October 18, 2025 • 43 mins
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Have you ever felt like the fisherman's prayer?
Oh God, the ocean is so big and my boat is so small.
Or like Job when he said, for the thing I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come to me.
No doubt we have all felt this way and experienced our dark nights of the soul, and we're not done having them.
(00:29):
It's part of living outside of the Garden of Eden.
Well, we named him Trevor, and he was our second boy.
He came into the world 38 years ago, weighing seven pounds.
He made two quiet whimpers.
And then soon showered us with joy and a constant smile.
(00:51):
His brother Todd was three years older.
His sister
Uh Taryn came along and would be born three and a half months early, weighing uh only one pound eleven ounces.
And she's healthy and married and 33 today.
And Todd, my oldest, is is 42 and engaged and will be married next month.
(01:13):
As a child, Trevor had an endearing spirit.
He was kind and thoughtful.
Kids all wanted to sit next to him on the school bus.
He wrote on my walls with crayons.
He was a little redhead.
But he was the only child I've ever met who made out his Christmas list of what he wanted to give other people before he made out his list of what he wanted to get.
(01:36):
I don't remember doing that as a child.
I don't know about you, and I didn't teach him how to do that.
He was adored by all who knew him, that red haired, dancing green eyes, freckles, a constant smile
Um we were walking in the rain one day and I said, Oh, it's raining.
He said, you know, Mom, it's it's beautiful even when it's raining.
(01:57):
And he would tell you how the bird was feeling by how it was singing.
He noticed everything.
He noticed how people were feeling.
He noticed when they were sad.
He was deeply sensitive and spiritual, and I used to watch him and wonder what he would grow up to be.
Seven years later, the pediatric neurologist came into the waiting room
(02:22):
And with tears in his eyes already, he said, I wish I didn't have to tell you what I have to tell you.
But it appears that Trevor has a Pontine glioblastoma.
It is a completely inoperable tumor in the brainstem, and he probably has a few weeks to live.
I remember at the time suddenly feeling that all the air was sucked out of the room.
(02:45):
Some of you know what this feels like
And I wondered if I could take another breath.
And in the next few seconds I saw my life sort of flash before me.
It really sort of does that, right?
And you sort of begin this life review.
Um I had grown up singing all these songs of God's unfailing mercy and goodness and love.
(03:06):
I had memorized all the scripture about how God sees and answers every prayer and
In my bedroom as a child, I had the picture of the two children leaning over the bridge with the angels behind them watching over them.
I believed if I prayed and I gave my heart to God.
That he would send angels to watch over me and protect me and my children.
(03:28):
And all of the spiritual bedtime stories I read seem to assure me of that.
You do this, then this happens.
But here we were in that moment of searing pain, and I I tell you, I f I am a preacher's kid.
I am a four or five generations Seventh-day Adventist.
(03:49):
And I felt somehow betrayed and horribly let down.
I knew in my head I was not immune to the tragedies of life, but the pain was so great, and the fear was so strong.
And I would later realize that we hurt deeply as part of loving.
Anything less than we would have to live as stones.
(04:12):
I began reviewing all my mistakes and sins and desperately asking for forgiveness, claiming every scripture of God's promises like they were some sort of magic bean.
I recalled all the biblical stories of healing and miracles and frantically searched for that perfect response or formula that would make God do what I wanted him to do.
(04:36):
Now in this moment of this nightmarish news, I was already incredibly weary from the last six months.
Trevor had experienced gradually evolving mysterious symptoms that had doctors thought he would recover from
His journey started in January with just mild dizziness and a little car sickness on the school bus and he'd get up in the morning and he'd say, I just I feel funny, mommy.
(05:00):
And he was trying to describe feeling dizzy and wasn't quite sure how to express it.
In February, while driving him home from school one day, he said, Mommy, I see two of you, and I see two trees where there was only one.
And that came and went for a few days until it was permanent.
There was a slight change in his speech.
(05:20):
It sounded like listening to someone maybe with a cleft palate.
One morning he said, it feels like I'm swallowing bubbles.
His left hand began having just a slight tremor, and within four weeks of these very strange symptoms, we needed to take him out of first grade, out of school.
This was March.
um because of the dizziness and he had to kind of lay on his right side.
(05:43):
Even laying on his back and looking up, he would have pretty violent dizziness.
And his appetite diminished some
So during this time he had his first MRI scan.
Um uh was just uh uh uh a neurologist, not a pediatric neurologist, in our town in Santa Maria where we were living at the time.
It was my birthday weekend in March and
(06:04):
All the family were there and we waited for the radiologist to call and give us the report of the MRI scan and he called and he rejoiced with us and he said it's completely normal.
And we fell on our knees and we thanked God.
And the thought struck me just for a moment.
Isn't it interesting how we praise God when things go the way we want them to?
(06:28):
I mean we're human.
I said, I wonder if I thought to myself, I wonder if I'd be as willing to praise him, because he never changes, if I had different news.
But I said to myself, I don't have to think about that because Trevor's gonna be fine.
Well over the next many weeks it was like watching him have a very slowly
(06:48):
evolving stroke.
And none of this ever affected the thinking part of his brain.
He'd come up with this little quips and so forth, but we continued over the course of a few weeks to have more MRI scans and they still felt
He had something, some inflammation in his brain that he was going to get better from.
They started him on high doses of steroids in the hospital for a couple weeks and
(07:09):
If any of you are clinical, you know that when we give steroids to people who have tumors, it shrinks swelling around the tumor, and some of his symptoms improve slightly.
It just never got to where he could sit on the edge of the bed for more than a minute, and when he would take steps, he would sort of list off to the side.
He said to Joyce, his nursing assistant, because we had speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy coming into the home every day, and he had a hospital bed in the living room, which he thought was pretty cool, kind of command center out there in the living room.
(07:41):
And he would remind his brother of the things he needed to do.
