Introduction:
I do not remember the day I met Katie. So many of my childhood memories have her in them. We grew up in the same church. Our parents were in leadership. Katie and her family have impacted me in ways I never knew possible. Their faith through the hardest of times challenged me. They suffer well and love well. It is truly an honor to have her write a piece of her story for us.
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There are times in life when your circumstances can become overwhelming; when it’s easy to lose sight of the things you’ve always known to be true, and fear comes rushing in to fill the void.
February 11th, I went to surprise my mom at her house. My dad was sick, so I just wanted to pop in and see if she needed any help. My dad suffered a disease that was an autoimmune vascular illness that attacked his organs and severely compromised his immune system, so every cold or flu he got had to be taken seriously. By the time I reached their home, it was clear we were going to have to take him to the hospital. I stayed with them for a couple of hours until other family came to be with my mom, and then I left for home. We’d been through this many times before, so I was confident that once my dad had gotten some liquids and the antibiotics he needed from the IV that he would be fine.
I was wrong. Two weeks later, he was dead.
The night I got home from taking him to the hospital, my sister called me around midnight. Not only was the IV not helping him bounce back like usual, but his test results were so bad, they immediately intubated him and rushed him to the Critical Care Unit of the hospital.
I didn’t sleep after that. I wanted to go back to the hospital, but it was a forty minute drive, and my kids were sleeping, and what was I really going to do? My mind was racing. Was this it? Was this the time I had been fearing since I was fifteen when he was first diagnosed? Was he in pain? Was he aware of what was happening? How was my mom?
Most of those thirteen days were sleepless for me. When I did sleep, I just had nightmares about what was happening. It felt like a rollercoaster; up and down, slight improvement, then a setback, constant nausea in the pit of my stomach. All I wanted was for him to be healed or for God to take him home. I didn’t want to put him in hospice. I didn’t want to make that choice. Would he even want the extreme measures we were already taking just to keep him alive? How could we possibly know what to do? I had so much fear in my heart. Fear that he would die, fear that he would live but as a vegetable, fear that we would have to decide to put him in hospice.
It became clear that my dad was not going to recover. He hadn’t been conscious once since we brought him to the hospital, his heart was damaged, his kidneys weren’t working, his lungs had multiple infections. One night as I was home, my brother, Billy, called me. He told me that the doctors set up an appointment for our family to speak with the hospice center the following morning. It was time to make that decision. The thing about it was, if we chose to do this, they would extubate my dad. They would take out the machine that was giving his lungs breath. I didn’t want to do it. It was too awful. Billy knew that I was struggling, and so he spoke truth into my life. He reminded me of the God we serve. He reminded me that if God wanted my dad to keep breathing, if there was more for my dad here on earth, that He would give his lungs the air that they needed. He also spoke about how there was nothing my dad wanted more than to tell others about God, to point them to the God that we all so desperately need, and that if he could choose a way to go, he would have chosen a way that made all of us lean into God and come to understand Him in a deeper, more meaningful way, exactly like what was happening right now.
What broke through to me the night Billy and I were on the phone was that the entire time my eyes were in the wrong place. I wasn’t thinking about who God was or what He could do, I was thinking about the doctors and the machines and trying to simply weigh the pros and cons of our choices. I had become myopic, only able to see what was right in front of me. God never promised us easy, pain-free lives. What He promised was to always be there and to work good from each situation, and as devastating as this situation was, He was there bringing us peace and comfort. He was there when people brought us food at the hospital. He was there when my friends were texting and calling, checking in on me. He was there by giving us each other, a family strongly knit together, who know how to be each other’s shoulders to cry on and also how to joke until we’re crying from laughter.
My family knew I was the last one to be okay with hospice, so they were talking about how to approach me. Billy spoke up and said that he felt God was telling him he needed to be the one. God was there as he orchestrated the conversation I was in need of to go forward with making the right decision.
The following night we put my dad into hospice. Two days later, February 24th, he passed.
My dad always told me that every good gift in life is from God and that God only gives good gifts. When I focus on that, on my good God, is when I can have peace in the worst of situations. The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, and the more that I lean into His love, remember how He has been good to me in the past, look at the ways He is currently blessing my life, and expect Him to do the same tomorrow, the more my fear fades into the background.
Song of the Week:
God of the Hills and Valleys, by Tauren Wells
Listen Here
