worse than death

***This is a heartbreaking post with no happy ending.  But it is an important one for me...hope it will be for you, too.


Strangely enough, it wasn't Linda's physical condition that caught me off guard on Wednesday...though it was awful.

A friend had told me that morning that she was very near death, and I spent the day trying to prepare myself for whatever I might encounter for the sake of encouraging a new friend on her deathbed...a new sister in Christ.

I asked Junior as we walked what kind of culturally-appropriate comfort could be given, and was pleased to hear that it was the same that I would naturally do in my home culture...pray, encourage, share Scripture, just...BE.

And she did indeed look quite near death.  She couldn't weigh more than 50 lbs, resembling horrific National Geographic photos of famine victims in Africa...long limbs, huddled in a ball on her side with not enough muscle left to move, the outline of her hip bones jagged under the sheet.  Her face was so shrunken that I could see the outline of her teeth through the skin of her cheeks.

But it wasn't any of that that startled me.  It was her eyes.

The peaceful, content look in her eyes was gone....gone and replaced with WILD.  Before we even ducked into the dark room, the whites of her eyes shone, rolling back in her head in terror.

This was not a woman slipping into the loving arms of her Savior, but a hysterical woman petrified.

"EIGHTY DOLLARS" she rasped frantically.  

She started mumbling, and I joined Leandre and Junior in bending over her heaving frame, holding her skeletal hand, singing a few songs of comfort and praying beside her.  

"Sister, what are you saying?" Leandre asked after a while, the sheer presence of Christ in him calming me.  

"Eighty dollars!" she gasped again, eyes still wild and rolling.

"I need medicine!  I need to go to the hospital!  Give me eighty dollars!  Eighty dollars!"  ($9.75 USD)

We listened to her beg for money over and over, almost crazed, and to no avail Junior and Leandre tried to talk some sense into Linda.  There was clearly no point in a doctor, no miracle medication, no way she could ever make the trip to the hospital.

Junior and I made eye contact, and he mouthed, "Should we just give her the money even though there's no point?"

But it wasn't the sad nonsense of her request that gnawed at me.  

Where had her confidence gone?  Her peace?  Where was the Linda I had come to know...who was peaceful, even happy, saying many times that she had need of nothing?  Where was her rest, now that it was time for her to die?

I quickly explained my concern to Junior and Leandre, and we all switched approaches.

"Are you scared, sister?" I asked, kneeling down in a pool of her urine and spilled teas.

"I need $80.  I want to go to the hospital right now!"

"Ok, but if there is nothing man can do for you, and you were to die tonight, are you scared?" Junior asked.

"Won't you take me!?" she begged, clawing at the air in front of her.

We shared with her again from the beginning...the peace of being in God's hands, and of finding our lives in Christ.  Taking our time...making it clear...speaking to her in peace and love.

"GIVE ME $80" Linda yelped.  "I'm going to die otherwise.  I want money!"

I started to feel sick.  Sick in the depths of my heart.  This was serious.  It had to be clear to her what choice she was making.

"Linda," said Junior, "What do you want more than all else?"

"I want $80!" she moaned, frustrated. agitated.

"Cheri, you know that whoever loses his life in Christ will find it, and whoever pursues his own life loses it?  Do you want your grip on your life?  Or do you want Jesus?"

I held my breath, helpless tears coming on...no one could answer for her.  There was nothing I could do.  I couldn't make her.

"I WANT MY LIFE!" she almost shouted in a frenzy, lashing out angrily at Junior.  "I want my life!  I want $80!  Are you going to give it to me or not?"

Junior asked patiently a last time, a different way.

"You can put your confidence in Jesus, or you can put your confidence in man and the world.  But there is only ONE way to Life, and it is in Jesus.  Do you want Jesus?  Because He wants you, and...

"Are you stupid?" Linda hissed, putting the nail in the coffin.  "I WANT TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL.  Give me the money!"

"OK." Junior said, done.  "I'll go get what you really want and give it to you. Good-bye, Linda." Junior said, heading next door with Leandre and I to pray for a few other people in the house who are sick.

Cammie knelt to pray for her, but Linda was done "playing along"... she was uninterested, rude, and focused on how she could get the money as soon as possible.  

We all started heading out the door a few moments later, and just beside myself with grief, I looked back at her finished body and finished spirit raised my hand to Jesus, giving Him Linda.  I couldn't do anything else.

We made eye contact as I held out my hand, and she called me back over.  

"Aren't you going to give me anything?" she asked, bitterness dripping from her voice.

Immediately Peter's dialog at the Gate Called Beautiful rushed to my mind.

"I don't have silver or gold, but what I do have, I gave you Linda!  What I have given you these weeks is the most precious think I possess.  I don't have anything else of value.  All I've got is Christ."

Her response will always haunt me...must haunt Him every time He hears it.

"You have given me NOTHING."


I've never felt as helpless and deeply sad in my life as I did ducking out that dark door with Sofie onto the dirt path home, surrounding by chattering children and the blazing sun and the smell of sweet mangoes ripening in the heat. 


Knowing Linda to be on the brink of death--of heaven or hell--made her choice extra-devastating.   But as I've been talking to the Lord these last few days about her, I'm realizing that these choices are made every day.  Not just in the world...but BY ME.


Every day, we all have so many choices, and while they may not seem as drastic as Linda's, we are constantly choosing between loving our own lives or losing them...between ourselves and Him...between what He has asked and what we want...between LIFE and DEATH.


I make many of the same choices as Linda just made!...He's holding out what is best, holding out Himself, and so often I have my mind and eyes fixed on the "eighty dollars", fixed on the solution I have, fixed on the thing I want.  


I WANT to be angry...or I WANT to slide the truth a bit...or I WANT to make the choice that is best for me even if it's not for you...or I WANT to have my rights...I WANT to worry...I WANT to control the situation...I WANT to use "my" money my way...I WANT to have it all planned out...I WANT to be more comfortable...I WANT to be thanked...I WANT I WANT!  


But He has something better.  Something entirely different.  Something that doesn't look like me.  Doesn't look like the world.  Something that looks like Him!


So.  Then I have the choice.  He can't make me chose what is best.  No one can.  I can choose my life, or I can choose His.  One leads to death.  One leads to life.  One might be easier, but it leads to anger, bitterness, fear.  One might feel like dying to myself, but it leads to a joy that passes understanding, to the peaceful fruit of righteousness.  

...

This morning around 10 am Junior called from Gonaives on his way to Port.


"Linda died on Saturday," he told me, almost whispering.   


I wasn't surprised.  But still felt hit by deep rush of sadness that has been hitting me since Wednesday.  


Oh.


"She died Saturday and they buried her the same day."


Oh.
  
"They said she had that $80 clutched in her hand when she died."


Oh my.


"They pried it out of her fingers and used it to bury her."






There are some things worse than death.  One of them is choosing it.


It is urgent, family.  Not just that we share Life in Him...but that we choose it.  

he who loves his life will lose it, and

he who hates his life in this world

will keep it to life eternal.

john 12:25