I understand that this title seems contradictory... possibly phony... or maybe coming from someone who is not processing their actual feelings about death... but I beg of you to give me a chance to explain.
Because I have a story to share with you. Actually a few stories. They are painful and intense, so if you are at all squeamish you may want to pass on this one (although I am pleading that you don't).
This journey of grief has been a roller coaster of emotion and just when we think we are "ok", we're not. I have wrestled with the strongest of emotions but have found the most incredible thing in the process. Underneath the heaviness of death resides a beautiful truth about life and I refuse to let sadness, or anger, or *the devil* (dare I say it), have the victory on this one. Or the last word.
Death took something from us, but I refuse to let it keep taking.
I want my brother's passing to count for something. I want it to bring families closer together, joy to abound despite the pain, and most importantly - God's goodness and love to be proven true. Because in my brother's case, it was.
So in an effort to share just how unrelenting, persistent, and passionate God is about every person who has walked this earth, about YOU, I have to start at the beginning - almost twenty five years ago.
1994 - The Hanging
While playing in the backyard of our then home in Coalinga, CA my brother found himself atop the large play structure a bit afraid. Bethany, my younger sister, was fearless but John Paul would be best described as a "cautious" child.
Looking over the side of the gigantic aluminum slide (which of course may have only been four or five feet off of the ground), he decided to secure himself by tying a jump rope around his waist and around the handle bars to prevent him from falling off onto the ground in the rare case that he slip. This would have been great, should he have not fallen, but he did. At the same time that my sister and I were in school and my mother was about to get into the shower.
The rope that had once been tied around his waist had been suddenly thrusted upward until it was caught around his neck causing my brother to lay mostly hanging from the side of the structure. His lips turned blue.
My mother felt the Lord tell her to check on the kids just one more time, so she grabbed her bathrobe and walked outside. She found my brother just in time. He miraculously survived.
2015 - The Infection
John had always had the worst stomach pains, often taking antacids or changing his diet to alleviate future occurrences. This one day, however, the pain was so excruciating that he decided to go to the Emergency Room.
The doctors that day diagnosed my brother with an intestinal infection and sent him on his way with a prescription for antibiotics. My brother took them. Every day. As told. And the pain grew worse.
Finally, after becoming severely ill, my brother was taken back into the Emergency Room where a new doctor confirmed that my brother did have an infection - just not the one that they had originally been treating for. John had developed C-diff. Should he have waited it out for the prescribed antibiotics to finally kick in, he would have died.
John was put into an isolated room and nurses were given Haz Mat suits when checking on him. He miraculously survived.
2016 - The Collision
John Paul was a lover of motorcycles and riding. He had been hired at the Federal Court in Sacramento, CA and decided to save time and money with the troubling parking situation by purchasing a bike.
He rode it responsibly and wore the appropriate protective gear at all times. Then a woman pulled out right in front of him and his body collided with her truck. He broke a finger and had a few scrapes and bruises but, he miraculously survived.
2018 - The Suicide Attempt
The 27th year of John's life brought a lot of challenges. The loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, and the loss of living in a place that he loved. My brother was a strong willed man, there is no doubt, but the pain at this time in his life was stronger.
While my parents were asleep in the next room my brother took an extension cord and tied it around his neck. He hung himself. The last thing he remembered was slipping slowly into an unconscious state. And then after a long while, waking back up. There was no reason that it should not have worked. He called Stephanie in a panic and said "I don't know what happened! I shouldn't have woken up!" Again my brother escaped death's grip and miraculously survived.
2018 - The Accident
On Thursday, May 17th my parents moved the first U-Haul of their belongings from the house that my brother would now rent, from Roseville, CA to Grover Beach. Five hours away.
On Friday John purchased a motorcycle along with a new helmet, and on Saturday my brother made plans to take a casual ride up through Auburn, CA to take in the beautiful scenery on an even more beautiful day.
John texted my sister and then left the house. A while later the hospital would call my sister back to ask her to come to the hospital as my brother had been in an accident. Stephanie called my father with the information that she had been given: my brother had not lost consciousness but it was serious.
She arrived to the trauma emergency room and found my brother laying on a hospital bed, he was paralyzed from the chest down. Stephanie once again called the family with the devastating news. My parents who had just moved to our area, picked me up on their way back up north - a five hour drive - and on the way I called my younger sister who was still on her honeymoon in Big Sur so that she too could get on the road.
We arrived Saturday night to an awake and alert John Paul, but the injuries (of which included a completely severed spinal cord, damaged T3-T7 vertebrae, fractured C2, five arterial bleeds, a facial fracture, and more) had made it necessary for him to be intubated to assist his breathing, leaving only the ability for John to write as a means to communicate. He was in pain, but in high spirits.
The impact should have killed him. The doctors were baffled at the list of injuries as they, one by one, exclaimed that they had never seen anyone survive this list gruesome injuries before. He once again, miraculously survived.
2018 - The Close Call
John Paul had surgery to stabilize his spinal cord on Sunday, May 20th and things seemed to have improved. A doctor visited the waiting room and spoke with us about the future rehabilitation center that my brother would live in to teach him how to live "on his own" in a wheelchair as a paraplegic. Monday they took the tube out of his mouth and he began speaking to us about all matters of life. Mostly making jokes about himself, his condition... and his anatomy. I won't share those here.
