Christmas 2014 was shaping up even better than I hoped. I’d spent weeks putting together a celebration for my wife that would follow The Twelve Days of Christmas. Each day, for 12 days starting Christmas Day, she would receive gifts according to the number of the day. For example, one gift on Christmas Day, for the first day, and 12 gifts on the twelfth day.
Christmas morning arrived. I got up first and had a slice of toasted banana nut bread with cream cheese and a cup of coffee. Linda got up a bit later and had a bowl of cereal. I let the dog out and then we went and sat in the living room near the tree. I’d given her several days to just ponder what might be in the 240 packages, which were bundled together by day, in, around, and under the tree.
She opened her first present. I opened the gifts she had gotten for me, and we gave Lucy the dog her gift. Then I went to the bathroom and Linda apparently went downstairs to the basement. And then life took an unexpected, disconcerting turn.
We were having guests for dinner and Linda wanted to make sure everyone had a gift when they arrived. She realized she still needed one small item, so she went downstairs to the basement storage room to get something. I didn’t know she’d gone downstairs and I couldn’t find her upstairs, so when I came back into the living room I called her name to find out where she was. I heard her call my name and I heard Lucy bark from downstairs in the basement.
I hurried down the steps and turned to the right to see what I had desperately hoped I would not find. Linda was on the floor in the basement, in the one section of the basement where the concrete is not covered by carpet. She was lying on her side and could not get up. Lucy was circling her head whimpering.
Linda has muscular dystrophy. Because her muscles no longer function, when she falls there is no muscle tone to prepare for the shock of landing. She hits the ground with nothing to break her fall. We worry about falls. Our worries were founded that day.
Apparently as she reached for something on a shelf Linda lost her balance and fell backward slamming the back of her head on the concrete floor with nothing to cushion the force of the fall. Later we would discover she fractured her skull and suffered three different bleeds in her brain.
First, after I called 911, a deputy arrived (thanks, Dave) and then the ambulance crew came (they were incredible!) and transported Linda to the hospital. The hospital ER staff (amazing people!) worked their magic and soon Linda was headed to Duluth to the Neuro- ICU at Essentia Health/St. Mary’s. For four days she lay intubated and unconscious under the watchful care of skilled staff.
Standing next to her bed when I first arrived in ICU I asked her doctor how she was. I had been forgotten by the ER staff at St. Mary’s, had not been kept informed of their strategy, and did not expect to find Linda in the condition she was in. The doctor said, “We’ll know more in the morning.” I didn’t understand and asked her what she meant. She looked at me with all the compassion she could muster and said if Linda was still with us in the morning, it would be very good!
Now I understood. I understood the looks that had crossed between other people intervening in our crisis who had seen all this before. As I sat next to Linda’s bedside and the minutes of the night ticked away on the blood pressure monitor I came to understand something else, something even more important than realizing how precarious was my wife’s condition.
I came to understand that though I was more deeply concerned than I can ever remember being about anything, I was not afraid. I was not afraid. Not for Linda. Not for myself. Not for that moment. Not for the future. Not for anything. I had every reason to be afraid, to be overwhelmed, to be desperate, but I wasn’t.
I’m recounting all this for you because this is what it means for me to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a believer in God and in His word, the Bible. This is why I am a pastor and why Linda and I have spent 20 years attempting to serve the Lord with our whole hearts here in Grand Marais. In every moment of life, whether full of joy or shadowed in threat, I know without a shadow of a doubt that God loves me and has my life in His hands, my best interests in His mind, and my forever in His heart. I know that by sending His Son, Jesus, to live and die in my place God has made a way for me to know Him and love Him and be loved by Him; that He is good and always does what is right, and that He is worthy of faith, of trust, and of following.
I wish you could know what I know, that no matter what happens, God loves you and this life is not all there is. I wish you could know that even the most difficult situations that come to us need not enslave us to fear because there is One whose deep-hearted concern for us is both infinite and eternal. I wish you could know down deep in your heart that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28, ESV).
God is neither distant nor unconcerned. He is near at hand, not sequestering us from the fear-inducing events of a complicated, broken world, but upholding us, loving us, leading us from fear to hope as we trust Him.
That’s Good News for all of us.
Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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