You Surpass Them All...

It was 10 years ago today, and the sun was shining, just as it is now. I am warmed by the rays and I feel the comfort of it in my heart, although there are tears as well.

10 years ago, this would not have even been a possibility, but today, as I mark and honor the 10 year anniversary since my mom went to be with God, I am actually sitting here in the cemetary, next to her grave and typing this blog on my laptop, and it is comfortable. And it is so real. I look again at the daffodils I just put next to the gravestone and they look like the sun to me. I'm glad I chose them, because they also look like my mom: Radiant and full of life and their face is turned towards the sun.

Maybe I should write something about her life...something before she got sick...something from the good memories before Leukemia ravaged her body...but I don't think so, all the same. It was in her living that God was seen, yes. But how much more it was in her weakness that God's glory was accoplished so beautifully and so perfectly. It was in her dying that she said a full "YES" to God's ultimate will in her life.

And so I remember March 12, 1997 like a crystal clear picture in my mind.

It had been about a week since the doctor's had sent her home saying that there was nothing else that they could do for her. I remember that day that we took her in and she was so weak that as I wheeled her through the hospital corridor, she leaned her head back on my stomach...I remember waiting for the doctor and she talked about her funeral and I told her that I didn't want to see her die and I didn't want to see her with no life in her eyes. I was scared because I knew I was looking death in the face. She just listened.
We went home with oxygen-that was it. No more chemo, no more antibiotics. No solutions. It was the waiting game.

March 12. It had been a week. A horrible week. The sound of the oxygen machine 24 hours a day. The morphine drip. We had taken turns being in her room and I was exhausted. I remember being in the bathroom and asking God to please just let the sun be shining when she died.

I had left her room to go take a nap on the couch and after about an hour, I woke up and felt compelled to go back into her room. My sister was there, counting the time between her breaths...30 seconds...a minute...as we waited, we started singing "Great is Thy Faithfulness", her favorite hymn...

Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with thee
Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not
As thou hast been, thou forever will be

Great is Thy Faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness
Morning by morning, new mercies I see
All I have needed thy hands hath provided
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me....

We waited for another breath...and it never came. I asked Heather what we should do. She said, "Just keep singing..."

And we did. That is how my mom went to God... And the sun was shining.


I learned so much from my mom.

She told me that if her dying would bring even one person closer to Christ, then it would all be worth it.

She told me "Krista, don't ever wait to live your whole life for God. It is the only thing that really matters"

She found her victory through her surrender.

There is so much more I could write. I feel that this tribute is so insignificant, so incomplete. But now, I have to go to work. I have to leave this stone and grass that pays tribute to her life. I have to go live my tribute. And I want to live it well. God, help me to live it well.

And the sun was shining, just as it is now...