Part 3: when mercy comes running…

As I walked down the corridor to her new room I could picture her sitting up in her bed, active and smiling, giving praise to the nurses for their excellent care. She can be that way. Nov. 3 post

Today, my friend has her life back, complete and at peace. Last night she went to be with her Lord. It was expected just not so soon. Mercy came early. She was tired. She knew she could not live on in agony, strapped down like some loony because she kept pulling of her tubes… unintentionally I believed. I sat with her a few times the last few weeks. I prayed with her and for her. I brought in a dear friend to pray for her. I was powerless to help my friend, so I begged the Lord to help her. Mercy came running.

I am happy for her. It’s the day she longed for, the day she would get to meet her Creator.

2 Cor. “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Today my friend can sing and dance praises to her God. She can rejoice with those that have gone before her. She will get to see her son again. She is free from that earthly body that kept her in bondage to machines. Rejoice with me.

Pray for those left behind.

This flesh is not happy having to learn about her death on Facebook. How selfish am I? I can recall the day she phoned me in the wee hours of the morning to tell me her son had been killed. That moment is seared into my brain. There is no perfect, or pleasant way to deliver the news of the death of a loved one, but to learn it on a social media site, makes it so impersonal. I am not a person that keeps up with what’s going on on Facebook, and to learn about my friend’s death in that way makes me feel pretty…I can’t even think it.

I know that God had answered my prayer. I know that He used me to comfort her in that dark place where she spent her last days. In life, the Lord had extended my friend so much grace, more than anyone will ever imagine and now He extended mercy beyond words.

That last day I saw her I was remembering my mom. She too had been living with dialysis and in the end she made the decision to get off the machine. She lived two weeks after. The doctor had told me that morning that there was nothing they could for my friend. She would stay on dialysis until her body could no longer tolerate it, then hospice. I guess when the doctor spoke to her husband later that day she must have mentioned something about that possibility, because that evening in talking with him, my friend’s husband had adamantly said he would never take her off the dialysis machine.

Somehow, I knew that she preferred death to living in a shell of a once lively temple. It’s what she wanted, but it was not something she would ever ask of her husband. He was prepared to deal with her illness, to allow her body to keep going until it could no more. The only way I knew to help my friend was to cry out to God to help her. God showed her mercy.

She is at rest now. And those of us left behind must deal with her absence. In so many ways I am so thankful for her life and for her friendship…through it I learned that no matter what we suffer through God’s grace will always be greater. Still, death and life are never satisfied. Both keep us longing for more. I am thankful that my friend suffers no more and she is finally where she always wanted to be, with her heavenly Father.