October 1st will mark three years since my husband, Cecil, closed his eyes, stopped breathing and went to be with the Lord. It was his time, despite heroic efforts by a team of medical professionals and the prayers of many. Three days before this he wrote his last post on Zion Beckons, apologizing for being out of touch for a few days while he had an angiogram on Thursday. He never made it to that particular test. Instead, he was taken by ambulance on Wednesday night to St. John's Hospital in Springfield. He had a stopgap treatment so they could wait for enough scar tissue to develop so that they could mend the hole in the posterior of his heart. Unfortunately, the damage was too great. A badly damaged heart can't tolerate the trauma of resuscitation. He was pronounced dead at 7:40 on Friday evening. I hadn't even made it back to the hospital yet.
Since then, four other ladies in my church have lost husbands. We are now nine in number. For a small church this seems like a lot. We range in age from forty-something to seventy-something. We're tough, we're resilient, we're resourceful. And we're totally dependent on the Lord for our next breath. It's hard, and none of us wants to go through it ever again. I've learned how to fix a toilet, drag fifty pounds of dog food into the house, do carpentry work, use a pickaxe to dig holes in my rocky soil in order to plant anything. I've hosted a major auction, killed two copperheads and taught myself how to use firearms.
From the numbness that came when my stepson Marty called told me not to hurry back to the hospital, to the meltdown on what would have been our 29th anniversary on Sunday, to trying to make two mortgage payments this month, God has been with me. He's been with my friend who had to get rid of her horses because she can't buy them hay this year; he's with another friend who has a handicapped daughter with mysterious anemia; he's with another who lost her husband at age fifty. Widowhood.
Charles Stanley of "In Touch" ministries, says, "Fight all your battles on your knees," and I try doing that. But sometimes I try running instead and that doesn't work out so well. God told Joshua to be strong and courageous. It's hard to be strong and courageous when you can't pay your bills and your next check is three weeks away. But when I retired in March I told God that I would try to do my part if He would only keep me afloat. And He has. And I am so grateful. But sometimes I give in to the evil one and find myself in the middle of panic. With God's help I climb out of the pit and crawl to the foot of the cross again.
It's not always easy.
j.
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