Why I Still Believe

Last week, I had several new experiences that I can honestly say I never wanted to have.  On Monday, I sat with my mother as her breathing slowed to nearly nothing. I sat with her for hours, talking to her while her body shut down. She responded by blinking and movements though, so I know she could hear me. She passed away the next day,  at 4 in the morning.

On Friday of last week, at mom’s memorial service, someone came up to me at the end and asked how I could possibly still have faith in God “after all I’ve been through this summer.”  I didn’t get into detail there, mostly because the question itself didn’t really make sense until after the fact, but I guess I feel the need to address it now.

I am, by faith, a Christian. My husband is as well, and our children are baptized into the Christian faith. And while it would be easy, I suppose, to abandon my faith right now, to get really angry with God, etc. I can’t because He actually made this as easy as possible on us, even though we didn’t see it at the time.

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2 years ago, we were building a brand new home 300+ miles away from the town where I grew up, where my mom lived. 3 weeks from closing, we got a frantic call from the builder saying the loan company had given us misinformation and we’d need WAY more money at closing than we were prepared for. Our options were to go through with it and bring that money, or receive a full refund for our deposits made and back out of the deal. After a lot of crying, panicking, long talks with each other and my mom, and some fighting with my husband (yes, we do fight!), we decided for option #2. We hurried into a not-so-great renting situation because we had such short notice, and life was really, really miserable for a year while we were stuck there.

About a month before the lease was to expire on our bad rental, Dave’s cousin sent him an email about a job opportunity in Pittsburgh, where both of us grew up. Dave wasn’t actively looking for a job but….This job would be easier than his then-current job, pay way more, and be closer to our families in an area we loved. He jumped on the opportunity, and less than a week later, was offered the job.

They wanted him there in a week to start. One week. So we hurried and packed, gave our notice to move, and were able to leave as quickly as we came because it was a rental property. If we had owned the house we were building, we couldn’t have moved so quickly and we may still be stuck there, especially in this housing market.

In one weekend, we viewed something like 20 potential places to live (rentals, of course, because there was no time for the buying process) – most of which were less than worth the  money asked. The very last place we looked at appeared to be too good to be true online, but when we got there,  it delivered. We put down our deposit and moved in the following week, and still live there. It also came with amazing neighbors, so it was twice worth it.

My mom started having gall bladder attacks in early March, right after we had gotten settled in our new place. She tried to ignore them, but as the month went on, they got worse. When the first week of April rolled around, she admitted herself to the hospital and they determined her gall bladder had to come out.

That night, as we left from visiting her, I told Dave that I had a terrible feeling about it, even though gall bladder removal is pretty commonplace. I cried and cried that night, with this terrible feeling looming over me. Everyone told me that I was being dramatic, but I still couldn’t shake it.

When the doctor came out to talk to me after mom’s gall bladder surgery, he started with the good. “It went well,” he said. “She’s in recovery. However, I have to tell you that the gall bladder looked…odd. It’s really rare, but we’re sending it out to be analyzed because sometimes, there’s cancer when the organ looks strange.” I nervously giggled and barely regarded that last part because the surgery had gone well and she was in recovery. And because “it’s really rare” apparently meant in my mind that “nothing bad will happen.” The bad feeling was still present, though I pushed it to the back of my mind.

It was cancer. And in a whirlwind, mom ended up with a second surgery and a third surgery – both revealed what I felt in my bones from the get go. It wasn’t good. Not even close. The cancer had gone from gall bladder to liver to lungs in a matter of 2 weeks. There was nothing more the doctors could do. They gave her approximately 6 months to live.

The weeks that followed were full of ups and downs. I was able to take care of her accounts, pay bills, make final arrangements with her before things got so bad she couldn’t express her wishes. For the first time since we’ve been  married, Dave and I were making enough money to pay bills AND save. The kids got to see their grandma a lot. She got well enough to be able to go to lunch/dinner, festivals, and parades. Those weeks were magical memories for us – ones that we wouldn’t have had if we’d gotten that house, if Dave had blown off that job opportunity, if we hadn’t been able to find *the perfect rental* when we moved.

3 weeks before I was due with Harrison, I woke up in the middle of the night on a Sunday, feeling like someone was stabbing me in the liver. I was violently ill and in terrible pain. After 3 hours of dealing with it at home, I went to the hospital, where they admitted me to labor and delivery. By 4pm, they decided that both Harrison and I were very sick and needed to be separated. By 5pm, he was born via c-section, 3 weeks early, and completely healthy. By 8pm, I was back to healthy too. Mom was able to come to the hospital to visit us.

A week after Harrison was born, mom’s health slipped downhill significantly. She slept a large chunk of the time, and even her hospice nurses seemed concerned. If Harrison had been born “on time,” she wouldn’t have remembered meeting him, and she certainly couldn’t have made it to the hospital. During that week, we also found out that Dave’s union was going on strike, leaving us with no income, and leaving him at home.

Because we had been able to save  money with this new job, we were able to pay our bills. And because of the strike, Dave was home to help me with the kids and house, and was able to be there when I got the 4am call that my mom passed away. He was able to be there to help me make funeral arrangements, to be there for the entombment, and to be there at the memorial service itself.

The day after the memorial service (just this past Saturday), we got word that the strike is over.

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I believe because God was definitely present in all of this. Like most anything else, it is easiest to be a fair-weather Christian, and it would be very easy to be angry, hurt, and disconnected from my faith. But I honestly feel like God’s hand was at work in this, even starting 2 years ago with the house falling through. And that’s not to say that I didn’t grumble and complain and question things along the way, but on the other side of it all, I see why it came to be.

I’m not one to think that God will prevent bad things from happening to good people – and I actually prefer to look at it as good people happening to a bad world anyway. Death is inevitable for all of us, but in losing my mother and best friend, God handed us quality time on a silver platter and let us run with it for as long as we could.

And I am so thankful for that.

 

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