Written for the Glory of God by Lynne Garrison
His Grace Runs Deep
Yet, the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
-Isaiah 30:18
This is a story of God knowing my deepest desires. Within three months, I lost three friends to cancer. Two of them, Laine and Charlotte, lived far away yet we communicated by e-mail. I was connected to these beautiful, Christian women by a summer mission to France in 1980. I stayed in touch with them for 44 years. I knew their diagnoses (advanced metastatic cancer), their treatments, and their suffering. Since my correspondence was directly with them, I worried I would only learn of their deaths long after their passing. M y deep desire was to not miss their Celebrations of Life and to be able to grieve and worship with their families and friends.
Laine, from California, passed away November 5, 2024. In the early morning hours of November 10, I received a phone call from her husband, Arthur, while Herb and I were in France. For 30 minutes he tearfully recounted their courtship (brewing in the summer of 1980), their marriage and family life, and their final days together. I listened to his memories and shared in his grief and pain. We watched her Celebration of Life service online two weeks later as we packed to return home.
During that same trip to France, Herb and I visited Charlotte and her husband Daniel, in their home north of Paris. We had visited them many times over the years and because of Charlotte's cancer had anticipated this would be our final time together. She was on a break from her chemotherapy and was having a good day. Charlotte died one month ago. We joined her Celebration of Life remotely after Daniel reached out to us on WhatsApp.
The third loss occurred suddenly with no warning and no suffering. After being gone a week and leaving her at home with her buddy Edith, Colbie greeted us with great joy. We had a fun evening playing fetch, and she chewed up two Christmas toys. The next morning, she collapsed unexpectedly. The ultrasound at the vet's office showed a ruptured cancer of the spleen. My worry had been that our 12½ year-old Golden Doodle would die while we were out of town. That worry was wiped away as Herb and I were there with her as she peacefully went to sleep.
These three deaths were times of great sorrow, but God granted me peace and closure with each one. They showed me how deep God's grace runs — into the very depths of our souls to worries we may not even speak out loud.
Thank you, God, for paying attention to worries we might think selfish or trivial. Thank you for your faithfulness and abounding love. Amen.
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