I’ve been to war.

Not a figurative war, which many people have experienced within their unique circumstance, but a real war where bullets fly both ways and mortars and rockets explode with the intent of ending lives.  My war experience, of course, is no longer unusual as the United States continues adding to the longest period of conflict in our history.  I understand the damage a war can do.

Private, figurative wars, the ones without bullets, have been raging for centuries and are just as spiritually damaging as the real wars are physically damaging.  Spiritual wars are waged in our minds as we deal with the loss of loved ones, the breaking of a heart through shattered marriages, the breaking of promises and vows, the loss of stability financial or emotional.  The lists go on and undoubtedly will touch everyone who will read this paragraph.  The private wars have touched my family and me through suicide, cancer, divorce, death…

My dearest cousin’s husband is dying.  How odd that phrase when , in fact, we are all dying, just at different times.  For an atheist the idea of death must be one of great loss and despair.  To have as your only hope, “like the little dog rover, when you’re dead you’re dead all over,” would not be extremely comforting.  I suspect most atheists don’t remind themselves of death very often.  Yet, we are surrounded by it.  Every day the local paper reports them in the “obit” section.  I am very happy to report that my cousin’s family are not atheists and have a comfort available to them that is not the case for people that prefer to “go it alone” without God.  There are days when my cousin’s husband just wants to go on and leave the old shell behind, but he lingers.  Even in asking, “why,” we know, if we’re honest in our quest for the answer.  I believe the answer is the one given by one actor to another in a movie I saw once.  One asked the other on the occasion of leaving this life for the next, “It’s hard to let go isn’t it?”

Physical life is precious, it’s a gift of God, yet, eternal life is so much more a gift.  The transformation from one to the other is a great mystery.  In his great novel, “If Winter Comes”, A.S.M. Hutchinson describes how a young man named Freddie Perch who had just been killed in the war (WW I) came back to help his mother die.  He was the type of son that would never allow his mother to even cross a road without him.  And here he was to help his mother cross the greatest road in her life.

She was moaning….  That inhabitant of her body had done its preparations and now stood at the door in the darkness, very frightened.  It wanted to go back.  It had been very accustomed to being here.  It could not go back.  It did not want to shut the door.  The door was shutting.  It stood and shrank and whimpered there…..  It was old Mrs. Perch that stood there whimpering, shrinking upon the threshold of that huge abyss, wide as space, dark as night …

“Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)

The shortest and perhaps one of the saddest verses in the bible.  The occasion was the death of a dear friend, beloved brother of Mary and Martha.  Weeping for a friend – the human face of the Master – like us – grieving when death deals its horrific blow.  In this case, though, Jesus knew He would raise Lazarus from death shortly.  So why did He weep?  Perhaps He was touched with Mary and Martha’s grief.  Perhaps He was sad that His friend had to suffer through the pain of the death process.  Perhaps He knew how happy Lazarus was, and He didn’t want to call him back to earth, far and away from Paradise.

Whatever the reason, Jesus was so moved that He mourned, deeply, for awhile.  Even Jesus, with the universe at His beck and call suffered a period of deep, unfathomable grief.  Grief of that magnitude cannot be hurried, cannot be wished away, can only be lived through.  When grief becomes our lot, our friends, because they love us, want us to be whole again – like we were.  They honestly think they know what is best for us, and sometimes it’s not.  They want us back like we were before, and not only that, they want us back as soon as possible.  What is difficult for those who haven’t taken residence on “Grief Mountain,” is that they have a hard time understanding that what we were before has forever changed.  We do not have it in our power to return to what we were.  We are different people, and eventually stronger for the Mountain we have ascended, but different.  This difference is the by-product of an event we would never have chosen for ourselves, or even an enemy.  We will be back, but not exactly the same, and it will take time, more time than some are prepared to invest is us.  And that’s ok; we understand and love them anyway.

Please, and I hope you do, enjoy a poem I recently wrote that considers the foregoing thoughts.

THE JOURNEY

Good friend,

Please do not interrupt my flight,

For sometimes I alight

On leaves of loneliness,

Sometimes, on twigs of tears.

And please,

Do not try to catch my wings

As I try to pass,

For somewhere,

In the great Sometime,

I will alight again,

In a sweeter place, on better flowers.

And then I will be again, alright,

If you, dear friend,

Do not interrupt my flight.

Photo by LiebeDich  http://www.flickr.com/people/liebedich/ used under Creative Commons agreement

Listen to an audio presentation on this topic here

On May 29^th, my darling little granddaughter, Sierra died. She fought a most heinous form of cancer for eighteen months. She died bravely, the way I want to when it’s my turn. I was with her at one o’clock in the morning when she breathed her last. Those eighteen months would take a volume to chronicle which I will never do. But, through all the hours of weeping and happiness, yes, happiness, there is something that I learned that is on my heart to share. Maybe it will help you, I hope so.

