Wow.  I have been silent way too long.

Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers despite my hiatus from writing.  I would love to go deeper with so many thoughts and events that have happened since March, but for now, a brief update to bring everyone up to speed.

We have started attending a grief support group in Ft. Worth.  It meets every two weeks and we have gone three times.  Love going there.  The kids are having the best time talking though their feelings and meeting with kids their age who have lost a parent.  There is something powerful about meeting with a group of people in the same boat.

More on that later.

We are selling the house.  It has become too hard to stay.  The three of us are convinced that we need a new place to begin a new chapter.  Our current house has been a fantastic place and has served us well.  The memories are strong and we will be sad to leave it, but the pain is too strong to remain here.  Kaufman is our home and will be until God moves us.  For now, we just need a new house.

More on that later.

The new school year is right around the corner and I am looking forward to some normalcy.  The summer has been great, and now it is time to get back to school.

On another note, it was 11 months ago tomorrow that Dr. Javle told me that there was nothing else he could do for Beth.  Eleven. Months.  Without a doubt the grief trail has been long and hard, but today the kids and I are emotionally healthier than ever.

And there will definitely be more on that.

Later.

Jesus spoke with such authority that demons begged for mercy.  The religious leaders said that no one spoke like He did.  He could pierce the sinner’s heart and speak peace to a fallen world.

The miracles He performed astounded those who saw them.  He walked on water.  He healed the blind.  He conquered death.  Even the grave was no match for His power.

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing is impossible for the God we serve.

Six months ago, I believed that He had the power to save her life.  The doctors were out of options.  Her cancer advanced beyond their medical wisdom and only God could have saved her.  So many of you prayed fervently for a miracle.  I prayed.  The kids prayed.  Team Beth prayed.

God did not save her.  Miraculous healing did not occur.  Eleven months after her diagnosis, she breathed her last on a sunny Saturday evening in September.  We said our goodbyes and left Houston without her.  A void was created in my heart that I cannot explain.  Only those who have walked this road before can begin to understand how my very soul was ripped in half.  I have spent the last six months trying to bring balance back to my state of mind.  The only words I could find to describe the feeling is, “I feel like I am constantly forgetting something.”

Where was my miracle?  Why couldn’t I experience God’s power in the way others have?  Has He given up on miracles?  Does He let nature takes its course?  The nature He created?

In the middle of a worship service last month, the Spirit of God asked me a life changing question:

What would be the real miracle?  Taking her cancer away or using her death to transform the world?

Doctors can reverse the effects of cancer, but only I can reverse the effects of death.

The real miracle here is still being worked.  He is working in the hearts and minds of all who knew her.  None of us are the same because of her life.  Her death has had just as much of an impact.

My whole life I have lived with a curse.  Actually, it’s more of an annoyance than a curse.  Curse is rather dramatic.  And to be fair, I come by it naturally.  Several members of my family are cursed.

I get cranky when I am hungry.

I turn into a bear.  And not a friendly bear.  Hunger turns me into a crazed man who snaps at anyone who dares pokes me.  If you haven’t heard, one should not poke a bear.

Beth learned this about me early on.

“Hey, sweetie! How’s your day?”

“Horrible.  Everyone is out to get me.  I can’t do anything right. My job’s at stake and it looks like I might be coming down with leprosy!”

“Get a taco and call me back.”

She never broached a major topic of discussion until I was full.  Dragging me all over north Texas buying supplies for VBS always started off with a hearty lunch.  She would ask me to help her with a long day of errand running, “if I promise to feed you first.”

Unfortunately, for her, the kids have the same gene.  So she would keep this snack box in her office so we could keep the edge off.  While we were losing our heads and snapping at each other, she would look at us like we had lost our minds.

“If you guys don’t stop it, I’m going to make you eat something.”

I miss eating snacks in her office.  It was one of the highlights of my day.  She would be busy wrapping up the end of her work day and I would come in from school.  The kids would sit on the floor, working on homework, and we would raid the snack box.  Beth and her three bears.

I have tried keeping snacks in my office, but it’s not the same.  She showed us how much she loved us with this simple act of practicality.  She didn’t have to, but she wanted her office to be a happy place for us.

And it was.  We were fed.  And we were happy.

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times.”

Sound familiar?  I have caught myself saying these things to my kids.  Life gets pretty busy and I just don’t have time to revisit things that have already been covered.

“Dude!  There are dirty clothes all over your floor.”

