A Leper, My Sister, and Brittany Maynard

 

 

Brittany Maynard has decided that she wants the option to “die with dignity” on November 1^st.  After witnessing my sister, Vanessa’s, year long battle with pancreatic cancer, I can totally understand her decision.

 But, Vanessa did not want that option. She wanted to fight and win. She wanted to seek a miracle. She wanted to live for her husband and her children and her grandchildren.

Vanessa was so much braver than me. She had the option of medication that would keep her from feeling anything, but she chose to use less pain medication so that she could be alert enough to spend time with us. We would cry and she would apologize for making us feel bad. Even to the end she was always thinking of others.

I was amazed at the hospice nurses and aides who chose every day to place themselves in suffering’s path. I asked my sister’s nurse why she chose this aspect of nursing, and her answer astounded me. She said that there was nothing more precious than spending time with people as they passed from this life to the next. That she sensed God’s presence in the middle of it all and that she had the privilege of helping people make that transition.

I know that Jesus walked with us through this past year – particularly the month of June. We could not understand the last week of Vanessa’s life. How could her heart and lungs go on when the cancer had taken so much? How could she endure?  How could we endure watching her leave us a little more every day?

Jesus totally gets it. He knows her pain. He carried her pain. He knows our pain. He carried our pain. He still carries our pain.

The leper in Mark 1 came to Jesus and said, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus was willing. He could have just spoken the words and the leper would have been made clean. But He did much more than s.peak He entered into the man’s suffering by touching him. He identified with the man’s pain, and by touching him, he showed the man how valuable he was to God even in his miserable condition.

I don’t know why God said “no” to our prayers for my sister to have more time on this earth. I don’t know why she had to suffer as she did. And truth be told, I am still angry that she suffered as she did. It isn’t right; it isn’t fair. But I do know that she is now cancer-free, enjoying life that is true life, and wanting us to live our lives on this earth truly loving others.

To Brittany Maynard I would say, let Jesus carry your pain and suffering. Let Him touch you as He did the leper, as He did my sister. Isaiah 53:4 “Surely he took up or pain and bore our suffering,”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bms0ZiM_KG0 Chris Tomlin, I Will Rise