(from October 2009)
So there I was, shell shocked with the news, staring out the window of the plane as we taxied towards the runway. I was fighting the waves of emotions coming at me—for the third time in nine months I had received news that I’d lost a sister. I had been in Charlotte, North Carolina for a three day training session. I was having breakfast before the second day’s session, when I got the call that my sister Kris had died. Now I was sitting on a plane, waiting to taxi towards the runway and fly home to Nashville. It was rainy and gray outside, the wind blowing a steady rain around as I watched. It didn’t surprise me that it was raining. I remember hearing my mother-in-law tell of a missionary lady who had lost her husband and partner of many years. She was so sad and she prayed, “Lord would you please let me know you’re sad too?” The answer came--it rained a torrential downpour for the next three days. Joy also remembers a particularly tragic funeral a couple years ago. A teenage boy had died in a car wreck over the summer. His funeral was on a hot summer day, and with no rain in the forecast, it burst into an unexpected downpour the afternoon of his services. Earlier this year, a friend from church lost her husband. We went to the visitation Sunday afternoon and got rained on coming out of the funeral home. And last year, a police officer who worked security over the pre-school and children’s area at church died. His funeral was one of the grayest, rainiest days I can remember. It wasn’t a surprise that gray, dreary rain surrounded the days around Kris’ death. It seemed fitting. In fact, it seemed like we had a very wet and rainy year in the Nashville area, which seemed ironically appropriate, at least for me personally. Losing three sisters in nine months called for lots of rain in my mind. In fact, it rained or snowed for both Nancy and Kris’ deaths. Nancy’s death came in January in Illinois. I drove from Nashville to Morton, Illinois through a terrible snow and ice storm. The ice storm was so bad and so widespread that my sister Kris and her husband Jim were without power for days in Arkansas. They had to stay in a hotel the entire week before they traveled to Illinois for Nancy’s funeral. (I remember very pleasant weather around Kathy’s death in August, but that would spoil my point so I’m omitting it as an anomaly). Now Kris had died and it was raining again. It would end up raining most of the eight hour trip to Arkansas on the following day and over half of the trip home. I think rain and death will be permanently connected in my mind.
Anyway, like I said, I was staring out the window at the gray rainy weather, fighting back tears and trying to get my mind to grab onto something other than the grayness and the sadness. I was in one of those mental places where lots of thoughts are flying through your mind, but you can’t seem to lock in on any one of them. We sat on the taxiway for an extra ten or fifteen minutes waiting to be cleared to take off and I just stared out into the rain. I watched pretty fall colors being suppressed by the wind and rain, ripping colorful leaves off the trees and driving them to the ground, blowing them down before their time. I remember thinking the leaves were just like my sisters, beautiful and meant to be enjoyed, not driven down before their time so others couldn’t enjoy them. The captain broke into my thoughts for a moment, announcing we were cleared to take off. I watched the ground speed by, the wet leaves becoming a blur as we gained speed. Finally the nose lifted and we broke free, giving me a wider picture of the wet grayness below. I continued to stare out the window, again my mind refusing to lock in any one thought and deal with it. Suddenly we were in the clouds and then a moment later we broke through them into bright dazzling sunlight. I angled my head away from the window because the sun was so bright. I squinted out the window, feeling the warm sun on the side of my face as I looked out. The clouds that had been sending down dreariness and rain looked so fluffy and white as I looked down on them. Clear blue skies filled the horizon as far as I could see. It felt good to feel the sun on my face. I found myself wishing that I could’ve tapped into that feeling earlier in the year, and then it dawned on me, like a child flying for the first time, it’s always sunny up above the clouds. What a comforting thought. Even when it seems like the rain will never end, the sun is still up there, as warm and comforting as can be. I thought of Little Orphan Annie singing “the sun will come out, tomorrow”. What strange comfort the sun provided to me. It was like a warm hug from God, letting me know He is still there. I then took the analogy further, thinking that looking down from above, it’s easy to remember the sun is there and waiting, but when you’re underneath the clouds feeling the rain, it’s easy to forget about the sun or even doubt if you’ll see it again. I looked down on the clouds—they looked so white and fluffy and harmless from here. It was hard to imagine they were responsible for such depressing gray conditions. I looked closer—it was impossible to tell from above whether it was raining under those clouds or not.