But he looked at Joyce one day and he said, Joyce, his nursing assistant, do you know Jesus?
And Joyce answered him and said, yes, Trevor, I do.
And Trevor said, well, I just wanted to ask because it's really important.
(08:01):
One morning when I was smashing his pills to make them easier for him to swallow, and I put them in jam, he struggled to swallow it, and he looked up at me in his hospital bed in the living room and said in sort of his slurry speech
Mommy, I'm not getting any better.
I think you need to call the doctor.
He's talking to his mother, a nurse, and telling her that I need to call the doctor.
(08:24):
He'd been home for three weeks on that hospital bed.
And so we drove the hour and a half back down to Santa Barbara cottage, um to the clinic there that and the hospital, and the sixth MRI scan was done.
And by this time Trevor could tell them how to do them
Um but he was just always delightful.
(08:45):
And as I was walking past the radiology room and he had it they had his films up on the viewing box and three radiologists were pointing to something and shaking their head.
And it was the first time I allowed myself to think that we might be dealing with something serious.
Hence, we went back to the waiting room.
And waited for the news that Dr.
(09:06):
Caraza, the pediatric neurologist, gave us.
He had four little children and a little boy, Trevor's age.
So when he came in to tell us he already had tears streaming down his face.
I went in to tell Trevor he wanted to know everything.
I explained that he had this place that was no bigger than a pea.
Um, a little bit like spaghetti that was in the part of his brain where all the signals for breathing and all the good stuff happens.
(09:34):
And that doctors have said that if God doesn't choose to work a physical miracle, we believe he still does today, and we'll pray our hearts out for that.
that people who have this particular tumor, children actually, are the ones who have this particular tumor, do not live very long.
And he looked at me and I looked at him and I can still feel him patting me on the back as we had some tears together and he said, Mommy, he had just turned seven and had his birthday party at home while he was on a hospital bed.
(10:04):
He said, Mommy, at least I had seven years.
Some people don't even have that.
And that began what we didn't know was just two weeks to be together there in the hospital.
When he was awake, I would search his, he would search my face for how he was doing how I was doing.
He always wanted to know that we would be okay.
(10:24):
He said, Mommy, if I die, he said, it won't be bad for me because the next thing I know, I'll hear Jesus say, Wake up, Trevi, it's time to go home.
But for you, mommy, I know it will be hard, and I don't want you to have to miss me.
And of course I do every day.
I'd watch him sleep hour after hour.
Since I couldn't sleep, I could not imagine this earthly life without him in it
(10:49):
How would Todd and Tarran be?
Terran was two and Todd was eleven at the time.
I couldn't understand how a greater good could be served by letting this darling, precious, innocent, loving, kind little human
die.
What a story he would have to tell if he were healed.
(11:11):
I was reading in a book then about how often we fill out our agenda for God and pray over it.
And graciously give it to him when what we need to do is take a blank piece of paper and sign it and give it to him.
I asked to go into an empty room on the pediatric unit and the nurses arranged that for me.
(11:35):
And I uh took off whatever I had on and stayed decent, but I laid down on the floor.
And I was in there for two hours.
And I cried and I wrestled, and I finally got to the place where I could take out a blank piece of paper.
And sign it and give it to God.
(11:57):
And only then did I begin to have peace and really feel his presence
Very, very close.
We sent Trevor's sixth MRI scan to Dr.
Ben Carson, renowned pediatric neurosurgeon.
You may have heard of him
at Johns Hopkins to Fred Epstein, renowned pediatric neurosurgeon in New York.
We sent them to Loma Linda University, UCLA, to their specialists.
(12:20):
Within 24 hours, I talked personally with Ben Carson, with Dr.
Fred Epstein.
And they all concurred this tumor.
They go after everything in the brainstem, but the technology wasn't there.
Um, and he they said your best um
Their best counsel is to begin radiation to shrink the tumor, relieve some of the symptoms, and take him home on hospice.
(12:44):
Before he went into the hospital for the first time, since it was getting close to his birthday, he had ordered and wanted us to order, and I did, a butterfly garden.
I don't know if you've ever done this with your kids or grandkids
You read about it in the magazine and you're like, oh sure that's gonna work, right?
But you send away and you get these larva, little skinny little larva that are in the bottom of this jar sitting on this brown gooey stuff that they eat.
(13:10):
And then when they get fat, they go up to the top of the jar which has filter paper on it and they hang by a thread and spin their cocoons
And then you take them out and put them in a viewing box and you feed them a little sugar water for a couple of days and then you let them go and I thought, oh, this will be so disappointing, you know.
And I'm a person with a glass half uh full, but that just sounded like a lot to me.
(13:34):
So by the time we went back into the hospital for the f what we didn't know was the final time, those larvae had gotten fat, they'd gone up to the top of the jar, spun their cocoons, and were hanging by a thread, and Trevor's concern
was that he was not going to live long enough to see the butterflies come out.
So I went home uh one day and I peeled the filter paper off and put it in the cardboard viewing box and drove our van.
(13:59):
the hour and a half back down to the hospital with these things flapping in this box.
And I just prayed, Lord, let these five little larva, you know, cocoons make it.
And they did, and we set that viewing box on his bedside table in his hospital, and the news went out all over Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
There is a little boy with terminal brain cancer on the pediatric unit who's growing butterflies.
(14:23):
And they came in every day, respiratory therapists, lab technicians, you name it, nurses, doctors, and they would say, are they out yet?
Are they out yet?
And uh if you had come into his room, Trevor handed pipe cleaners out to everybody.
You had to make a piece of art, he was our little artist, and we'd stick them up on the wall.
So his wall was covered
(14:44):
um with pipe cleaner art and he would give you a Tootsie Roll pop.
He wanted to give people something when they came to see him.
And so sure enough, these little painted lady butterflies came out of their cocoon, I think, on a Wednesday.
And on the Friday, we went up to the roof of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital that overlooks all of Santa Barbara.