People usually deal with dying and death, particularly a tragic one, in pretty much the same way. They believe that no matter the severity of the illness, prayer will more than likely change the outcome. Their core belief is that God will interdict on behalf of the sick person and heal them. Modern medicine does what was impossible only a short time ago, people live who would have died then. These medical marvels are a gift from God.

But what about those who are not healed?  And no matter how many, how long or how fervent the prayers, they die.  When this happens some will blame God for “taking” their loved one. How could an all knowing, all powerful God let theirs die and let another live? It’s a puzzle that begins to eat at the very center of the believer’s heart. Well meaning friends might say, “If we had only had more faith”, or some other horrific statement, the sick one would have been made well. This is a satanic phrase and even though well intended strikes terror deep into the soul. How guilty would you be if your loved one died because you “didn’t have enough faith?”  Yes, we should have faith, enough to move a mountain, as Jesus said, but this faith is not for physical mountains, but spiritual ones.

“All the glory is due you! You are the Holy One! You’re the One, You’re the only One!”

I listen as my family and I sing these words. We sit together as one unit, one band of people suffering through a tragic loss; if you only knew what we had been through. You wouldn’t believe it if you could hear us singing these words with all of our hearts. You wouldn’t believe that just a little over a month ago, we lost one of our family members to cancer. A little girl, we loved her without measure and now she is gone. We are upset and we do struggle through life sometimes. However, you would never believe it if you could hear us now. We hold our heads high as we show God that we trust His judgment. “You’re the One, You’re the only One!” We know it, we believe it, and we sing it with pride… together.

Chelsea Chaney is a 17 year old Christian who loves God and Christ.  She is a leader and inspiration to her family and friends.  In addition to being active in the church, she is the captain of the high school varsity cheer squad, senior class president, student council president, book club president, and publicist for the Spanish club.

And my daughter…

Practical Christian application:

1.  We have confidence in an eternal reward through Christ
2.  It’s impossible for us to fully understand God’s will
3.  God wants us to have patience, know that evil will not prevail, and to fully place our trust in Him

Last week we lost a 15 year old family member after a lengthy battle with cancer.  Her struggle was featured in a post by her grandfather last month.   As I prepared to officiate over her funeral I thought it was appropriate to share on this blog the comfort our family found through God.

Over and over family members and friends in the community asked how God could let something so terrible happen to someone so young.  A close friend who had lost his wife in a tragic car accident years earlier had great counsel to me.  Part of his word he took from a message Billy Graham delivered on the National Day of Prayer, September 14, 2001

I’ve been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept by faith that God is sovereign, and He’s a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. Full message here

Our family found great comfort in suffering knowing that God is a loving God even though we may not know why such tragic things happen.  We choose to trust God.

What is the measure of a man? What is it that he calls upon down deep inside when desperate times come? Heroes are sometimes found in shooting wars and sometimes in wars of another kind.

For the past year my granddaughter Sierra, has fought cancer. January brought news that she was suffering from osteo sarcoma in her right knee. This is a tumor attached to the bone. Chemo, titanium inplant, more chemo, cancer recurrence in the calf of her leg, amputation of the right leg above the knee, another surgery for recurrence in a lung and now extended treatment with a new protocol to improve her immune system is a summary of her year with terror, seven operations and numerous biopsies!

It’s 2009 and she’s back in school, looking forward to getting a prosthesis on what she now affectionately calls her “little leg”. We’ve been in three hospitals as well as a consultation in another. We have met many “battle buddies” along the way, and what a blessing that has been. We have seen grace and courage in people thrown almost overnight into a nightmare they could never have imagined, a nightmare not to be awakened from, but one awakened into, over and over and over.

Cancer is a thief, a robber of time, money and most of all, normalcy. Normal is good. Boring is good. But in the wild and terrifying roller coaster ride where Mr. Cancer takes away a person’s buttons and bows, there stands another MAN. He’s the guy that stays the course, doesn’t run from the unthinkable and remains true to what he vowed, “in sickness and in health.” He’s the man holding his wife up when she’s almost beaten, cancer tired. He’s the dad that holds his wife up when their baby is sick unto death. He’s the hero of Cancerland and somewhere they’re making his medal of honor, his badge of courage. These men are described, I hope, in a poem I wrote some time ago and is in my book, ” POEMS BY LOU DAVID ALLEN”

My Prince Charming
Is not the richest,
Nor the smartest,
Nor the most handsome,
But when I’m sixty three
He will still love me
And put a diamond on my hand.
And should our babies be
Sick, even unto death,
He will pray God takes him
And not them.
That’s who my Prince Charming is.

Guest author David Allen has a B.S. degree in Physics and an MBA.  He has been an elder in the church, engineer, teacher, junior college administrator, mayor and a salesman.  For more information about his book of poerty contact David at dallen@camalott.com