He also spoke of his scientific beliefs about the world, his longing to not be selfish in who would visit his bedside, and the importance of (and love he possessed for) his friends and family. At one point he looked at my sister and me and said "in your reality, I die. But in mine, I live again." He was of course talking about an alternate reality in which he would be reborn as some other person or thing, but we smiled and talked about something else.
I stayed with him that night in the hospital. I encouraged my family to go somewhere to get a full night of sleep as he had been doing so well, and I set up a chair by his bedside. He was supposed to sleep, but he never did.
I laughed at his jokes, danced to his music (as he lifted his arms to dance along with me), and I handed him his suction and water when he felt like he was choking or needed to suck on his "water pop".
My father came at 5 am on Tuesday morning to relieve me of my duties and I took a power nap in a hospital recliner inside of the waiting room. I awoke at 8 am to find the tube had been inserted back into his mouth as his lungs had been progressively getting worse.
At some point John's body had developed an infection that would wreak havoc on his frail body. I will spare you the details (and spare myself from having to relive every terrible moment of waiting) but what I can say is this - the notice outside of the Trauma ICU doors that reads how there are only allowed 2 visitors at a time unless it is the "end of life" became very real to our family that Wednesday night. Over a dozen of us, along with a social worker and chaplain, were rushed into his room as his sats were crashing.
While family members were desperately praying one nurse walked around carrying a tissue box. I looked at her and said "he's dying, isn't he". She, through tears, responded with a sorrowful yet assured "yes". He wasn't expected to survive the night but he again miraculously survived.
2018 - The Final Goodbye
The afternoon of Saturday, May 26, 2018 will forever be etched in my mind. The doctor sat with our family and discussed that John's condition was severe. The intense medications he was on was keeping his heart stable but killing his other organs. He was in organ failure and the dialysis was of no help. Keeping him on the medications would end his life. Taking them off of the medications would end his life.
It was not a matter of "if" but "when".
We gathered around his bed, kissing his hands and holding each other close. And then my brother passed away at 8:40 pm.
- - - - -
You may have read these stories and wondered what I could have possibly learned about God's love through it all, but I want to share with you this last thing.
My brother grew up in church but had never made a decision to believe in God. In fact, he reminded us of that up until the last week of his life - even after his initial accident. This has always been a point of sorrow for me as I have devoted my life to the teachings found in scripture, because I wholeheartedly believe it to be true. Every word.
The night my brother's sats dropped, grief consumed my heart. If he had passed at that moment - if he had passed at any moment when he straddled the line between death and life - I could not tell you where my brother would spend his eternity with any certainty. But God.
Friends, God was relentless with my brother. He was patient and loving and kind, and chased after John with more intensity than I can even wrap my head around. He never gave up. Never said he was too far gone in his own beliefs. Never turned His back.
God rescued my brother time and time again from certain death to give him one more chance, and then one more chance, and then one more chance.
On Thursday, May 24th my brother - barely holding on - would struggle to blink his heavy eyes on command. This was the last time that he would respond to any of our conversations with him. And it was in this moment that my husband would walk into his hospital room, joined by my father and our pastor, and ask my brother the most important question anyone can ask.
"Do you want to pray the sinner's prayer and ask God to come into your life?"
He blinked.
My husband prayed. And then Rich asked "if you prayed that prayer with me, can you blink again"... my brother slowly blinked four more times as a sign of assurance.
- - - - -
The truth of the matter is this - my husband had a dream that we prayed that prayer with my brother. I believe it was to push us to do so as it would be the last chance we would have with him. And if he had prayed it in his own head, we would have never known.
This is the God that we serve. A God that unrelentingly chases us with His love and a God who cares enough about those who are left behind to give us visions that prompt us into action so that we could hold onto that moment as a source of peace forever.
- - - - -
The pain is still very real, it can be crippling at times, but the peace that my brother is in Heaven getting to know his Savior is real too. And not only that, but my brother is whole and walking on streets of gold. Waiting for us to join him.
I cannot wait to see him again, oh what a reunion that will be!
The last picture my brother sent to my sister, one we took in April when we celebrated my father's birthday. He said he loved it the most, because he looked happy.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed, friends.
If you have been running from God's love, I want to encourage you today to stop for one moment and ask yourself "why". He loves you. He always has. He always will. Nothing (no sin or shame or distance or rejection) can separate us from His love. (see Romans 8:35-39)
If you would like to accept Jesus into your life as your personal Lord and Savior, making Heaven your home in eternity, then all you have to do is "declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. " (Romans 10:9). You can do so now by praying this prayer:
Lord Jesus, for too long I’ve kept you out of my life. I know that I am a sinner and that I cannot save myself. No longer will I close the door when I hear you knocking. By faith I gratefully receive your gift of salvation. I am ready to trust you as my Lord and Savior. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for coming to earth. I believe you are the Son of God who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead on the third day. Thank you for bearing my sins and giving me the gift of eternal life. I believe your words are true. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, and be my Savior. Amen.