, there’s no going back.
For me, that point came six months into our scariest round of marital discord; two months after Rob walked out of our last joint marriage counseling session and refused to come back; two days after he broke into the house and I thought one or both of us were going to end up dead.
I should have seen it coming, because as usual, it started with a vicious verbal assault filled with false accusations, cruel name-calling, and threats. He stormed out of the house around midnight that night yelling as he went that he would be spending the night with his brother who lived a couple of hours away.
Something in me knew that he would be back. I double-checked all door and window locks. I then took the house phone and my cell phone into my sleeping son’s bedroom (he was 4 at the time), locked the door, and pulled the dresser in front of it so that Rob could not get in.
Around 3 that morning, Rob came home really drunk. As he checked all of the doors and realized he was locked out, he started screaming for me to let him in. I ignored him and began to pray for our safety. I spoke every Bible verse about protection that came to mind, but I did not call the police.
I could hear Rob at our back bedroom windows beating on the windows and hurling curses at me. I did not answer but continued to pray. Within 15 minutes, he had broken in through the sliding glass door and was raging down the hall to our bedroom. When he realized I was not there, he turned and tried to open our son’s bedroom door, which was directly across the hall.
As soon as Rob realized that the door was locked, he grew quiet, and in a calm voice, he said, “Oh, so this is how you want it, Kim? Fine. Here’s Johnny.” (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Stephen King’s The Shining, this is the line the psychotic father says as he uses an axe to try to come through the door his wife and son are barricaded behind.)
For the first time since he’d come home, I spoke softly. “Go to bed, Rob. Your son is sleeping in here.”
He said nothing else, but turned and stormed down the hall. For a while, I listened to things crashing and banging, and then the house was silent. I still did not call the police. There is no explanation for it, and today I still don’t understand why I felt powerless to do anything to help myself, even though I had access to both phones.
My son and I spent the rest of the night locked in his bedroom, him sleeping, and me praying to make it to daylight. As soon as dawn broke, I called my aunt and asked her if she would send my uncle to get us out of the house. I was afraid to open the door without someone else there, because I thought Rob might be lying in wait for us or may have finally carried through on his threat to kill himself.
My aunt was there within 15 minutes—all 5’3’’ of her—and after ringing the doorbell for several minutes, I finally heard Rob shuffling off to let her in. He and I ended up driving in separate cars to a local eatery so that we could “talk” about what had happened while my aunt stayed with my son. Throughout this conversation, Rob continually denied that he had any real intention of hurting either one of us. He claimed not to understand why I was so afraid.
I would like to tell you that this was the tipping point. It wasn’t. While it precipitated the finale, that actually came two days later in a teary call with one of my work colleagues when I finally had the courage to admit what had happened to someone outside of my family. Dan listened quietly to the whole weepy story without judgment. When I’d finished recounting it, he said very gently, “Kim, why didn’t you call the police?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I didn’t want my son to see his father taken off in handcuffs.”
Quietly he responded, “Would it have been better for him to watch him mom being carried out in a body bag?”
Even now, the memory of that question takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. That was the moment. The tipping point. In that instant I realized that I didn’t know how to leave, but I knew that I had to. I had been willing to endure all sorts of terror in the name of trying to hold my marriage together, but I was not willing to saddle our son with that kind of memory for the rest of his life.
So I’m now going to do someone out there the same difficult favor that Dan did for me. Very gently, I’m going to tell you that I know that it’s hard to leave. Sometimes it even seems impossible. I understand that you love him. I know that when you took those vows, you really meant for better or worse. But I need to ask you: “Would it be better for your child or loved one to watch you being carried out in a body bag?” I know that’s a tough question, but you are worth asking it of.
Now, take a deep breath and let’s all have a bit of God-style, I’ve-got-your-back, comic relief. I had forgotten all about the following incident until it came up in a small group discussion a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what happened to Rob that very week.
At the time, he managed a store in a pretty sketchy area of town, though he’d never had any problems there. Imagine my surprise, when he came home visibly shaken one day. According to him, he’d been minding his own business in the store when a man came in looking for water. Not long after the man was in the shop, he stared ranting and cursing Rob and acting as though he were going to attack him. Rob ended up fleeing the shop completely unharmed, but as he recited the tale to me, he said that at the time it happened, he really thought the man was going to kill him.
