When my children were young, one of the things I remember fondly as a parent was our nightly routine of tucking them into their beds and teaching them to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. . .” and asking God to bless all those we love. This nightly ritual would come to be a special memory for our family. But, more importantly, this time together would work to form the relationships with God we would lean on through the greatest hardship in our lives: losing Keith, beloved husband and father, to cancer. We prayed to God, asking for healing. When the answer was different than what we had hoped for, we were able to trust God and continue to live our lives with faith in His love for us. We knew God would give us the strength each of us needed to move forward. Those Bible stories we read as a family about the God we worshipped and trusted would bring us hope and comfort as we mourned the loss of a wonderful husband and father we dearly loved and missed.
Years earlier when I myself was a child, my parents also tucked me in at night, and together we would pray that same prayer. Keith and I taught the same Bible stories to our children that I had learned as a child, stories that taught me about the God I could trust with both big and small things. As that child, I prayed to God to help me do well on a test, make the cheerleading squad, beat out the competition for first-chair flute—small things that seemed big at a young age.
The first loss I remember that shook my family was losing my brother, Jeff. His unexpected death turned our world upside down. My three sisters and our parents held each other tightly and looked to God for help in this time of tragedy, trusting God to provide the strength we needed to move forward. I held tightly to the verse I read in a card someone sent to our family: “Trust in the Lord and with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Another time when I trusted God with something big was when I lost my father to cancer. My father was a man who lived life to the fullest with a personality that filled the room when he entered. He was loved by his wife, five children, and twelve grandchildren. He valued family time and shared experiences, encouraging all of us in our large family to follow this model in order to ensure close relationships. Sadly, he lost his battle to cancer. We were called together to say goodbye to him, yet another time when we would turn to God and the wisdom of Scripture: “I can do all this through Him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).
While preparing for the memorial service for my dad, my young niece asked if we could send cards to “Pop Pop,” letting him know how much we loved him and how much we would miss him. She suggested we tie balloons to the cards so they would reach Pop Pop in heaven. The color of the balloons must be red, she insisted. Red was his favorite color and also the color for love. We gathered as a family at my sister’s home in Florida and shared our messages out loud instead of writing them in a card. Then we released the red balloons, one at a time. This shared experience, although sad, remains a special memory for our family. We ended the service with a prayer, asking God to be with us and give us strength to move forward with our lives without the presence of our dad and grandfather in it.
Through these experiences of losing someone deeply loved, God has answered my prayer in providing the strength I needed to move forward, one day at a time. While I do not know what tomorrow brings, I do know God’s word is critical to living out my faith: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
In living out my faith, the person who continues to model trusting God fully is my beautiful and amazing mother, Caryl. She has demonstrated unconditional love for each of her daughters, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren throughout the years. Her faith in God has never wavered, as she trusts that God is interested in both the big and small things that cause us concern. Her patience is demonstrated daily during this time of uncertainty as she lives in a senior living community, where she is bound to a wheelchair, needing help with most everything. Nevertheless, she is thankful for her caregivers, her chair by the window, and the daily phone conversations she shares with each of us. I delight in hearing her voice on the phone asking, “Who’s calling, please?” and then to hear her say, “Oh, Elizabeth! I’m so happy it’s you.”