August 18, 2019, mid-morning, the world went grey.  My world went grey.  She went grey.  Grey is a far cry from something bright, radiant, or full of life.  Grey – the colour of life draining from a body.  The breathes becoming less frequent until they ceased.  Time ceased.  The blank stares and tear stained faces silently pleading and watching intensely for a miraculous filling of lungs to breathe – to come back.  Nothing…

She was gone.  Her body still present, but her soul in the presence of Jesus.  Pain free and completely healed from the evil disease that plagued her body.  Those were the words spoken.  Those were the words that were to bring comfort.  Those were the words that we knew were true.  Those were the words we hoped to never say.

What?  How did we get here?  And WHY?  What happened?  The chemo was to be working, according to weekly reports.  Sister was feeling good and doctors were encouraged.  What caused things to change in a month?  How did we get from seeing prayer answered in amazing ways to staring at a lifeless body in just eight months?  It was too short.  It went too fast.  Why?  Why did we have to go through months of encouragement thinking God was healing her only for her to be taken from us?  Wouldn’t the greater miracle have been to heal Sister’s body here on earth to live out her days?  Why did I only get 24 hours to be by her side?  Why did I have to witness those last hours that constantly replay over and over again in my memory…sometimes waking me as if living a nightmare?  Why leave 11 children motherless?  Why her and not me?  WHY???  IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!!  How do we go on from here?  All these and more questions and statements were angrily blurted out or painfully and tearfully thought as I stood in a field surrounded by the acres Sister so loved.  They were all directed towards God – the One who gives and takes away.  The One who I have grown to love and trust and yet, in that moment, I questioned everything.  Things I believed I had a firm grasp of.  Things I knew the answers to, but needed reassurance.  I was a child pouring out my broken heart to my Father – all the messy, emotional, raw truth of me.

It has been a month, but those first days are as vivid as my hands typing now.  My thoughts are still scattered and it may show in this post, but hey! that’s being real.  It has really only been the last week that I could actually engage my brain to do something more than get dressed.  This journey – this month of quiet and grieving – has allowed me to learn and experience God’s love, grace and faithfulness in ways I would not have had things stayed A-OK.  Even in the field that day, as painful as it was, and as much as I did not like the answer, the Lord spoke to my heart with a still small voice, “Because.”  “Because you sing about knowing I AM able and I can save through the fire with My mighty hand, but if I don’t…if I don’t answer or save in the way you want, that you will still hope in Me alone.  The hope you say and know is an anchor – is steadfast.  Because you say even if things don’t go as you planned, I (God) AM still good.  Because you read and know that I Am bigger than what lies in front of you.  Because you were reminded by Ann Voskamp, ‘The God who has carried you till now can be trusted to carry you till you’re through.’ ”  That was the answer to my why.  Even Jesus declared to His disciples, “What I’m doing you don’t understand now, but afterward you will know.” (John 13:7)

Sometimes our whys? gets answered on this side of Heaven and other times they don’t.  Through it all, at least what I can attest to, is God is good and God is sovereign.  He has been, is, and will continue to be.  He knew that 28 years and eight months to the day that my dad passed away, I would be in the best position to walk through this journey with my nieces and nephews.  To know how they would feel and know how to comfort – to feel a deeper bond.  He was aware of the foreshadowing a picture painted by my mom was.  An image captured of father and daughter many years prior.  He allowed Sister and I to be connected by a Bible verse and a song over the months of her illness that we did not discover until the day before she left us.  A portion of scripture that kept us going, Psalm 34.  I have only written out a few verses…“I will praise the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.  Proclaim Yahweh’s greatness with me; let us exalt His name together.  I sought the Lord, and He answered me and delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces will never be ashamed.  This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him from all his troubles.  Taste and see that the Lord is good.  How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!”

God orchestrated me and Hubby to be a part of her last 24 hours without any previous notice of what awaited us.  (Originally we were frustrated that none of the weeks earlier in the summer would allow us to take our holiday time).  He lovingly gave Sister and I a small window of time to spend together cuddled in her bed, just like we did as small tots in her crib.  As the older sister, I wanted to make it better…go away, but I couldn’t.  All I could do was hold her.  I can still feel her there.  I am thankful.  The Lord graciously gave Sister enough strength to get in a  wheelchair and travel to the hub of the house to see what all the children were doing a short time before leaving.  I believe she was saying her goodbyes.  He saw fit for us to have a mini worship and praise service to prepare Sister for the choir of Heaven.  He provided words of encouragement at just the right time through that most difficult week and the sun to shine even brighter when we missed her sweet smile.  My good good Father never once left us during that time.  Although, there were foggy brains, doubts, questions and so many emotions, the truth remained – He is faithful.  Because I couldn’t see clearly and had no understanding (still don’t) I had to rely on what I already knew – He has been faithful in the past.  And if He was faithful in the past, I could trust Him to be faithful in that time of despair and for the rest of the days going forward.

I was reminded the other day (while listening to a message online) that this story I am telling you – really the whole story of my life – is not MY story.  It is GOD’S story,  It is just a part in the bigger story.  All of us play a small role in the grand picture.  “Our” stories are to display His goodness, His love, and His redeeming grace in our world.  In our world of brokenness and hopelessness.  (I cannot imagine going through times like these without a hope and a strong hand of refuge).  You see, it is all about Him.  It’s not about how I survive, it’s about How God walked me through…how He walked our family through.  How He will bring dancing and singing from great sorrow.  How He is going to work all of this for good…He promises to in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”  How He has and is going to use the “radiant” life of Sister for His glory.  Over the eight months of diagnosis she fixed her eyes and mind on Christ.  Did she question and plead?  Absolutely!  But she knew He was her only hope.

As an aside: “Hope is commonly used to mean a wish: its strength is the strength of the person’s desire. But in the Bible hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness.”

Hope for healing (whether in life or death).  Hope during those scary moments of appointments, procedures, dark nights wrestling with an unknown future.  Hope that no matter the chaos, He was the One constant.  She trusted her life in the hands of her Maker.  He did not cause her cancer.  Sin caused the evil disease of cancer.  However, for reasons unknown to us, God allowed Sister to be used in this way to continue writing the perfect story.  He used her to show us (and she touched many lives through this) that no matter what, we can “taste and see that the Lord is good” and those that have their eyes fixed on Him will be radiant.  Their lives will display God’s glory.  Sister is more alive and radiant than she ever could have been here and she left an amazing testimony and legacy behind.  I am trusting my unknown future to THE ALL KNOWING GOD because God is good and God is sovereign.  He knows the end from the beginning.  And because of these truths, I can walk through each day and bring Him my daily offering of praise and thanksgiving, albeit, with the rawness of grief.  I can honestly say, “Blessed be Your name.”

Sister had a slight obsession with sunflowers.  It is interesting that they symbolize adoration, loyalty and longevity.  Her unabashed love and trust in the Lord was forever and it continued to grow stronger each day as He showered grace upon grace.  Likewise, our loving heavenly Father constantly showed His loyalty and adoration of the beautiful red-head He created.  He never left her side and held her in His arms when she entered her forever home.  That hope she clung to…the hope we as God’s children all cling to…to enter that perfect place of rest to spend eternity praising our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Melanie Eileen Gibbesh May 3, 1983 – August 18, 2019

Definition of Hope Citing:  Wiley Online Library