Yesterday, I hugged a mama who stood by the casket containing the sweet form of her two-year old son. Then I hugged the baby’s daddy. They have spent the last year-and-a half in and out of cancer units at Huntsville Hospital, Vanderbilt and St. Jude. Baby Amos has spent more nights of his life in the hospital than out. They watched him suffer when Morphine and Ativan were no match for the pain. These parents were often away from their six other sons while keeping the bedside vigil for Amos. One of those six is severely disabled–unable to walk, communicate, breathe easily, or eat– due to complications at birth. This nine -year-old receives constant family care. The past year-and-a-half have been, for these parents, only survival mode. Last Tuesday, Baby Amos won the battle over the cancer and gained the ultimate freedom from all pain and sickness.
At what was appropriately termed a celebration of his life, his brothers, ages 3-12, led the family (and all of us) in singing “God is so Good”, “How Deep the Fathers Love”,“Jesus Loves the Little Children”, and “Jesus Loves Me”. His father talked about counting our blessings and letting our lights shine. He talked about baby Amos now being whole and happy and safe with our Lord. 
Some of the songs were sung in English first and then echoed in Samoan, the family’s native tongue. One song was sung completely in Samoan and the rich tones of that full and beautiful refrain from that broken-hearted, but faith-filled family are with me still as I reflect. They did not falter in praise. Amos’ uncles and his cousin also helped with the service.
Last night, as Eliza Jane said her bed-time prayer, she said “Thank you for taking care of Baby Amos when he died.” I could not have said it better. Simply profound. He is now in the infinitely better care of the Father.
That’s what He’s done for me, too. At Calvary, he took care of me for the time when I die. He empowered me to shout “Oh death, where is thy strength? Oh grave where is thy victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).
Amos suffered like none of us reading has endured. Yet during some of his hardest days, he was still giving out his favorite form of encouragement—fist bumping all around him “to beat the band” from that hospital bed.
Sunday night is often Eliza Jane’s night to come to Mammy’s. As I write it’s about 6 am on Monday and she has just come from her little bed to climb in and snuggle with me. As I look down at her little Bluey-tattooed arm and her disheveled dog-ears, her closed eyes and that ever-beloved paci, that we can’t seem to wrest away, bobbing up and down, I wonder why. Why is it that one family has lost their baby and my little grandchild is sleeping peacefully beside me? I do not know. But I do know that they really have not lost him. 
They know right where he is.
While the pain is excruciating and the sorrow will not ease for a long time, that sorrow stands in juxtaposition to the faith and hope that was so bravely displayed yesterday in that service. Their very lives, in this moment, are the battleground between despair and faith, between steadfastness and surrender to the awful pain that was initially inflicted in the garden by the devil himself. And faith and hope is winning in their lives. I have never seen a more potent display of faith. They came to Huntsville, Alabama almost ten years ago now, for many reasons, the immediate one being care for Melchizedek, their third son. They needed resources. They needed more current methods of health care for Mel. They needed a strong church family. But I think we needed them more than they needed us.
I am stronger today than yesterday, when I went to worship in dread of the sadness I knew the day held. God is good, like that. Yesterday, he gave Glenn and me four people with whom to study. He gave us three baptisms. He gave us a visitor who needed a little comfort over lunch. He gave us an extra 9-year -old friend at lunch for the children. He gave me two visitors to transport in my vehicle. On an infinitely grander level, He gave us His undeserved communion around His table and the privilege of study and praise. And then, just when I sat down to witness a family in their hour of deepest sorrow, He gave me, through the lens of a great Samoan ohana, the light at the end of a dark tunnel. I have long quoted Psalm 46:1:
God is our refuge and strength; a very present help in a time of trouble.
Yesterday, the verse was not merely quoted; it was on display. Trouble, in that verse, means a constricted place, in which there is no way to turn. It means between a rock and a hard place. Yesterday was a tangible picture of what His people do when between a rock and hard place and, in the most constricted of places. They realize that the Rock is Jesus and that, even in darkness, they can find a way to stand firmly on that Rock. Thank-you, Abraham, Diana, AJ, Caleb, Mel, Glenn, Gabriel, Zechariah, Pisa, Ruth, Junior, Retta, Malachi and Gideon. We are praying continually. Thank-you Amos, for leaving a little legacy. The God of more (Ephesians 3:20) can do more than we ask or imagine with a brief life lived in that constricted place.