It's just gorgeous.
(15:05):
And we opened up the box.
We had Trevor on on a gurney on a stretcher.
And one at a time these little butterflies flew away.
And Trevor looked at me and he said, Mommy, he said, our the caterpillars are like our life here on Earth.
The cocoons are like when we die, and the butterflies are like when Jesus comes and we go to heaven.
(15:27):
A little sermon preached.
During that week, he developed a kidney stone, an adult-sized kidney stone from all of his time, three or four months having been in bed.
And hard to keep him hydrated.
The only option was to do surgery.
They don't even have laser fields developed for kids.
Don't get kidney stones.
So it would be major surgery, be on an endotracheal tube and on a ventilator, and probably on that for the rest of his time.
(15:54):
And nobody wanted to do that, and we did not want to do that.
So the palliative care physicians, bless their hearts, are just amazing, amazing humans.
I've done that work in my career in palliative and hospice, and it's such sacred work.
And on Friday evening, my husband and I stepped away to go get a bite to eat.
And when we returned, people were all around his bed, and my heart sank, but he'd had a seizure, and they felt it was the advancing of the tumor.
(16:22):
And the doctor sat us down very compassionately.
And as they were getting ready to do that, Trevor was trying to say something.
His words were going a little more together the next morning after the seizure.
Um and I brought him a clipboard and his letters were going on top of each other.
But I could make out that he wanted to know
(16:43):
If the people that were in his room wanted to go to the roof because he had just been there and he knew how beautiful it was.
Oh boy.
Um but the doctors took us out into the waiting room and said, look, uh you have an opportunity here, even though it's very difficult to see it as that.
He has severe abdominal pain now.
He hadn't had pain, just violent dizziness.
(17:07):
We will have to medicate him to the upper legal limit of his weight because that's what it'll take to relieve this pain for him.
And just know that he will then appear unconscious and asleep.
And and the medicine, as pain medicine does in the end stages of disease, it doesn't hasten dying.
It allows the body to do what it wants to do.
(17:32):
And once again the air was sucked out of the room
I went in and told Trevor because he kind of wanted to know everything again.
And um
The family was coming the next day, which was Father's Day.
It was Sunday the next day.
(18:00):
Take this pain away and just allow him to go to sleep.
And when I said the word sleep, his eyes got real big.
He knew what I meant
And he searched my face.
I told him how brave he had been and how much we loved him, and that we would be with him all the way.
And he asked for the family portrait to be brought to him, the eight by ten in his room.
(18:22):
And he began by touching his brother's face and then everybody's face in the family.
And I said, is this what you would like, Trevor?
I said to have your pain relieved and just be able to rest and go to sleep and so forth.
And he gave me the thumbs up.
And so we began calling family.
We were able to have some time with him before we started this medicine, which within a few moments went through an uh an intravenous sight in his arm.
(18:49):
He was asleep.
And I tell people that was the loudest noise I had ever heard, have ever heard, was that silence
as he was at peace and at rest, having this pain relief.
Sunday night the nurses who were off shift came in and got a big recliner chair, picked him up and put him in my lap.
(19:09):
I think he'd grown four inches those four months he'd been in bed.
And as I held him in his arms and his heart rate was very fast and his breathing rate was very slow, my mom and dad had gathered around him and we sang.
Rock, rock, rock, little boat on the sparkling sea, which was one of Trevor's favorite songs.
(19:30):
Interestingly, halfway through those last two weeks in the hospital.
We had started singing some music together and we started out with, Do your ears hang low and take me out to the ball game, you know?
And about a week into it, Trevor asked, can we start singing My Homes in Heaven?
And do Lord?
(19:50):
And he's able.
And we would sing that with every ounce of strength in our human hearts that we could.
I began feeling God's presence very close, very tangible.
If you've ever experienced that in your life, no one can ever take that from you.
(20:10):
I I caught a glimpse that God understood how we were feeling because he watched the life of his own son slip away on the cross.
Thousands of people were praying for Trevor.
My dad was well known and loved in our denomination, so from the general conference across the country and particularly on the West Coast, thousands of people were praying.
(20:33):
We had two all-night prayer vigils at our church.
We had two anointing services for Trevor in the hospital with some very special ministers who came and did that and were long time
family friends.
I think if it was God's intention to heal Trevor physically, he would have done it from Trevor's prayers alone.
Trevor would say, Dear Jesus, I don't want to die.
(20:55):
Please come.
And place your hand on the part of my head that is sick and make it well so I can go home and be with my family.
But if that's not what you're gonna do, Jesus, help me not to be afraid.
He died peacefully Monday morning at 5 a.
m.
June 21
(21:16):
Nine of his nurses and doctors came to his memorial service an hour and a half away.
My life has been forever shaped by their compassion.
And their presence and their support.
I've come to believe that God's greatest miracle is his restraint.
How else could love not grant such a prayer?
(21:37):
In the way our human hearts want.
Philippiancy, in his book, Disappointment with God, states (21:39):
I decided I would rather be disappointed with God than disappointed without him.
I have learned that living here we will be chronically disappointed because we were made for paradise.
And God is some not not some cosmic candyman who just doles out goodies.
(22:00):
and blessings only to those who are faithful to him.
He never promised that.
In fact he told us that he would uh we would have trials and tribulations, but that he would never leave or forsake us.
I'm a nurse.
Um was a chaplain for years in a hospital.
I used to try and explain what God was up to as if he somehow needs our defense or our protection.
(22:26):
Trying to make sense out of my own and others' pain.
Of course, through chaplain training, you learn not to do that.
There is no sense to be made, and God has never answered those questions.
We live in a world where we experience more sorrow than we deserve, and we also experience more grace than we deserve.
(22:47):
I've learned that the most important question isn't where is God when I'm hurting?
It's where am I?
How am I going to respond?
