How she didn’t die.

I thought she would die.

I don’t think she thought she would live this long…and now what.

She had lived plenty…she had lived a good life….she had born 5 and borne much more.

I think she thought she could just fade away.

I sat with her every day…or every other day.

Her friends filled her table with cards and prayers, flowers and chocolates.

My aunts brought soup and drove her to a million useless doctors appointments.

She told me she didn’t want to cook…I brought her dinners every day I could.

We went through sadness to madness…. in the back of my head I knew if I could just get her to summer….she would be okay.

I sat and listened…and somedays I got mad…and somedays I broke down in tears and begged, throwing pride to the side, “I love you , please don’t leave  us like this.”

and somedays I just left the chicken and rice in the fridge as I slipped in and out of her home.

But one day I saw a receipt tacked up on the board which has been there my whole life… I cringed, the receipt said the Immortality Iris would arrive in the fall.

I could feel her eyes on me …even though she had tried to act like she was sleeping.

I felt like she ordered those stupid iris’ on purpose as a sign…

and we would have to sign for them in the fall….and I bet she thought she would be gone by then.

She probably thought she would be dead.

I have never even seen her plant iris’ before in all her beautiful gardens I couldn’t think of one iris.

I fumed frustrated when I left that day.

She always came to PFW…always.
One night I slipped in next to her…I peered into her, locking eyes with hers so sunken…she had never looked worse, now down to 90 lbs but taller than me. A hundred tiny bobby pins all ill placed holding broken bits of grey hair to her head. Nothing to lose but her, I whispered…“You know how our marriages should reflect how Christ loves the church?”
She nodded knowing the Bible better than I.
“You know how the church is to cast all it’s problems…all it’s cares and worries upon Him?”
Her whole body nodded forward and her eyes squinted to see where I was going.
I lowered my tone and told her the rest… the rest of my theory….and then I told her to pray a certain way…ask for a certain thing…let go of it all in a certain way.
She furrowed her brow in doubt…and I made her tell me she would do it.
And she surely did.

~

The next day I saw her…and it was like she was new again.
Still skinny… but light in her eyes… she had woke up and curled her hair….she smiled and laughed as the little girls sang.
I sat next to her again…”did you pray it like I said?”…she patted my leg, smiled and nodded, and her eyes sparkled at me.

~

That was three weeks ago.
She has since  went to my brother’s wedding and danced.

She came to PFW the other night , like she always does, and was up to the front to sway to the music.

1 Peter 5:6-11
New International Version (NIV)
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

~

Ephesians 5:22-30
New International Version (NIV)
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body.