In March 2022, after four-plus years battling colon cancer, and praying for healing daily, Nanci and I decided it was time to end the treatments, which weren’t effective anymore. We planned a final vacation together. Nanci was excited to make that last journey, but God had another journey in mind.
She took a turn for the worse, and nine days before she died, Nanci told me that she felt she didn’t have much time left in this world, and she wanted to speak into the lives of our kids and especially our five grandsons. (She called our daughters “the girls,” our grandsons “the guys,“ and our sons-in-law who are both named Dan “the Dans.”) So I reached out and asked our family to come within two days to gather around Nanci for what would be the final (in this world) gathering of our tribe of 11.
Honestly, I can’t imagine a more Christ-honoring sendoff and short-term goodbye of a loved one than God kindly gave us. It was truly all I could’ve hoped for and prayed for. Nanci heard words of deep love and respect from her children and grandchildren, sons-in-law, and husband.
For weeks she had hardly been able to speak a sentence without a nagging cough (her colon cancer had moved to her lungs and a third of her lungs had been surgically removed). But that day God gave her strength to share words of love and encouragement. She spoke to us for 15-20 minutes. It was Christ-centered and remarkably clear, and she spoke way longer than she had for months. God gave her a voice and His breath.
Nanci spoke to each of the people in the room, including our daughters and sons-in-law and grandsons, and she had something in particular to say to each, from her heart, as she called them by name. There were many tears, but also laughter, and it was Nanci’s laughter that gave permission and blessing to ours.
With her permission, I then read various powerful segments from her handwritten journals. This included her own profound thoughts from meditating on Scripture, as well as many verses and great quotations she had written in her journal.
This was not a normal journal. She would write a sentence or two about what the doctor had to say at an appointment, and then a page or two about a Scripture passage. For example, she had read Psalm 119:91, which says “All things are God’s servants,” then wrote in her journal about “My Cancer is God’s Servant.” I read that and various other things “Grams” had written in her journal.
I reminded our family that she had written everything I was reading to them, so I was simply the mouthpiece, and all these words and insights came from her, not me. Not only were the rest of us encouraged by what she had written, she was. It was a dream come true to have every member of the family there in that room.
That day some of our family got up and going at 8:30 AM, and by 11 AM we all came into the bedroom where Nanci was in her hospital bed. We didn’t end until 8:30 PM. Nanci slept a fair amount of the time after our morning gathering and at the end, when it was time to pray over her, she was still asleep. But we all laid hands on her and each member of the family prayed, very different and beautiful prayers. It was so incredibly heartwarming.
The beautiful thing was that all of them had earlier—either in the group of 11 of us, or one-by-one coming in to talk to her during the day—crowded into our bedroom and personally shared their love for their Grams and a temporary goodbye, which we know will be followed by eternal reunion.
What an emotional and meaningful and truly unforgettable time! Nanci's desire was to have an eternal impact on the lives of her grandsons, and her life did that, but that day was the culmination of her life.
Nanci told them, “Boys, don’t ever become bitter at God for what He chooses to do. He loves me even more than you or than I love myself and He knows what's best. Trust Him no matter what hard things you go through in your life. He will always be there for you.”
One of our seventeen-year-old grandsons sat beside his Grams, listening to her struggling to speak powerful words and hearing me read amazing words from her journal. After hearing words of life, commitment and trust from his grandmother for forty minutes, he said to her, “Grams, if you can trust God facing this [suffering and death], I know I can trust Him in whatever I’ll go through in my life.”
Another teen grandson told her, “I will never forget what you said to us today, Grams.” The others in their own ways made it clear they felt the same.
It was all embodied in those thoughts she wrote to God in her journal and allowed me to read. The family members were blown away to hear in her own words the depth of her trust in the love and sovereignty of God. So much Scripture and so many quotes from Charles Spurgeon are woven into her journal, way more than personal details of things that were happening in her life. In her journal, Nanci said twenty times more about God than she did about herself.
Seven days to the hour after we finished our time listening to Nanci and praying over her, and everyone was back home, I was alone with her and holding her hand when she died. There was a flood of relief for her and of joy for her. And of course, a river of grief, but it was not a flood because I had been going through grief for her for years. I was, and am, so incredibly happy for and proud of her for how she served and honored Jesus in this life and affected the lives of people all around her. I thank God every day for the blood-bought assurance of eternal reunion with Him, and with her, and with each other.
In light of the coming resurrection of the dead, the apostle Paul could say, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).
I realize not everyone gets the chance to have a final gathering with their family. But I do encourage anyone who has a terminal illness to use your remaining time to have God-honoring interactions with your loved ones and say whatever needs to be said while you still can.
One of the greatest gifts you can bestow on your loved ones is the honest anticipation of reunion in a better world, the one for which we were made. In fact, even if you’re not terminally ill, if you have something you’d wish you had said to your loved one before they or you unexpectedly die of a heart attack, stroke or accident that could happen any time without warning, let me suggest that you say it to them today or if not, as soon as possible. Next month may not be soon enough.
Hopefully both you and that loved one will still be around for a while. But the time will certainly come when they or you won’t be around. So be realistic. Use your time wisely now to speak into the lives of those around you.
For those who love Christ, the separation brought by death will be brief; the reunion will be everlasting and incredibly sweet. For God‘s people, the best is yet to come. We never pass our peaks in this life, we won’t reach our peaks until the resurrection and once we reach those peaks, we will never pass them, unless it is because our capacity for joy will keep forever expanding.
The kind of family gathering I’m talking about could also win the hearts of any family member struggling with their faith or who might be prone to suffer greatest grief when you die. You can give them words of assurance they will hold onto.
“Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. . .. God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. . . . We who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them. . . . And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, 17-18)