“My bad.”

“Can you not put them in the dirty clothes?”

“Sorry.”

“Every day, son.  Every.  Day.”

I have to admit that parenting can be a complete beat down.  My kids make me sound like a broken record.  Beating my head against the wall is not my favorite activity, but I was reminded of the need for persistent parenting this last week.

I took a picture a couple of years ago that I will treasure forever.  Beth sat down with Emily and had a conversation about what it means to make Jesus the boss of her life.  I hid in the other room in order to not interrupt and managed to sneak a picture.

This was not the first conversation Beth had and it certainly wasn’t the last.  Beth talked with both of our kids almost daily of the love God has for them.  It was important to her that her kids knew Jesus and made Him the boss of their lives.  She lived long enough to see both of her children give Jesus their hearts and lives.

This is another one of my favorite pictures.  After months of conversations and faithful praying on her behalf, Beth got to lead her daughter to Jesus.  Sitting on her mommy’s desk, my baby girl asked Jesus to be the boss of her life.

Here’s my point:  You will have the same conversations with your kids over the years.  Do not give up.  There is too much at stake to not persistently talk with your kids about God’s love.  The conversations should not end at salvation.  Children need to hear every day what it means to follow Jesus.

If Beth could tell us anything today, it would be, “Don’t miss this!  Talk to your kids.  Not just about what they are learning at school, but what are they learning about God.”  She talked with them continually, and I continue to teach them in her absence.

I hope you are talking to your children.  Keep talking.  Even if you have told them a thousand times.

Some day it will click.

For every believer, the question of God’s will has to be at the forefront.  What does God have in store for me today?  Am I in His will today?  What would He have me do?

God told Abraham to move to a land that He would show him.  Abraham would have been frozen with fear if he knew what God was up to.  God’s plan for Abraham would have been too much for him to handle.  How would that conversation have gone?

God:  Abram, I am moving you to a new place.  It will be a place for my people to become a mighty nation.  You will have to wait until you are unbelievably old before I give you a son.  And when I finally do, I am going to ask you to sacrifice him.  Kings will try to steal your wife so you’ll need to lie to them and  say she is your sister.  Your nephew Lot will rebel and live in a city that I will have to destroy and he will escape with only the clothes on his back.

Abram:  That’s all pretty heavy stuff, Lord, but I will follow you or my name is not Abram.

God:  Yeah, about that…

Jesus commanded us to “take up our cross daily” and follow Him.  The life of a Christ follower is not one of personal gain or ambition.  It is answering to the will of the Father. Every day, I wake up and give Him my life.  Paul said that he no longer lives, but it is Christ who lives through him.

Jesus prayed to have the cup pass from Him, but He would do whatever the Father asked of Him.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.  Without a doubt, Jesus was not on Earth because He wanted to, but because His Father wanted Him to.

I remember as a teenager struggling with God’s plan for my life.  What does He want from me?  Where will I go?  God, please show me what you have for me.  I want to know your plan for my life.  Give me some kind of clue of what my future will look like.

My entire life prepared me for October 14, 2010.  All the church camps, Vacation Bible Schools, Youth Mission Trips, mentoring relationships, college experiences, Sunday School classes, and personal devotionals prepared me for that day.  I had no idea that day was coming.  Never in a million years would I have thought that cancer would invade my life.  If I had seen that day coming, I would have fought with God the entire way.

The doctors knew what we were up against.  They didn’t tell us.  Statistically, people do not survive pancreatic cancer.  Each year sees 38,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer.  Each year sees 31,000 patients die.  The odds were not in our favor, but they did not tell us that.  To be honest, I am glad.  I did not need to know that.

I entered into the fight with a blind ignorance that depended on God to bring me through each day.  The last eleven months I spent with Beth were the best months of our entire marriage.  Had I known they were our last ones together, I would have missed it all.  I would have shaken my fist at Heaven and dragged my feet all the way.  Frozen in fear and doubt, I would have been worthless to Beth and the kids.  I did not need to know.

No longer do I ask what the future holds.  I don’t want God to give me a detailed map of where He is taking me or for what He is preparing me.  Trusting Him completely, I will not worry about tomorrow, because today has enough troubles of its own.  He will be there for me.  Just as always.  Even to the ends of the earth.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, Beth’s office would be the reception desk to Heaven.  Everything was in its place and everything had a place.

On days that the clutter was the worst, she would proclaim, “I can’t work in this environment!” and the cleaning would begin.