How can I work this reality into my life so I'm enlarged by it and not diminished by it?
God's passion for us, Philippians says, is not to make us comfortable.
(23:10):
It's to make us his
His passion is to make us his, and that seems to occur most profoundly in the dark nights of our soul when we're the most vulnerable and sense our need of him.
There's a quote that says, trusting God doesn't mean building a house in a land of no storms.
It means building a house that no storm can destroy.
(23:33):
I learned that it's not how long we live, but how we live.
That while we were praying for the only kind of miracle we wanted, although we said, Thy will be done,
There were miracles going on all around us, the miracle of some time together, of the outpouring of people's love and prayers of support, of our neighbor back in Santa Maria who went to all of the
(23:57):
um pharmacies in town and put out a a little jar like marcha dimes and put Trevor's picture on them and said help support a a local boy uh dying of brain cancer and his family
And I didn't even know that was happening.
I went back home in the middle of those two weeks.
Trevor was in the hospital for the final time.
I went to the CVS or somewhere to get something and I walked to the counter and here is this jar.
(24:23):
With Trevor's face on it.
And I just instantly began to sob.
And I sat down next to the counter.
And the cashier lady, God bless her, came around.
And I'm so glad she didn't say, what's wrong?
She just sat down and just sat with me.
(24:44):
When I shared a little bit of the story, she wept with me.
And she said, I'm honored to have his picture and have this jar here in our store.
Hot meals every day in our house for six weeks after Trevor died.
Um breaking into the house, people from our church paying our bills.
(25:04):
See if you ask people who are grieving what they need, they don't know.
It's too overwhelming.
It's too exhausting, too draining.
They're not gonna ask people to do things for them.
Would you would you come into my home and help pay my gas bill?
Right.
So just step in and do something.
People will let you know if it's intrusive.
(25:26):
At one point I had 32 boxes of cereal in the garage.
And I enjoyed taking them to the homeless shelter.
Just miracles of God's strength and courage that were bestowed on us.
Love with skin on it, you know.
And I learned that it's a gift not to know the future.
Trevor is buried in the cemetery where in Santa Maria where he learned to ride his bike two years before.
(25:51):
What a blessing not to know.
Sheila Walsh says, true spirituality can live with unanswered questions while empty religion confines God to a box with neatly packaged answers.
I learned that someone else's love and silence and presence heals and comforts.
What does not comfort are all of our attempts to fix it, even though we're well-meaning.
(26:17):
Or spiritualize it with a quick scripture when the wound is fresh.
Try to make other people feel better.
They don't need to feel better.
We actually need to wrestle with deeper life questions when we're going through challenging times.
What we need is people to companion us.
We don't need explanation.
We need consolation.
(26:38):
We need to know someone that can stay in a season of grief and sorrow or our anger and not try to judge it or fix it or make it different or make it seem like a lack of faith.
Just let it be the tragedy that it is and be present and be kind and listen.
Even if people are telling their stories over and over.
(26:59):
Every time we retell our stories of struggle, we're not going to be able to do that.
We reframe it a little bit more into this newer chapter as we need to move forward.
I experienced God most profoundly when I held Trevor and his little life slipped away.
What does also not heal or comfort are the phrases that we say, and we'll talk about this more uh after potluck this afternoon.
(27:25):
But we say them meaning well, but they really serve to distance ourselves from someone's pain that we can't fix or comprehend.
No one can ever understand what someone else is going through.
I could meet a mother who lost a son 38 years ago, who was seven years old, who died in the same week of the same month of the same year of the same diagnosis.
(27:46):
I don't have a clue how she feels.
Not a clue.
I know what it was for me.
I can't possibly know what it is for her
We all come with different life experiences and backgrounds and and sometimes limiting beliefs and traumas and things we've experienced, things in our DNA that those before us have experienced.
(28:09):
We carry all that around with us.
And we move into our experiences with that.
Grief is not an illness to get over or a problem to fix.
It's natural, it's necessary, and no two people experience it the same.
Again, this afternoon, we will learn more about that together.
How desperately we want life to be fair, don't we?
(28:31):
Especially as Christians, we live in the disparity of how things are and how we would like them to be, sort of a chronic state of grief.
We want more than anything else to be comfortable and to have relief from our hardships.
And maybe even holding God off at times because He doesn't seem to dream our dreams.
(28:52):
Or bring us the wholeness and the satisfaction we long for.
Larry Crabbe in his book Finding God, I think if your last name is Crab, you have to write a really good book.
And and he did.
Finding God is an extraordinary book.
He said, when we pursue the satisfaction we think God can give more than we pursue Him, we get neither.
(29:15):
We crave relief while he craves relationship.
And we miss realizing that what we actually crave is what he craves.
Because he made us like him, wanting connection and intimacy and safety.
But here's the thing, our definition of safety demands that God fix all the brokenness now.
(29:35):
Something he never promised to do.
Our doctrines, our tenets of faith, do not protect us from life's painful experiences.
Neither do they answer all of life's questions or contain everything that has ever been known or ever will be known about God.
(29:55):
They're a beautiful framework and sort of map, if you will, but they are not the whole territory of God.
God is not captured in my understanding of his character or my dreams of what he will do for me.
I was at a large well-known church a number of years ago, and people got up to talk about their encounters and experiences with the power of God in their lives.
(30:23):
And I want you to listen to this carefully, because it's still an unfolding lesson for me.
They told stories of finding something lost.
or praying for something and having it come to pass, or surviving a car accident, or recovering from a serious illness.
And the leader ended with this phrase, he said, you too can have a real encounter with God.
(30:51):
So I understand that.
And we need to praise God for those things.
But listen very carefully.
I held my seven-year-old son as he was dying, and thousands of people were praying for him.
And we had all night prayer vigils and anointing services, and he died, and I had the most profound experience of God I have ever had in my life.
(31:16):
Period.
