Easter Presentation, 2003

Galatians 5:1

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, wrote (and I am paraphrasing) that "we live in an upside down world" and that while "we are in this valley of tears, cursed with labor, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed to perpetual planning's, puzzlings, and anxieties, certain qualities that must belong to the heavenly condition have no chance to get through, can project no image of themselves." Lewis says "It is only in our hours off, only in our moments of permitted festivity that we can find an analogy, for down here (on earth) is not their natural place. Here they are but a moment's rest from the life we are placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. Joy is the serious business of Heaven."

In January I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. This time it was terminal leukemia with a prognosis of surviving 3-6 months. A diagnosis of cancer makes you fully present to what is important in your life. There is a bittersweet clarity in facing your own mortality. Time becomes precious and you quickly learn to let go of things that most of your time is devoted to. There is only room for the real. And it made me think again how much of my time was taken up with attachments to earthly things that keep us from real joy.

Over the past 14 years, my family and I have been faced with many such moments, starting with my husband's car accident that turned our family upside down and resulted in my going back to work for about a third of what our family income had been. After 6 years of struggling with my husband's back surgery, rehab, and return to college to earn an engineering degree, I felt I could finally take a breath and life would return to somewhat of a normal routine.

After each ordeal we "pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps" like good independent citizens. Even when there were no bootstraps left to pull, we were determined that we "would not lose everything" that we had worked so hard to achieve. After all, we still needed to be "practical" and think about retirement and wouldn't losing our house be foolish? No one in America need put a millstone around your neck. Most of us are more than willing to do that for ourselves. Still, God kept sending help when we would let him. God sent us countless friends and family members that helped us through every ordeal.

Still, looking back I believe we could have made different decisions that could have made our trials not any less devastating, but certainly easier to endure. Would I have entangled myself with a job that took up too many hours and too much of my energy with a three hour commute on top of it? Would I have held onto the "stuff" that kept me in that job? Would I have kept the too big house with the too big yard that took most of our income and time to keep up? What sort of freedom was Jesus talking about when he told us that we had the "liberty" not to be "entangled with the yoke of bondage"? Why are we so willing to exchange our God-given freedom for temporal things? It's not that things in themselves are intrinsically bad, but if they threaten our health, relationships with family, friends, and time for service to others, they are a trap that we put ourselves into.

God has told us that we are free to be rid of them, no matter what our culture tells us, because our real investment is in heaven. Our real priorities are spelled out for us as Christians: spreading the gospel, the care of the needy and of widows and orphans. Our minds, hearts, and hands are to be attentive to the Kingdom of Heaven today.

One month before Steve's graduation, I was diagnosed with stage III cancer. I spent the next 8 months mostly in the hospital undergoing radical chemotherapy treatments.

In June of 1995, my husband graduated from college and I finished my chemotherapy treatments. Two weeks later, on Father's Day, our son, then 21, was a passenger in a car that went into the Puget Sound. He was trapped inside the car underwater for 27+ minutes, had cardiac arrest, was revived and suffers from a severe head injury that left him unable to care for himself for the rest of his life. We went from being overjoyed at having "made it" through what we thought would be the toughest ordeals in life to a devastation that hardly made my cancer and my husband's accident worth mentioning. I have no answers for this one. But I know that when I see the Lord, I will know why and my tears and broken heart will be healed. But I did come to realize that when we are faced with a situation we did not cause and cannot change, we still have a choice about how we are to deal with it.

As Americans we have an inordinate preoccupation with a future we can know nothing about. Warnings are everywhere in the Bible about presuming that we are guaranteed even one day on this earth.

We are especially vulnerable in this country because so much of our vision of a "successful life" is based on what we strive to have. Capitalism has become a religion of its own. Gerald Sittser, a man who knows something about suffering after losing his wife, mother, and daughter all at once in a car accident, writes in his book "The Will of God as a Way of Life" that God's will for us is to learn to choose quality of life over quantity of options, and further, that "our contemporary culture presents us with an infinite number of choices that creates pressure to live busy, fragmented lives, and isolates us from community".

Believe me, when you are in my shoes, the choice is very easy, as it could have been all of my adult life as a Christian. Jesus said he came to give us life and give it more abundantly. I have tasted that abundance the last few months just in the letting go of so many earthly struggles. The letting go of the unimportant has allowed me to really focus on the true joy that God had for me all along: time with my family and friends. Not hurried and scheduled, but blessed with conversation about what our hearts yearn for, what we have meant to each other, and yes, facing the pain and sorrow of what is to come. I have been given the blessing of knowing ahead of time that I am going to be called home. And because of this gift, our family circle has grown stronger. I have come to know my daughter, Brandy, as a beautiful and strong woman who has had many trials upon her young shoulders. I have seen her treat others with the love and compassion of one who knows from the depths of her heart the pain and anguish of loss. I have had the Joy of seeing her married to a young man that we love as a son. I am so proud of her. My husband of 30 years has been my strength. He has loved me through it all and continues in his constant care and devotion to me. We married young. I was 18 and he 22. It is the best decision I ever made. I have also been freer to share my faith and my Hope for what awaits me in Heaven. The Lord has opened many doors the last few months that otherwise would have remained closed.

I intend, until God brings me home, to stay open to the Joy He has yet to bring me on earth, and the Joy that awaits me in Heaven.

I would like to close with something I wrote about my son 18 months after his accident. Who would have guessed that it would be him comforting me at this time?

February 1997

Some Personal Thoughts on Shawn

"And only Love sails straight from the Harbor

And only Love will lead us to the other Shore"

from a song by Wynona Judd

It has been 18 months since Shawn’s accident and I feel now as I felt then, that he is suspended between heaven and earth. And still I want him to come home. All of him. Whole and safe. My sweet Boy, my heart. I promised God that if he could come back, I would never take the miracle of him for granted again. How could He entrust something so wonderful as a child to any of us?

I have stopped asking "why". There could never be a reason good enough. I try to understand instead where. It is clear to me that he is in a place that is unreachable by mortal means. Time and money and things have no importance there. He is under the protection of heaven where the angels' voices are clearer than for those of us still earthbound. We can only communicate by the thing common on heaven and earth: Love. And it is the kind of Love that can break our hearts and bring us to our knees that is required. It is the only kind that pulls us away from the unreal and allows us contact with the eternal.

I don't believe God makes bad things happen. The laws of the universe are in place and things just simply happen, good and bad. The particulars of how a person becomes disabled mentally or physically in the end are unimportant. The bigger question of "what do we do now" will always remain for us, and is within our power to choose. And when we choose to embrace them, the tragedies of our own lives and the lives of others can teach us the kind of compassion and caring that gives us a glimpse of the very nature of God.

Perhaps it is from there that we stand at a high enough place to hear an angel's voice too.

(Janice Nicholas entered into the joy of heaven on Sunday, July 13, 2003.)