Goodbye
Note: I've moved my blog to my own web site - the new address is:
www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
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This morning, my friend Jane died of cancer. It was a shock to me, not because of the cancer - I knew she had it - but because I hadn’t talked with her or her husband Cy since August and I didn’t know that the cancer had advanced that far. Jane developed cancer several years ago, but went into remission. Then earlier this year she was told that the cancer was back, and she started treatment. But this summer the doctors discovered that the cancer had moved into her lymph nodes, which is very bad news.
Jane was an artist. She was very creative - it seemed like she always had some kind of project that she was working on. Several years ago she gave me a watercolor painting of a barn in a field, which is one of my favorite pieces of art and is still hanging on my living room wall. She was very kind, with a quiet wisdom that only made me feel encouraged when she offered her advice. She seemed to enjoy my sense of humor, and we could get together after long periods of absence and talk and laugh with ease. She was not a vegetarian, but she and Cy loved veggies and she made them a part of most of her meals, and she also who grew a lot of her own food. I don’t care for veggies, and that was the source of a little joke between us about vegetables. Once when I was visiting she gave me a small bag of sugar candies made to look like peas and carrots. I guess she thought that was the only way to get me to eat veggies.
Cy and Jane were married 29 years, and they genuinely loved each other. They struggled through the same things many couples struggle with - trying to buy their first house, seasons where the money was tight, raising Jane’s two boys from her first marriage, then having two more children, a boy and a girl… typical married-life issues. And they were good friends to me as I struggled through my life… tolerant of me as a young rowdy musician type, compassionate when my first marriage ended in divorce, encouraging as I spent several years living single, and supportive when I married Emily. In fact, Jane and Emily found they were kindred spirits, both of them being creative women who lived their lives following Jesus, and both being artists who came to appreciate each other’s work. I’m disappointed that they didn’t get to spend more time together.
As I spoke with Cy he wondered aloud why someone, a wife and mother as kind as Jane, should die from cancer while people like terrorists or brutal dictators live seemingly healthy lives. This is probably a question of faith that comes to many - why does God allow evil people to live while good people suffer painful deaths. I think the answer is faith itself - do we trust God, not just in good and pleasant times, but in light of terrible, painful events? If we believe in God, can we say that we trust Him in all things, even with the life - or death - of a loved one? Can we cry out in our grief that, even though we don’t see or understand the reason, we believe that God has a reason, and we trust Him?
For Cy, who misses his wife terribly, his response is simply:
“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him“.
www.nonaverage.net/insomanywords/
Comments can only be left at the new location.
*********************************************************
This morning, my friend Jane died of cancer. It was a shock to me, not because of the cancer - I knew she had it - but because I hadn’t talked with her or her husband Cy since August and I didn’t know that the cancer had advanced that far. Jane developed cancer several years ago, but went into remission. Then earlier this year she was told that the cancer was back, and she started treatment. But this summer the doctors discovered that the cancer had moved into her lymph nodes, which is very bad news.
Jane was an artist. She was very creative - it seemed like she always had some kind of project that she was working on. Several years ago she gave me a watercolor painting of a barn in a field, which is one of my favorite pieces of art and is still hanging on my living room wall. She was very kind, with a quiet wisdom that only made me feel encouraged when she offered her advice. She seemed to enjoy my sense of humor, and we could get together after long periods of absence and talk and laugh with ease. She was not a vegetarian, but she and Cy loved veggies and she made them a part of most of her meals, and she also who grew a lot of her own food. I don’t care for veggies, and that was the source of a little joke between us about vegetables. Once when I was visiting she gave me a small bag of sugar candies made to look like peas and carrots. I guess she thought that was the only way to get me to eat veggies.
Cy and Jane were married 29 years, and they genuinely loved each other. They struggled through the same things many couples struggle with - trying to buy their first house, seasons where the money was tight, raising Jane’s two boys from her first marriage, then having two more children, a boy and a girl… typical married-life issues. And they were good friends to me as I struggled through my life… tolerant of me as a young rowdy musician type, compassionate when my first marriage ended in divorce, encouraging as I spent several years living single, and supportive when I married Emily. In fact, Jane and Emily found they were kindred spirits, both of them being creative women who lived their lives following Jesus, and both being artists who came to appreciate each other’s work. I’m disappointed that they didn’t get to spend more time together.
As I spoke with Cy he wondered aloud why someone, a wife and mother as kind as Jane, should die from cancer while people like terrorists or brutal dictators live seemingly healthy lives. This is probably a question of faith that comes to many - why does God allow evil people to live while good people suffer painful deaths. I think the answer is faith itself - do we trust God, not just in good and pleasant times, but in light of terrible, painful events? If we believe in God, can we say that we trust Him in all things, even with the life - or death - of a loved one? Can we cry out in our grief that, even though we don’t see or understand the reason, we believe that God has a reason, and we trust Him?
For Cy, who misses his wife terribly, his response is simply:
“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him“.
posted by Ruben at
10:07 PM
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