So here was the God part in all of that. As Rob was telling me the story, I knew he’d been visited with a little divine payback. After all, this was on the heals of his making me think he was going to kill me. Nothing like this had ever happened before in his store (or happened after that time). While he remained physically safe in the incident, he was mentally and emotionally shaken.
Don’t get me wrong. God is light and there is no darkness in him. He does not promote evil. He did not force this stranger to behave this way. At the same time, he did not stand in the way of it happening.
“He is the God who pays back those who harm me; he subdues the nations under me.” Psalm 18:47 (New Living Translation, emphasis mine). I don’t know it for a fact, but I think this was a case where God allowed Rob to get a taste of his own medicine (so to speak), while his life was never really in danger.
All I can tell you was that as he recited the tale—clueless of any connection—I thought of how faithful God is. He protected us both, but he also allowed Rob to see for himself exactly what true terror felt like. In that moment, God confirmed his love for me, his protection of me, and his control of the situation. At a time when most of my family seemed unable to comprehend my need to leave the marriage, he sent me a gentle colleague to speak truth that sparked the courage to change. And then he topped it off by allowing Rob a life lesson sure to bring the understanding he was lacking.
If you are reading this and know that you have been living in a dangerous situation that you need to get out of, you need a plan. I worked with my counselor to develop a safe exit strategy. I am not a counselor, but I know there are shelters out there that can help you with such a plan. And I hope that should you find yourself in the middle of a terror incident, this story will give you the courage to call the police.
For all of us, no matter what our circumstances, we can know that God is on our side. “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV, emphasis mine)
God is with you. A mighty savior who loves you and delights in you to the point that he sings about it.
I just love the idea of God singing over me. Sometimes, I imagine it more as a love song, sometimes a lullaby. As I was on my way to work this morning, the first song on the radio was “By Your Side” by Tenth Avenue North. For anyone not familiar with it, it’s sung from God’s perspective to those he loves. Here are a few of the lyrics:
“I’ll be by your side wherever you fall. In the dead of night whenever you call. And please don’t fight these hands that are holding you. My hands are holding you.”
As it played, I realized that this just may have been God’s way of singing over me this morning. I love it when he does that!
He’s always with us. Sometimes we just have to stop and listen for him.
For me, that point came six months into our scariest round of marital discord; two months after Rob walked out of our last joint marriage counseling session and refused to come back; two days after he broke into the house and I thought one or both of us were going to end up dead.
I should have seen it coming, because as usual, it started with a vicious verbal assault filled with false accusations, cruel name-calling, and threats. He stormed out of the house around midnight that night yelling as he went that he would be spending the night with his brother who lived a couple of hours away.
Something in me knew that he would be back. I double-checked all door and window locks. I then took the house phone and my cell phone into my sleeping son’s bedroom (he was 4 at the time), locked the door, and pulled the dresser in front of it so that Rob could not get in.
Around 3 that morning, Rob came home really drunk. As he checked all of the doors and realized he was locked out, he started screaming for me to let him in. I ignored him and began to pray for our safety. I spoke every Bible verse about protection that came to mind, but I did not call the police.
I could hear Rob at our back bedroom windows beating on the windows and hurling curses at me. I did not answer but continued to pray. Within 15 minutes, he had broken in through the sliding glass door and was raging down the hall to our bedroom. When he realized I was not there, he turned and tried to open our son’s bedroom door, which was directly across the hall.
As soon as Rob realized that the door was locked, he grew quiet, and in a calm voice, he said, “Oh, so this is how you want it, Kim? Fine. Here’s Johnny.” (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Stephen King’s The Shining, this is the line the psychotic father says as he uses an axe to try to come through the door his wife and son are barricaded behind.)
For the first time since he’d come home, I spoke softly. “Go to bed, Rob. Your son is sleeping in here.”
He said nothing else, but turned and stormed down the hall. For a while, I listened to things crashing and banging, and then the house was silent. I still did not call the police. There is no explanation for it, and today I still don’t understand why I felt powerless to do anything to help myself, even though I had access to both phones.
My son and I spent the rest of the night locked in his bedroom, him sleeping, and me praying to make it to daylight. As soon as dawn broke, I called my aunt and asked her if she would send my uncle to get us out of the house. I was afraid to open the door without someone else there, because I thought Rob might be lying in wait for us or may have finally carried through on his threat to kill himself.
