I'm getting married in April to the man that God handpicked for me. I get too excited when I think about what the future holds for us. This time next year, we will be decorating OUR tree in OUR house. We will pick out Christmas gifts for our family together. We will only have one grocery list. But its so much more than that.
Its love--FOREVER. Its not butterflies in your stomach or however you want to describe the emotions. Its a willful act of selflessness and total commitment to another person. Its for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part.
I've seen "for better."
I've seen "for worse."
I've seen "for richer."
I've seen "for poorer."
I've seen "in sickness and in health."
My parents have been a great model for me, especially in this area. They've had good years of farming, bad years of farming, financial ups and downs. They've agreed and disagreed. Mom was sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for years while I was in JH and HS and couldn't work, and dad loved her through it. They've been married 26 or 27years... And they still hug each other. They sit in the recliner together. They flirt. (They're often told by me and my sister to knock it off!)
My parents did a great job teaching my sister and I how to live out the wedding vows by setting a great example... But just last week I saw "until death do us part" in its entirety.
Nick's Uncle Jim had been battling a rare blood disease for many years. His only treatment option was to undergo a bone marrow transplant. The doctors gave him a 50% chance of living through the transplant. Uncle Jim was a tough man and he wasn't going to go down without a fight. He found a donor from within his own family. His youngest sibling, Beth, "the miracle child", was a perfect match. She bravely agreed to donate her bone marrow stem cells and cure her big brother.
He spent 10 long weeks in the hospital going between the bone marrow unit and ICU. He had C. difficile diarrhea, staph pneumonia, aspergillis pneumonia, sepsis, and renal failure. He WENT THROUGH it. We saw miracle after miracle. The doctors would tell his wife to call the family in, and hours later he'd be doing great. A few days later, he'd hit rock bottom again. It was a roller coaster of medical stability for Uncle Jim and a roller coaster of emotions for the family. This went on for 10 straight weeks... and his wife never left his side. She was there every night while he was in the bone marrow unit and never missed a visitation while he was in the ICU. She spent every night in the hospital. She bathed there. She washed her clothes there. She ate there. She got to know the nurses, the doctors, the other families in the bone marrow unit and ICU. The hospital was essentially her home. She only left the hospital on occasion to run an errand, eat with the family at Sal and Mookies (usually to celebrate a miracle God had performed in Jim), or to come visit the family that was in town staying at Nick and Elliott's house.
As Thanksgiving approached, Uncle Jim's condition worsened. Although the bone marrow transplant had worked and engrafted successfully, all the other insults and complications were taking their toll on his tired, weak body. His BP was too low to dialyze him. His kidneys were beyond repair. He was on a ventilator due to pneumonia. His low blood pressure and anemia were a double whammie in causing hypoxia to major organs, especially the brain. They had enrolled him as a case study, and given him a new drug that had not been approved yet. It actually was working, but just a little to late. The week of Thanksgiving, they told his wife that he was basically on life support at that time, and that she needed to be thinking about what she wanted to do as his power of attourney. She prayed that she would not have to make that decision. Jim's 7 brothers and sisters were coming in to town to have Thanksgiving lunch at Nick's house and to visit him in the hospital. The night before Thanksgiving, the nurse allowed the whole family to go in his room in ICU to visit him. He was unresponsive and his blood pressure was slowly falling, even with all the pressor medications at maximum doses to keep it up. There was nothing more they could do for him. The nurse didn't expect Jim to make it through the night. We all stood around his bed and talked to him as if he could hear us. We had a few laughs, shared a few memories, and expressed our love and thanks to him. Then his wife bent down close to his face and while rubbing his forehead, she told him that he could quit fighting if he wanted to. She told him that it wouldn't be giving up; he had fought a good fight. She told him it was okay for him to go home to be with Jesus. She told him to run to the white light if he saw it and that he didn't have to suffer anymore. Nick's dad, who is Jim's younger brother by 1 year, promised Jim that he would take care of his wife, son, and daughter. As the visitation hour slipped away one minute at a time, we gradually started to leave in order to give Jim's wife and children some alone time. Everyone knew that Jim would never leave that room unless God performed a miraculous healing in him. At this point, our prayers were for God to be merciful. We prayed for healing, whether it was in his earthly body or if he was to be completely healed in his heavenly body, and we prayed for God's will in that to come quickly. He had suffered far to long.
Everyone slept lightly that night, waking every thirty minutes to an hour, looking at the clock, expecting the phone call bearing bad news, checking their phones for missed calls. By the next morning we hadn't heard anything. So all the aunts and cousins started to prepare the feast for the day set aside for giving thanks. At 10:30 we got the call. Uncle Jim had passed. His wife was by his side as he left his earthly body behind. She gave him back to the One who gave him to her. As hard as it was, she loved him enough to let him go. She loved him "til death do us part".
Matthew 19:4-6
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Ephesians 5:22-33
"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church- for we are members of his body. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."
1 Corinthians 13:4-8,13
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
Ephesians 5:1-2
"Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
Art by Christy Henderson:
There is more at http://www.chendersonart.com/