Another analogy crossed my mind—the tapestry. Many pastors have shared in sermons that life is like a tapestry, from the back a mess of crossed threads and intermixed colors, none of it seeming to make any sense. That’s what we see from our view. When you turn it over and see it from God’s view, it makes a beautiful picture. As I looked down on the clouds, I didn’t see any beautiful picture. I just saw fluffy white clouds lit up by a bright sun. I couldn’t tell what the clouds were doing, what grand purpose they were serving, or anything else that might have mattered. Funny thing about the tapestry analogy, you have to not only have God’s perspective, you have to see with His eyes. You have to be able see things as He does, even if you have the right perspective.
I happen to be colorblind. I’m not colorblind so bad that I can’t tell red from blue, just colorblind enough to fail those stupid colorblind tests (and my wife’s tests for putting an outfit together.) You know, the ones where they say “Look at these dot patterns and write down the numbers you see.” Numbers? What numbers! It’s a bunch of dots! I know other people who are completely colorblind, as in wearing one brown sock and one black sock to work if someone doesn’t catch them before they get out the door. I think we’re all colorblind to a degree when it comes to seeing the tapestry of life. We struggle and struggle to get around from our side of the tapestry, to see it from God’s view, but even then we can’t make it out. We may be enlightened to understand a part of a situation, or see how God is working in someone’s life, but it still doesn’t make complete sense. I remember understanding some ways God worked when my dad died in 1991. God used it to help us grow closer together. We drew strength from each other and from being together. He helped me, as a 24 year old young man in my first year of marriage, grow up and take on responsibility as the man of the family (even though I had 5 brother-in-laws around). God used my oldest sister Kathy to come alongside my mom and be many of the things dad was to her: a calming, steady voice in difficult times. She became the quiet leader of our family in dad’s absence and the glue that held us together. My 3rd sister Nancy’s research into our family history became so much more important to us. We wanted to know more about how and where dad grew up and his family. My 2nd sister Kris’ humor kept us lighthearted and laughing, even when our hearts were heavy. I even saw many of the ways God blessed my mom and dad in his final days. I remember Dad and I went to breakfast one morning before he decided to retire in 1991. He talked through all the pro’s and con’s of it with me and asked what I thought. I remember thinking “He is treating me like a friend, wanting my advice. Wow!” I don’t remember what advice I gave him, but he ended up retiring in May. His employer of 42 years, Caterpillar, held a retirement dinner for him and two other colleagues who retired that year. I remember a specific part of his retirement speech. He said it was very gratifying for him to have moved from a parenting relationship into a friendship with each of his kids. How cool was that! My dad called me his friend! I look back on that speech after his death and see it as God’s way of telling us that dad’s work was done in our lives. He didn’t need to teach us anymore as our parent and instructor. That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of things I still wanted to ask him. To this day, I still wish I could ask him things. I viewed that comment as more of an insight from God that Dad had told me everything I needed from him.
Some other things that I observed after Dad’s death—he and mom got to go to Colorado, their favorite vacation spot in the world in July of 1991. They spent a week there at a family reunion with his side of the family. Dad was the oldest of nine and many of his brothers and sisters and their families were there. It was the last time he would see many of them, but what a great time they had. They had such an enjoyable last visit together. He and mom ended up buying a time-share in Estes Park, a beautiful two bedroom vacation home they were going to enjoy together. They scheduled two weeks in October and invited Joy and me to spend a week with them. We came out and had a wonderful week together. One of my favorite pictures is of me and my dad sitting and laughing on the front porch of that vacation home. Joy has that picture in a framed ornament that hangs on our Christmas tree every year. We had such a great week together. I remember the last time I saw him, we had a big hug and told each other we loved each other. We always did that, especially after his first heart attack in 1985. Mom and Dad were still at that vacation home in Colorado, enjoying a second week with their best friends the week dad died. They had done all their favorite things together, playing cards, sightseeing and shopping. Dad and his friend Bill had even played some golf. If you could have asked my dad how he wanted to spend his last days, he couldn’t have written a better script. The outpouring of love and support at his visitation and funeral blew me away, too. I saw so many people that I had never met who had been impacted by his life. We felt so much love from the support of family and friends. I could see God at work in those events and in the days to come in our family. I could see part of the “why” in Dad’s death and its timing.