I had the picture over my bed of the angels keeping the two little children from falling off the bridge, as I said, and I'm sure that thousands of times in our lifetime our angels keep us safe.
No question.
I also know of a family, close friends, five of them, piled in the car, had just had a prayer service, uh, they were retiring and leaving, but they were on their way to Bible camp.
(31:46):
They had their grandkids with them and off they go.
And all five people were killed in a car accident on the way.
Now what do we do with that?
Nothing trips us up more than trying to explain that spiritually.
And we tend to avoid it.
Because here's the thing, God is either who he says he is, operating 24-7 in in our time
(32:13):
Uh out of love and mercy and grace and wisdom and all that, or it's the biggest crock that's ever been played on humanity.
There's nothing in between.
Jesus Christ was either who he said he was or he was insane.
And we get to choose what we follow and what we believe.
(32:36):
Scripture tells us the kingdom of God is dwells within us.
He doesn't just fly down from the realms of heaven.
And sometimes make it in time and sometimes not.
He's present with us always.
And there are simply times when we sense him more clearly, and that has more to say about us.
(32:58):
And it may be at times of finding the lost dog we were praying for.
And it may be at times when we pray for something and it does not go that way.
Again, Larry Crabbe with this amazing quote that says, We have become committed to relieving the pain behind our problems.
(33:19):
rather than using our pain to wrestle more passionately with the character and purposes of God.
Feeling better has become more important than finding God, and worse yet, we believe and assume that people who find God always feel better.
We've learned to praise God the way we tip an especially attentive waiter.
(33:40):
Good treatment we expect, but exceptional treatment deserves special recognition.
And after all, God qualifies for extra notice.
He's gone to great lengths to feed our souls and bolster our self-asseems and and give his life.
And
We therefore leave him a big tip and we feel benevolent and noble.
And he in turn beams with humble appreciation as he hears us say, Well done, Lord, you have served us well.
(34:09):
Larry Crabbe says, until we're moved to know God with a passion we feel nowhere else, we will never use the struggles of this life as an impetus to experience God.
His ways are not our ways.
There's no figuring him out.
And again, after all the years of being a critical care nurse and a chaplain.
(34:33):
being at the bedsides of hundreds and hundreds of dying people and their families.
I'm all done trying to explain them because I realize I'm not called to.
I'm called to reveal him and be his arms and hands extended to others, to let him live his life and transpose it through me to others
(34:56):
We can relax.
He wants our willingness to let him show up through us
I'll say one more thing and it just gives us all food for thought.
I've had people come to me when I have shared this story.
I don't think I've done it for about three years.
Um thank for thank you, Ellen, for giving me the opportunity.
(35:18):
But some folks would come up after I'd done a concert and combined it with this story.
And they'd say, listen, Sandy, one lady said, be very careful.
That you that that you say it right because God didn't cause Trevor to die, he allowed him to die.
And I looked at her and I said, How do you know?
(35:40):
Have you read the Old Testament?
We are creatures.
He is God.
He's wild at heart.
He's not always predictable.
His love is and his mercy is.
But the methods aren't always.
He used a donkey to speak to Balaam to remind him to use a jouse of a whale to to you know for Jonah to have his awakening.
(36:08):
I mean these are things I mean Jesus came into a world when people wanted him to be their uh the Messiah to them was for someone to come and relieve them of of Roman
Oppression and suffering, we do the same in many ways today as humans.
As humans.
So whether God allows something or whether he causes something is not the right question.
(36:32):
It's not the right thing to dwell on
These conversations serve to keep us from the only response as creatures to a creator, which is to rest in his arms and trust him and make the journey a little bit lighter for someone else.
The appropriate response to suffering is found in the life of Jesus.
(36:56):
Look at his last hours of life.
His cry, can this be accomplished in some other way?
Can this cup pass from me?
Not my will but thine, and then he had the courage to let those around him, and we're going to talk about this more this afternoon.
Had the courage to let those closest to him, those three disciples, know how they could best support him.
(37:17):
And he said, I'm anguished and my heart is ready to break with grief.
Stay and watch with me.
The creator of the universe needed comfort and presence and compassion and companionship, and they fell asleep.
(37:39):
Human beings are God's love language.
Martin Luther once said of the story of the Good Samaritan that the first question the priest and Levite asked, who were of the same faith
If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?
The Samaritan, who had every social reason to walk by, stopped and said, if I don't help this man, what will happen to him?
(38:06):
To live with God's promises and the contradiction of them is the most heroic challenge in the walk of faith.
Another quote I love says, faith is not our ability to hold on to God.
It's trusting his ability to hold on to us
Trevor said that if only one person came to know God more through his story, he said, Mommy, then it's okay what's happening to me.
(38:32):
And I'm that one person.
He said he wanted to be a greeter at the gates.
There's gonna have to be a lot of gates there one day, right?
Because there's just gonna be like throngs of people there.
And I can't wait to hold him again and hear his voice.
What a reunion day is coming.
Remember the scripture that says, say to them that are of a fearful heart, fear not, be strong.
(38:56):
For behold, your God will come and save you.
Then shall the eyes of the blind be open, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as a heart, and the tongue of the dumb will sing.
And God will wipe away all tears and sadness, for the former things are passed away.
Behold, all things are new.
(39:17):
There is a day that is coming, Some Holy Morning.
Years ago, Tim Crosby at the Voice of Prophecy wrote this song, Some Holy Morning.
He sent it to me.
This was a year or two before Trevor ever got sick.
He said, I wrote this song with your voice in mind.
He said, I just I just hear you singing it somehow.
(39:38):
And it was on a cassette tape.
Remember what those were?
And he sent that to me.
And I never listened to it.
I don't know what happened.
I got caught up in the day.
I put it on a shelf and there it sat.
Three or four months after Trevor died, Lonnie Malishenko called me from The Voice of Prophecy.
I know him well for years.
