I Miss Her

I’ve mentioned the fact that my husband was adopted, and that he and his siblings were reunited after being separated 35 years. It hardly seems possible that was thirty years ago, too. Time flies. We grow older. Most, but not all of us.

One of us stopped growing older October 18, just three years ago, and I miss her very much. Long before the reunion, she married the third brother. We didn’t know about their wedding, their three children or her husband’s service to our country. By the time we met, we were already grandparents.

We had already determined service to our Lord was really the most important thing we had to share. In addition to being sisters-in-law, we were also sisters in Christ. I miss her.

She loved our Lord enough to share Him with others, even when they failed to believe. She helped teach me to accept that, but to continue in prayer and love for each and every one that still need Him.

She knew her heart was failing – it had failed before, a consequence of radiation treatments that beat Hodgkin’s. Each time there was a treatment, a doctor, perhaps even a miracle along the way that gave her years to enjoy her family, her children, her grandchildren, new brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews.

Through the years she explained what I later recognized as part of Pascal’s Wager:

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. 
Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

That’s not the way she said it, of course. She made it much more personal and easier to understand:

I’d rather live my life believing there is a God and die to find out there isn’t than to live my life not believing there is a God only to find out there is.

She believed. She believed, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelations 22:21. She didn’t understand all of it any more than I do, but she found love, comfort, peace that passes understanding. Before her last surgery, knowing it might not be sufficient, she shared that peace with us. But, I miss her.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8 KJV)

There are verses that comfort me as I plan a picnic with her in a specific place:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. (Revelation 22:1-5 KJV)

A picnic beside the river of water of life under the shade of the tree of life with God-given light, where we can once again sing the praises of our Lord, glorify His name and I will not be missing her.