This year was so different--the pain was bewildering. Losing Nancy, Kathy, and Kris in the past nine months sure didn’t make sense to me. When Dad died, we all had each other and we still lived in fairly close proximity to one another—we worked through it together as a family. Now we were scattered across the country--Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, and Maryland. Mom was devastated from losing three children. (A person may not be shocked to lose their spouse, after all, there’s a fifty-fifty chance it will happen to every married person.) She told me, “It’s hard seeing your kids die, Mike. I never thought when I was having all those babies that I’d see them die before I did.” God in His wisdom took Kathy, Kris, and Nancy home in the same year and I couldn’t understand even a little of it. Nancy was still mom’s child to worry about, the only one of her children that was unmarried with no spouse to care for her. Her health had gotten so bad in the past year of battling Hepatitis C and the complications that go with it that she was in a nursing home. Kris was a faithful friend to mom, calling her every Sunday to talk about whatever was new under the sun, sharing favorite sermons and music they had recently heard. And Kathy was mom’s main source of support over the past 18 years after Dad’s death. That was just Mom’s perspective on the losses. I had seven nieces and nephews that had lost their mothers, and two brother-in-laws that had become widowers.
My perspective was every bit as painful. Nancy was one of a kind, like a second mother to me when I was younger. She was “my favorite sister” when I was growing up. She loved me and spent more time with me than my other sisters. I know it wasn’t because she loved me more than they did, she just had more time to spend with me and was more interested in me than they were at the time. Kathy was my advisor. She was going to share her parenting wisdom and help me get my three kids through the teenage years, as she and her husband Jan had done such an amazing job with their four kids. She was the leader of the family, always gathering us at her house, keeping us together and taking care of mom. Who could help mom like she did? How could I take care of mom from Tennessee? Even as I tried to call mom more after Kathy died, I realized how bad at being Kathy I was. And Kris was such a good listener and such a great comedian in the family. She could make fun or herself and us and keep us from getting too uptight or depressed. She could also offer spiritual wisdom and comfort—she listened to sermons and read books more than most of us. She was an encouragement to many of us. She made it a point to tell Joy and I what a great job she thought we were doing with our kids. I was looking forward to spending more time with Kris after Nancy and Kathy died, she was just what I needed, what we needed to help us through these times. Now she was gone too. How could I lose all three of them in one year? In nine months? That didn’t make even a little sense.
But as I stared down at the clouds again, trying to figure out what was going on under them, I remembered, like the tapestry, no one has God’s full perspective and vision when it comes to seeing things clearly as He does. Things will never fully make sense until we are with Him in eternity. Strangely, that thought comforted me as I looked down. I didn’t have to make sense of this loss, of these losses. That was God’s territory. I just have to trust Him that He has a plan and that the tapestry does make sense. It will make a beautiful picture someday. I may not be able to see or comprehend it until I get to Heaven, because I’m colorblind. We all are. And that’s ok.
It the meantime, the sun was shining bright and warm on my face, still up here above the clouds. It felt good and I closed my eyes and stopped looking down trying to figure things out. For that moment, it was good just to enjoy the warmth of the sun and not try to understand everything under it. I appreciate the sun and sunny days more now than ever, like God’s reminder to me that He still loves me. But when it rains and life hurts, I remember that the sun is still up there, above the clouds. I remember that God still loves me, cares for me, and has a plan for my life, even if things don’t make sense to me.