(39:59):
He said, Sandy, I'd
I'd like to do um I just interviewed a woman uh on our radio show about when God says yes and answers prayers in that way.
I'd like to do I'd like to do an interview um with you and your journey around when God says no.
And I said, well, first of all, and I could speak with him this way, um, let let me correct you on something.
(40:24):
Um
God didn't say no.
He said not yet.
Because God can heal now, he can heal over time, or he can heal when he comes
He is in the work of healing.
And we can claim that promise.
How it takes place, we don't have the wisdom and the end from the beginning to know how that's best.
(40:49):
Um and so I, you know, he laughed and he said, I know I'm still gonna call it that.
I said, that's okay.
And we had fun talking about it.
He said, why don't you sing the song at the close that Tim wrote?
I said, what are you talking about?
And he said, I don't know.
It's called some holy something or other.
And um
(41:10):
I pulled out my earphones.
I found that cassette tape.
This was four months after Trevor died.
I sat in the beanbag chair and I cried my eyes out.
And I knew what it had been saved for.
I'm not even sure I can make it through today.
I haven't sung it for a while.
It's never been published
People write me all the time and say, where can I find that?
(41:31):
And I just say, you gotta find someone like a Kelly Maurer or someone who's extraordinary on the piano who can listen to it and then play it for you because it's not published anywhere.
So I offer this to you as a reminder that some holy morning, soon, and very soon, we will be in a far better place where there will not be any more tears or sorrows.
(41:56):
And we will agree with God in his wisdom for how our lives went.
As Ellen White says, if we could see the end from the beginning.
We would not have chosen for it to go any other way than how it went some holy morning.
Father in heaven, we are whew
(42:17):
We are in awe of the reminder that we are creatures and you are the creator.
How fortunate we are that you call us your children who gave your life.
We'll spend eternity trying to really understand and get ourselves around what that kind of love really means
(42:41):
We want with all our hearts to know you more, to love you more, to serve you more
And to be your arms and hands extended to others.
Live out your life in us, O Jesus, King of kings.
And may we be held by your grace, by your courage, by your power until that day when we are in that better place of no more tears and no more sorrows.
(43:12):
Singing with the angels on the sea of glass.
May it be so and may it be soon.
And we are better for having been here today in your presence.
Give us your spirit to go with us now as we go, and for those staying for Potluck.
We are praying over the food here too.
And we thank you for the ways that you nourish us and care for us.
(43:36):
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Have you ever felt like the fisherman's prayer?
Oh God, the ocean is so big and my boat is so small.
Or like Job when he said, for the thing I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come to me.
No doubt we have all felt this way and experienced our dark nights of the soul, and we're not done having them.
(00:29):
It's part of living outside of the Garden of Eden.
Well, we named him Trevor, and he was our second boy.
He came into the world 38 years ago, weighing seven pounds.
He made two quiet whimpers.
And then soon showered us with joy and a constant smile.
(00:51):
His brother Todd was three years older.
His sister
Uh Taryn came along and would be born three and a half months early, weighing uh only one pound eleven ounces.
And she's healthy and married and 33 today.
And Todd, my oldest, is is 42 and engaged and will be married next month.
(01:13):
As a child, Trevor had an endearing spirit.
He was kind and thoughtful.
Kids all wanted to sit next to him on the school bus.
He wrote on my walls with crayons.
He was a little redhead.
But he was the only child I've ever met who made out his Christmas list of what he wanted to give other people before he made out his list of what he wanted to get.
(01:36):
I don't remember doing that as a child.
I don't know about you, and I didn't teach him how to do that.
He was adored by all who knew him, that red haired, dancing green eyes, freckles, a constant smile
Um we were walking in the rain one day and I said, Oh, it's raining.
He said, you know, Mom, it's it's beautiful even when it's raining.
(01:57):
And he would tell you how the bird was feeling by how it was singing.
He noticed everything.
He noticed how people were feeling.
He noticed when they were sad.
He was deeply sensitive and spiritual, and I used to watch him and wonder what he would grow up to be.
Seven years later, the pediatric neurologist came into the waiting room
(02:22):
And with tears in his eyes already, he said, I wish I didn't have to tell you what I have to tell you.
But it appears that Trevor has a Pontine glioblastoma.
It is a completely inoperable tumor in the brainstem, and he probably has a few weeks to live.
I remember at the time suddenly feeling that all the air was sucked out of the room.
(02:45):
Some of you know what this feels like
And I wondered if I could take another breath.
And in the next few seconds I saw my life sort of flash before me.
It really sort of does that, right?
And you sort of begin this life review.
Um I had grown up singing all these songs of God's unfailing mercy and goodness and love.
(03:06):
I had memorized all the scripture about how God sees and answers every prayer and
In my bedroom as a child, I had the picture of the two children leaning over the bridge with the angels behind them watching over them.
I believed if I prayed and I gave my heart to God.
That he would send angels to watch over me and protect me and my children.
(03:28):
And all of the spiritual bedtime stories I read seem to assure me of that.
You do this, then this happens.
But here we were in that moment of searing pain, and I I tell you, I f I am a preacher's kid.
I am a four or five generations Seventh-day Adventist.
(03:49):
And I felt somehow betrayed and horribly let down.
I knew in my head I was not immune to the tragedies of life, but the pain was so great, and the fear was so strong.
And I would later realize that we hurt deeply as part of loving.
Anything less than we would have to live as stones.
(04:12):
I began reviewing all my mistakes and sins and desperately asking for forgiveness, claiming every scripture of God's promises like they were some sort of magic bean.
I recalled all the biblical stories of healing and miracles and frantically searched for that perfect response or formula that would make God do what I wanted him to do.
(04:36):
Now in this moment of this nightmarish news, I was already incredibly weary from the last six months.
Trevor had experienced gradually evolving mysterious symptoms that had doctors thought he would recover from
His journey started in January with just mild dizziness and a little car sickness on the school bus and he'd get up in the morning and he'd say, I just I feel funny, mommy.
