4th December
Grief Interrupted
When the oncology team from the Royal Children’s Hospital requested a meeting with us on Christmas Eve, we suspected the news would not be anything we wanted to hear. After home-nursing our teenage daughter who had been bravely battling aggressive brain cancer for almost a year, we were not ready to receive these shattering words:
‘We are so sorry … we have done all we possibly can … but the tumour is on the move again, and we expect Bethany will pass away during the Christmas holidays.’
As the reality of encroaching death tightened its grip, somehow we managed to thank the team for all their care, while wondering how on earth we could communicate this life-altering news to the rest of the family who were still praying for a miracle. Our Christmas had been brutally interrupted with unfathomable grief. And yet, as we were soon to discover, the transformative message of Christmas came bursting through the grief with shards of luminous hope, interrupting even our darkest hour.
Bethany took the harsh news better than we did, reframing her ‘death sentence’ with surprising insight. It was heartbreaking, yet it was also incredibly beautiful to witness our daughter surrender her tender life and dreams to God, even as she whispered her sacred goodbyes: ‘Mum and Dad, the Lord showed me he was going to do something special for me soon, and I think this is it. You can stop praying for me now … all I really want is to be with Jesus … to sit on his lap and gaze into his face.’
My new devotional journal, Waiting Well With Jesus, builds on themes I learned from Bethany’s experience of Emmanuel – God with us. Jesus still delights in interrupting the sorrows of this world with his ever-present life and peace.
