Death and Life and Hope

One year ago today, on a Thursday, I thought my life had ended. My young wife died. We were married only seven years... so much to do, to see, to feel, to experience. It was not to be.

I had the privilege of being her husband, much of the time not a very good one, but I received much forgiveness and love from her, and hopefully returned that same love to her.

The day after that awful day, our good friends, Mike and Laura, had their first child, a son, named Benjamin. I wept in my loss. I rejoiced in their gain. Death and life, side by side.

This summer, one of my closest friends Kelly lost her baby. I was able to identify with her, as she had joined the ranks of a community that nobody wants to be in.

This summer, my best man Rich and his wife Lynda had long-awaited Keira, a beautiful baby girl who I look forward to meeting soon, and rejoice with my friends.

This past Monday, my good friends Chris and Sarah had twins -- Audrey Hope and Samantha Leigh. Audrey’s middle name is in honor of Amie and Bianca Hope, my daughter who was born and died on the same day, July 16, 2008. They now have four girls -- they will need a little bit of Hope and a lot of patience!

Death and life, side by side.

Amie was a wonderful, life-giving woman, who loved whoever she was talking with at the moment, who struggled with fear and doubt and insecurity, who could give me the silent treatment like nobody else when she was mad at me, who loved me more than her own life, who was all of playful, serious, studious, funny, compassionate and full of Hope, who didn’t want to die at the age of 33, but was ready to die when death was inevitable.

Christians are called to "rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep" and all human beings do this, and do so imperfectly, of course; Christians do so knowing that they have a future and a Hope. Many times during the past year, I would meet someone, perhaps a friend or acquaintance that I had not seen me since Amie died, and they were in "weep-with-those-who-weep" mode before I even began a conversation with them! I could read their face and body language; it had become all too familiar. Frankly, it has often been awkward, because at those very moments I may have not been "weeping"... I may have been thinking something else (like, "Boy, I am hungry; I’d like a burger right about now"). Nonetheless, I understood where they were coming from… they sincerely and instinctively wanted to express their sorrow, and enter into it, and to express their own sadness and feeling of loss.

For those of you who are not Christians, or who are unsure, I can identify with your skepticism, ambivalence or belief in another way of thinking and living. For me, though, it is wonderful to know that someone in the universe knows what I am feeling at the very moment I am feeling it. And who knows exactly what I need, even when I don’t. And to trust that the person is not going to reject, criticize, scold, nag, who is simply going to love me and even write a song about me; who does not observe rejoicing and weeping as a disinterested bystander, but who enters into the cosmic weeping and takes it upon himself, so that we might rejoice and have a reason to Hope.

For those of you offended by dark humor, skip this paragraph… So, I am part of this small group which gets together to pray, study the bible, discuss faith and hang out, and over the past several months, no less than a half dozen of us have been in the hospital, injured, or having some type of extraordinary medical procedure. So I thought, gee if we invite a new person or couple into the group, what a selling point: "Join our small group, you’ll be sure to be dead, have a difficult pregnancy, or be hospitalized soon…" I can hear my mom right now: "Paul, that’s terrible!" Sorry Mom. But a note to my church family: for your own good, stay away from our small group! (j/k)

Ok, back to seriousness... So, yes I have experienced intense sadness this week. "Weep with those who weep" is appropriate. But so is "Rejoice with those who rejoice." For in his mercy, God has provided a friend who is wired to alternatively rejoice and weep with me, who herself recently met the person I just spoke about. She now knows that her rock is not her family (a wonderful, talented, funny and crazy band from northeast Ohio), her job (professor at a community college), her skill sets (running, baking, cooking, smiling). Her rock is a person who has created a universe so vast, it cannot even be comprehended.

On October 3, 2008, Amie and I had what amounted to our final conversation. She gave it all she could give, with cancer ravaging her body minute by minute. And her basic message to me was, "after I'm gone, love." No small feat, because my default is selfishness, doubt, fear, anger. I love gods I create, passionately. But the God who is love, teaches me what love is, and invites me to join in the love, His love. And when I am loved like that, I want to love the same way, and those other "gods" don’t have the same allure, as the songwriter wrote many years ago, "The things of earth will grow strangely dim / in the light of His glory and grace."

So, I embrace life, though my default is to fear that death has swallowed (my) life. I remember day after day that the one who loves has overcome death. To the skeptical, unconvinced person who is unsure about God, that statement is not easy for me to write and believe. Last July and October, I was more inclined to believe that death wins, that the sting of death was too much for me, for any of us. But what speaks into that erroneous belief is this: "Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning."

I believe in God. I trust him and his will. And though I must go on in life without my first love, and though the reminders are everywhere, and though there are days in which I feel I can not live without her, I still have Hope.