Nothing was safe.  Germs and dust didn’t stand a chance.  Everything would be sprayed and wiped down.  And if it didn’t smell clean, it wasn’t clean.  Pine-Sol was her favorite scent.  If she could have figured out a way to put a wick in a bottle of that stuff, it would have been the eternal flame in her office.

Legend has it the rest of the staff knew that Beth had a lot to accomplish because she was cleaning her office.  The waft of Lysol hanging in the hall was her declaration, “If you want to sit down and small talk, find another day.  I’ve got corn to shuck.”  She was a woman on a mission and if you sit still too long, she will draft you into battle.  This was war and clutter was the enemy.  No time to consider the collateral damage.  You will be disinfected.

So it was no surprise to me when I found these bottles in her office.  I imagined her using them to get her office just the way she wanted it.  Clean and ready for action.  There is an old joke that says, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.”

That joke never was really funny.

The last time it happened, Beth and I were sitting in a doctor’s office.  Two married kids in love with God, life and each other.  Spending the last two minutes laughing about events that happened the day before.  In the third minute, Dr. Weber walked in.

Cancer.

Never has three minutes been so powerful.  So painful.  So scary.  A lot can happen in three minutes.

This morning, I experienced another three minutes that I will not soon forget.

The first minute.  Sitting on the edge of my bed, I read John 17:21

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

The second minute.  I wrestled with this impossible prayer of the Savior.  Has Jesus lost His mind?  How can sinners be unified?  Even if we can find common ground, is it possible for us to experience the kind of unity that Jesus shares with His Heavenly Father?  The answer is simple.  No.  We cannot.  Not without complete and utter surrender to Him.  He has to be the glue that holds us together.  If we want to know true unity, God has to be our Lord.

The third minute.  On my nightstand sit two pictures of our family on vacation.  As I looked at our happy and smiling faces, images of four people who had no idea the loss they would experience a year later, I prayed:

God.  If there is any way our family can be whole again.  If we are going to be completely healthy and happy, filled with joy like we were standing on the beach that summer; we have to depend on You.  I put my life and the lives of my children in your hands.

I closed my Bible and sat on the edge of my bed.

God spoke.

In the silence of the third minute, I could hear my beautiful son humming a song.  A song that has meant a great deal to me over the past few months:

“You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of dust.

You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us.”

With my jaw dropped, I walked around the corner to see him alone in the kitchen, eating his bowl of cereal.  For a couple of seconds, all I could do was stand there and listen to the God of the universe sing to me through my boy.  He was unaware that I was watching him when I broke in,

“Brian?”

“Hey, Dad!”

“What are you singing?”

(Sheepishly) “Nothing.”

“No, seriously.  Do you know what are you singing?”

“I don’t know.  That song you really like.  It just popped into my head.”

He had no idea that he was used by God to speak healing to me.  Innocent and oblivious to my current pain, he was simply in his own little world humming a song he hears from time to time.  A song we sang in church weeks ago.  I hugged him.

“I love you, son.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Three minutes can change your life.  God can speak healing into your life in a way that will not be soon forgotten.

During our engagement, Beth became a full time minster to children and moved into her first office.  She thought it would be fitting to decorate her office with Noah’s Ark.  For Christmas that year (1997), she got more Noah stuff than she knew what to do with.  She kept all of it and stored most of it.  These pieces have always been in her office.

Several years ago, she told me that she was tired of it and wanted to take it down from the shelf.  I whined and begged her to leave it, because of its sentimental value.  Since it was a wedding gift, I wanted her to leave it as a reminder of those “simpler days” in our marriage.

Beth always wanted her office to be inviting to children.  She spent a lot of mental energy trying to keep it functional but also kid friendly.  If this Noah could talk, he would tell you stories about watching her pray for her children every day.  He watched her go through two pregnancies that made her incredibly ill.  Many times he overheard conversations Beth had with kids about becoming a Christian.  Parents have laughed and cried while he silently sat on the shelf.

He’s at the house now.  I’m not sure what all he will see and hear in the years to come, but he will always be to me a “stone of remembrance” that tells a story of Beth’s love for kids and their families.

January 4th, however, was about us.  Our wedding day.  On that day for the past 14 years, we celebrated our marriage.  We did not share the attention with anyone else, because it was about us.  Sounds selfish, but I prefer to call it personal.

I did not look forward to January 4, 2012.