He is good.
Death and its power never ceases to amaze me. I don’t want to be unfeeling or irreverent, but it has come to every single person (except Enoch and Elijah) since the sin in the garden. Yet we all act shocked when it comes to our house. It is the most predictable event and yet we are never prepared for our loved ones to go. We act as if we never imagined this could happen and yet we knew, beyond doubt, that it would happen.
I know God knows best, but I wish Carol could have lived a little while longer because, unlike most people diagnosed with cancer, she came into her spiritual prime AFTER that diagnosis. Not that she wasn’t a force for the devil to reckon with prior to the cancer, but, with all the spiritual tenacity that was characteristic of her whole life, she determined to spend the last months of her life influencing, patterning and preparing for the time when she “being dead, yet speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). And she does speak with clarity now. She went to her long home (Ecclesiastes 12:5) on Saturday morning early and left many of us just longing for the reunion we will know one day.
The first run quickly sold out and we have a very limited supply of the second printing. If you want one by which you may remember Carol, but most importantly draw closer to the God she served, order here: 
loved my grandchildren. She taught them and many of your children and grandchildren. She was the brightest source of encouragement that I’ve known in this world in a very long time. The chasm of this void will be deep for many. We should pray for each other as we walk through the valley of the shadow of this death (Psalm 23:4). He is with us.
So said Ezra, age five. As we were tromping through the old cemetery beside our house, he was asking about the people buried there. “Were these people Christians?”
Later in the week we watched that classic old Disney movie together: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. He listened intently to a line taken from the ten commandments and another phrase repeated throughout the movie: “I make sure I’m right, and if I am right, then I go ahead.”
Tonight, I am not where I want to be at all. I’d like to be in Texas with my husband as he mourns, there, the death of his sister, Laura Jenkins. I’d like to be there, not because it would be enjoyable, in any sense, but because it would be my honor to get to personally listen to the sweet tribute that will be her memorial service and to personally hug her husband and children and her parents who have meant so much to our family though the years. I’ve known Laura, of course, for as long as I have known my husband—over 40 years—and I have laughed harder with her than almost anyone. We laughed so hard that night I went sprawling across the WalMart parking lot in a mammoth fall, my feet right out from under me, sliding across wet pavement for several feet in a monsoon. (I’m still laughing just writing about it, but her laughter always exacerbated mine, particularly if we were in a place in which we were not supposed to be laughing.)
I personally know (with amazing precision) the hurt through which her daughter will battle on her way to be with her. I was 33 years old when I lost my mother to the same wretched disease. I think that’s exactly the age of Laura’s daughter, Amanda. My children were the ages of hers. My husband was a minister, like hers. It will not be easy. But it will be bearable because of Calvary’s sting removal. Jesus took away the sting of death that’s hopelessness. An old rugged cross made all things new for Laura. The pain on that hill took her’s away–for good–in the valley of the shadow of death. An empty tomb rolled away that one big stone for millions to come; those who’ve been buried and raised with Him.
While, I’m sure that, with the birth of her daughter and later, her second son, she had strong desires to stay and mold and watch as their lives unfolded (and I’m absolutely positive that her inner Lolli was hoping to watch three beautiful and talented grandchildren all the way to adulthood), she never stopped wanting to ultimately go to heaven.
And your daddy. That’s a different story. You want him to be happy so badly that you’ll travel almost any distance to let him put his arms around your kids on any holiday, birthday or any day that ends with “y”. His happiness. You want it, but you can never figure out how to make it happen. Nothing, at least for a while, makes him seem truly content. That’s because His center of contentment has relocated. You keep reminding yourself he’s on his way there, too.
She’d be happy to know your home is looking more and more like heaven. But really, heaven is looking more and more like home.
Many, up until his death last week, thought he was the world’s greatest living scientist. Merging Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum theory to himself postulate that space and time would begin with the Big Bang and end with black holes, he authored numerous books, including what was termed his landmark work, “A Brief History in Time”. This one volume, among many he authored, sold over ten million copies. (He is pictured here with former President and Mrs. Clinton.)