My aunt was there within 15 minutes—all 5’3’’ of her—and after ringing the doorbell for several minutes, I finally heard Rob shuffling off to let her in. He and I ended up driving in separate cars to a local eatery so that we could “talk” about what had happened while my aunt stayed with my son. Throughout this conversation, Rob continually denied that he had any real intention of hurting either one of us. He claimed not to understand why I was so afraid.
I would like to tell you that this was the tipping point. It wasn’t. While it precipitated the finale, that actually came two days later in a teary call with one of my work colleagues when I finally had the courage to admit what had happened to someone outside of my family. Dan listened quietly to the whole weepy story without judgment. When I’d finished recounting it, he said very gently, “Kim, why didn’t you call the police?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I didn’t want my son to see his father taken off in handcuffs.”
Quietly he responded, “Would it have been better for him to watch him mom being carried out in a body bag?”
Even now, the memory of that question takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. That was the moment. The tipping point. In that instant I realized that I didn’t know how to leave, but I knew that I had to. I had been willing to endure all sorts of terror in the name of trying to hold my marriage together, but I was not willing to saddle our son with that kind of memory for the rest of his life.
So I’m now going to do someone out there the same difficult favor that Dan did for me. Very gently, I’m going to tell you that I know that it’s hard to leave. Sometimes it even seems impossible. I understand that you love him. I know that when you took those vows, you really meant for better or worse. But I need to ask you: “Would it be better for your child or loved one to watch you being carried out in a body bag?” I know that’s a tough question, but you are worth asking it of.
Now, take a deep breath and let’s all have a bit of God-style, I’ve-got-your-back, comic relief. I had forgotten all about the following incident until it came up in a small group discussion a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what happened to Rob that very week.
At the time, he managed a store in a pretty sketchy area of town, though he’d never had any problems there. Imagine my surprise, when he came home visibly shaken one day. According to him, he’d been minding his own business in the store when a man came in looking for water. Not long after the man was in the shop, he stared ranting and cursing Rob and acting as though he were going to attack him. Rob ended up fleeing the shop completely unharmed, but as he recited the tale to me, he said that at the time it happened, he really thought the man was going to kill him.
So here was the God part in all of that. As Rob was telling me the story, I knew he’d been visited with a little divine payback. After all, this was on the heals of his making me think he was going to kill me. Nothing like this had ever happened before in his store (or happened after that time). While he remained physically safe in the incident, he was mentally and emotionally shaken.
Don’t get me wrong. God is light and there is no darkness in him. He does not promote evil. He did not force this stranger to behave this way. At the same time, he did not stand in the way of it happening.
“He is the God who pays back those who harm me; he subdues the nations under me.” Psalm 18:47 (New Living Translation, emphasis mine). I don’t know it for a fact, but I think this was a case where God allowed Rob to get a taste of his own medicine (so to speak), while his life was never really in danger.
All I can tell you was that as he recited the tale—clueless of any connection—I thought of how faithful God is. He protected us both, but he also allowed Rob to see for himself exactly what true terror felt like. In that moment, God confirmed his love for me, his protection of me, and his control of the situation. At a time when most of my family seemed unable to comprehend my need to leave the marriage, he sent me a gentle colleague to speak truth that sparked the courage to change. And then he topped it off by allowing Rob a life lesson sure to bring the understanding he was lacking.
If you are reading this and know that you have been living in a dangerous situation that you need to get out of, you need a plan. I worked with my counselor to develop a safe exit strategy. I am not a counselor, but I know there are shelters out there that can help you with such a plan. And I hope that should you find yourself in the middle of a terror incident, this story will give you the courage to call the police.
For all of us, no matter what our circumstances, we can know that God is on our side. “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17 (NIV, emphasis mine)
God is with you. A mighty savior who loves you and delights in you to the point that he sings about it.
I just love the idea of God singing over me. Sometimes, I imagine it more as a love song, sometimes a lullaby. As I was on my way to work this morning, the first song on the radio was “By Your Side” by Tenth Avenue North. For anyone not familiar with it, it’s sung from God’s perspective to those he loves. Here are a few of the lyrics:
“I’ll be by your side wherever you fall. In the dead of night whenever you call. And please don’t fight these hands that are holding you. My hands are holding you.”
As it played, I realized that this just may have been God’s way of singing over me this morning. I love it when he does that!
He’s always with us. Sometimes we just have to stop and listen for him.
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