We have all lost loved ones; some, like elderly parents, we were happy to see go on to be with their life partners. Some brothers and sisters have died too soon; friends who have died ahead of their time we mourn deeply. But children are a whole other story. Parents are never supposed to outlive their children.
Many of our friends have lost children, in car accidents, skiing accidents, sudden heart attacks, drug overdoses and even three in one family who died very close together from previously unknown genetic heart disorders. I have always begged God never to let us experiences such losses, as we have no idea how to cope with them.
But courageous and heroic parents must deal with such losses every day. In hospice nursing I saw them up close and personal and admired the happy hearts they showed their dying children so they would not be afraid.
One such mother wrote to me about her young daughter, diagnosed with ovarian cancer, who wanted so much to live. They denied, they cried, they prayed and finally they accepted the “ultimate healing” God chose for her, “delivering her from the perishing body she had long endured, to be with her Lord. Would I bring her back? No,” she wrote. “I know Jan is with her Lord and I will see her soon. A little while before she took her last breath, a beautiful expression came across her face. Not a big smile, but a look of total peace. Her eyes were no longer sunken in her head and her mouth lay softly open as if sleeping. I knew she was at home with the Lord.”
The loss of a child is always heartbreaking, but when a mother is willing to give her child back to God rather than see her suffer any more, it is the ultimate sacrifice and a totally unselfish gift. We should all pray we would be able to love so deeply if we had to.