(05:00):
And he was trying to describe feeling dizzy and wasn't quite sure how to express it.
In February, while driving him home from school one day, he said, Mommy, I see two of you, and I see two trees where there was only one.
And that came and went for a few days until it was permanent.
There was a slight change in his speech.
(05:20):
It sounded like listening to someone maybe with a cleft palate.
One morning he said, it feels like I'm swallowing bubbles.
His left hand began having just a slight tremor, and within four weeks of these very strange symptoms, we needed to take him out of first grade, out of school.
This was March.
um because of the dizziness and he had to kind of lay on his right side.
(05:43):
Even laying on his back and looking up, he would have pretty violent dizziness.
And his appetite diminished some
So during this time he had his first MRI scan.
Um uh was just uh uh uh a neurologist, not a pediatric neurologist, in our town in Santa Maria where we were living at the time.
It was my birthday weekend in March and
(06:04):
All the family were there and we waited for the radiologist to call and give us the report of the MRI scan and he called and he rejoiced with us and he said it's completely normal.
And we fell on our knees and we thanked God.
And the thought struck me just for a moment.
Isn't it interesting how we praise God when things go the way we want them to?
(06:28):
I mean we're human.
I said, I wonder if I thought to myself, I wonder if I'd be as willing to praise him, because he never changes, if I had different news.
But I said to myself, I don't have to think about that because Trevor's gonna be fine.
Well over the next many weeks it was like watching him have a very slowly
(06:48):
evolving stroke.
And none of this ever affected the thinking part of his brain.
He'd come up with this little quips and so forth, but we continued over the course of a few weeks to have more MRI scans and they still felt
He had something, some inflammation in his brain that he was going to get better from.
They started him on high doses of steroids in the hospital for a couple weeks and
(07:09):
If any of you are clinical, you know that when we give steroids to people who have tumors, it shrinks swelling around the tumor, and some of his symptoms improve slightly.
It just never got to where he could sit on the edge of the bed for more than a minute, and when he would take steps, he would sort of list off to the side.
He said to Joyce, his nursing assistant, because we had speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy coming into the home every day, and he had a hospital bed in the living room, which he thought was pretty cool, kind of command center out there in the living room.
(07:41):
And he would remind his brother of the things he needed to do.
But he looked at Joyce one day and he said, Joyce, his nursing assistant, do you know Jesus?
And Joyce answered him and said, yes, Trevor, I do.
And Trevor said, well, I just wanted to ask because it's really important.
(08:01):
One morning when I was smashing his pills to make them easier for him to swallow, and I put them in jam, he struggled to swallow it, and he looked up at me in his hospital bed in the living room and said in sort of his slurry speech
Mommy, I'm not getting any better.
I think you need to call the doctor.
He's talking to his mother, a nurse, and telling her that I need to call the doctor.
(08:24):
He'd been home for three weeks on that hospital bed.
And so we drove the hour and a half back down to Santa Barbara cottage, um to the clinic there that and the hospital, and the sixth MRI scan was done.
And by this time Trevor could tell them how to do them
Um but he was just always delightful.
(08:45):
And as I was walking past the radiology room and he had it they had his films up on the viewing box and three radiologists were pointing to something and shaking their head.
And it was the first time I allowed myself to think that we might be dealing with something serious.
Hence, we went back to the waiting room.
And waited for the news that Dr.
(09:06):
Caraza, the pediatric neurologist, gave us.
He had four little children and a little boy, Trevor's age.
So when he came in to tell us he already had tears streaming down his face.
I went in to tell Trevor he wanted to know everything.
I explained that he had this place that was no bigger than a pea.
Um, a little bit like spaghetti that was in the part of his brain where all the signals for breathing and all the good stuff happens.
(09:34):
And that doctors have said that if God doesn't choose to work a physical miracle, we believe he still does today, and we'll pray our hearts out for that.
that people who have this particular tumor, children actually, are the ones who have this particular tumor, do not live very long.
And he looked at me and I looked at him and I can still feel him patting me on the back as we had some tears together and he said, Mommy, he had just turned seven and had his birthday party at home while he was on a hospital bed.
(10:04):
He said, Mommy, at least I had seven years.
Some people don't even have that.
And that began what we didn't know was just two weeks to be together there in the hospital.
When he was awake, I would search his, he would search my face for how he was doing how I was doing.
He always wanted to know that we would be okay.
(10:24):
He said, Mommy, if I die, he said, it won't be bad for me because the next thing I know, I'll hear Jesus say, Wake up, Trevi, it's time to go home.
But for you, mommy, I know it will be hard, and I don't want you to have to miss me.
And of course I do every day.
I'd watch him sleep hour after hour.
Since I couldn't sleep, I could not imagine this earthly life without him in it
(10:49):
How would Todd and Tarran be?
Terran was two and Todd was eleven at the time.
I couldn't understand how a greater good could be served by letting this darling, precious, innocent, loving, kind little human
die.
What a story he would have to tell if he were healed.
(11:11):
I was reading in a book then about how often we fill out our agenda for God and pray over it.
And graciously give it to him when what we need to do is take a blank piece of paper and sign it and give it to him.
I asked to go into an empty room on the pediatric unit and the nurses arranged that for me.
(11:35):
And I uh took off whatever I had on and stayed decent, but I laid down on the floor.
And I was in there for two hours.
And I cried and I wrestled, and I finally got to the place where I could take out a blank piece of paper.
And sign it and give it to God.
(11:57):
And only then did I begin to have peace and really feel his presence
Very, very close.
We sent Trevor's sixth MRI scan to Dr.
Ben Carson, renowned pediatric neurosurgeon.
You may have heard of him
at Johns Hopkins to Fred Epstein, renowned pediatric neurosurgeon in New York.
We sent them to Loma Linda University, UCLA, to their specialists.