The two days prior to our 15th wedding anniversary, I was angry.  Bitter.  Resentful.  Everything ugly and damaging that comes with grief hit me out of nowhere.  All of it was directed towards God.

How could You let her die?  Three centimeters.  Three centimeters of cancer took her from me and You did nothing to stop it.  Healer?  Great Physician?  Where were You?  All of this pain, all of this grief is Your fault because You didn’t stop it.

All of the blackness melted away on the morning of our special day.  I felt His love and forgiveness flood my heart as I sat and cried to Him.  Not tears for what I have lost, but tears for my anger.  He did not want her to die.  It was not His fault.  Certainly, I do not understand her death, but I trust that God will bring beautiful things out of it.

I decided to spend the day celebrating her life, particularly our marriage.  Weeks ago, the church staff lovingly packed her office and told me I could collect her belongings whenever I was ready.  January 4th seemed like a good day.

Carrying the boxes to an isolated part of the church, it occurred to me that if someone wanted to know who Beth James really was, all they had to do was look through the boxes I was carrying.  Some of the contents would need some explaining, but all of them spoke of who she was.

Over the next few months, I will be sharing who Beth was in a series of posts.  All the posts will be inspired by what I unpacked on Wednesday, January 4th, 2012.  I have decided to title the series: “From the Desk of Beth James.”

My journey through her pictures, notebooks, journals, drawings, and keepsakes was one I will not soon forget.  The day I dreaded the most since her death became the best day of grief.  I could not have asked for a better experience.

At the end of the day, I wrote the following:

God, thank you for January 4th, 2012. This was a day that I did not look forward to, but it was a day that you created, and I will be glad in it.  As I looked through these boxes, I was reminded of her strength and courage.  Her unyielding spirit and compassion for children will live on in these mementos, pictures, and journals. You used today to remind me of why I fell in love with her and married her fifteen years ago.  Oh, how I wish I knew in those moments what I now know. Those years were precious and fleeting. Her life was much too short, but was filled with more love and devotion to You than any life that has ever been lived.

Thank you for my marriage.  May she live forever in my heart because she loved You.  Help me to continue loving Brian and Emily as much as she did.  I want to see them the way she saw them.  Let them never forget their Mamacita.  One day, they will see how much You meant to her.  They have already begun to follow in your footsteps.  I can see in them a compassion for their friends and a desire to teach others how to make Jesus the Boss of their lives.

I will never forget that day last week.  It changed me.  I cannot wait to share with you what made my bride so special.

I’m a shark.  Sharks eat anything at any time of the day.  If it’s food, it’s good with me.  With that said, there are foods that I avoid, but I can always find something tasty.  I’m the one for whom you want to cook.  Many times I have heard, “It’s fun to cook for you.”  Well, I like to eat and about 90% of what is called food is yummy.  That’s how sharks roll.

Beth and I would discuss my predator nature on a regular basis…

..at home.

Beth:  ”What are you eating?”

Me:  ”Chili.”

Beth:  ”It’s 6:30 in the morning.”

Me:  ”So.”

Beth: “You’re such a shark.”

…at the restaurant.

“So what all is that on your plate?”

“I don’t know.”

“And, yet, you are eating it.”

“It’s tasty.”

“I would never eat something that I didn’t know what it was.”

“Being a shark has it’s advantages.”

…at the drive through.

(Watching me shove a breakfast burrito in my mouth)  ”That’s not what you ordered.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s bacon.”

“So.”

“You ordered sausage.”

“Oh.  Really?  I didn’t notice.”

“You’re such a shark.”

I rarely use the words “this isn’t what I ordered.”  I may have asked for chicken and got beef.  No problem.  Cold leftovers straight out of the fridge?  No problem.  Spaghetti for breakfast?  Bring it.  I’m a shark.  I adapt and eat whatever, whenever.

I wish that predator mentality translated to the rest of my life, but it doesn’t.  I loved being married to Beth.  She took care of me and she inspired me.  She celebrated my quirks and encouraged me in my faith.  With the holiday season approaching, I am more reminded of her departure.

This is not what I ordered.

However, I had a conversation this past week that God used to give me some perspective.  I am still wrestling with the words of my friend and figuring out what all they mean, so I am not ready to share the details publicly.  It was an important event that has forever changed the way I see myself.

So, for now, I am a shark.  I embrace my predator mentality.  Beth loved that about me.  She would be disappointed if I did not use it to my advantage.