(12:20):
Within 24 hours, I talked personally with Ben Carson, with Dr.
Fred Epstein.
And they all concurred this tumor.
They go after everything in the brainstem, but the technology wasn't there.
Um, and he they said your best um
Their best counsel is to begin radiation to shrink the tumor, relieve some of the symptoms, and take him home on hospice.
(12:44):
Before he went into the hospital for the first time, since it was getting close to his birthday, he had ordered and wanted us to order, and I did, a butterfly garden.
I don't know if you've ever done this with your kids or grandkids
You read about it in the magazine and you're like, oh sure that's gonna work, right?
But you send away and you get these larva, little skinny little larva that are in the bottom of this jar sitting on this brown gooey stuff that they eat.
(13:10):
And then when they get fat, they go up to the top of the jar which has filter paper on it and they hang by a thread and spin their cocoons
And then you take them out and put them in a viewing box and you feed them a little sugar water for a couple of days and then you let them go and I thought, oh, this will be so disappointing, you know.
And I'm a person with a glass half uh full, but that just sounded like a lot to me.
(13:34):
So by the time we went back into the hospital for the f what we didn't know was the final time, those larvae had gotten fat, they'd gone up to the top of the jar, spun their cocoons, and were hanging by a thread, and Trevor's concern
was that he was not going to live long enough to see the butterflies come out.
So I went home uh one day and I peeled the filter paper off and put it in the cardboard viewing box and drove our van.
(13:59):
the hour and a half back down to the hospital with these things flapping in this box.
And I just prayed, Lord, let these five little larva, you know, cocoons make it.
And they did, and we set that viewing box on his bedside table in his hospital, and the news went out all over Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
There is a little boy with terminal brain cancer on the pediatric unit who's growing butterflies.
(14:23):
And they came in every day, respiratory therapists, lab technicians, you name it, nurses, doctors, and they would say, are they out yet?
Are they out yet?
And uh if you had come into his room, Trevor handed pipe cleaners out to everybody.
You had to make a piece of art, he was our little artist, and we'd stick them up on the wall.
So his wall was covered
(14:44):
um with pipe cleaner art and he would give you a Tootsie Roll pop.
He wanted to give people something when they came to see him.
And so sure enough, these little painted lady butterflies came out of their cocoon, I think, on a Wednesday.
And on the Friday, we went up to the roof of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital that overlooks all of Santa Barbara.
It's just gorgeous.
(15:05):
And we opened up the box.
We had Trevor on on a gurney on a stretcher.
And one at a time these little butterflies flew away.
And Trevor looked at me and he said, Mommy, he said, our the caterpillars are like our life here on Earth.
The cocoons are like when we die, and the butterflies are like when Jesus comes and we go to heaven.
(15:27):
A little sermon preached.
During that week, he developed a kidney stone, an adult-sized kidney stone from all of his time, three or four months having been in bed.
And hard to keep him hydrated.
The only option was to do surgery.
They don't even have laser fields developed for kids.
Don't get kidney stones.
So it would be major surgery, be on an endotracheal tube and on a ventilator, and probably on that for the rest of his time.
(15:54):
And nobody wanted to do that, and we did not want to do that.
So the palliative care physicians, bless their hearts, are just amazing, amazing humans.
I've done that work in my career in palliative and hospice, and it's such sacred work.
And on Friday evening, my husband and I stepped away to go get a bite to eat.
And when we returned, people were all around his bed, and my heart sank, but he'd had a seizure, and they felt it was the advancing of the tumor.
(16:22):
And the doctor sat us down very compassionately.
And as they were getting ready to do that, Trevor was trying to say something.
His words were going a little more together the next morning after the seizure.
Um and I brought him a clipboard and his letters were going on top of each other.
But I could make out that he wanted to know
(16:43):
If the people that were in his room wanted to go to the roof because he had just been there and he knew how beautiful it was.
Oh boy.
Um but the doctors took us out into the waiting room and said, look, uh you have an opportunity here, even though it's very difficult to see it as that.
He has severe abdominal pain now.
He hadn't had pain, just violent dizziness.
(17:07):
We will have to medicate him to the upper legal limit of his weight because that's what it'll take to relieve this pain for him.
And just know that he will then appear unconscious and asleep.
And and the medicine, as pain medicine does in the end stages of disease, it doesn't hasten dying.
It allows the body to do what it wants to do.
(17:32):
And once again the air was sucked out of the room
I went in and told Trevor because he kind of wanted to know everything again.
And um
The family was coming the next day, which was Father's Day.
It was Sunday the next day.
(18:00):
Take this pain away and just allow him to go to sleep.
And when I said the word sleep, his eyes got real big.
He knew what I meant
And he searched my face.
I told him how brave he had been and how much we loved him, and that we would be with him all the way.
And he asked for the family portrait to be brought to him, the eight by ten in his room.
(18:22):
And he began by touching his brother's face and then everybody's face in the family.
And I said, is this what you would like, Trevor?
I said to have your pain relieved and just be able to rest and go to sleep and so forth.
And he gave me the thumbs up.
And so we began calling family.
We were able to have some time with him before we started this medicine, which within a few moments went through an uh an intravenous sight in his arm.
(18:49):
He was asleep.
And I tell people that was the loudest noise I had ever heard, have ever heard, was that silence
as he was at peace and at rest, having this pain relief.
Sunday night the nurses who were off shift came in and got a big recliner chair, picked him up and put him in my lap.
(19:09):
I think he'd grown four inches those four months he'd been in bed.
And as I held him in his arms and his heart rate was very fast and his breathing rate was very slow, my mom and dad had gathered around him and we sang.
Rock, rock, rock, little boat on the sparkling sea, which was one of Trevor's favorite songs.
(19:30):
Interestingly, halfway through those last two weeks in the hospital.
We had started singing some music together and we started out with, Do your ears hang low and take me out to the ball game, you know?
And about a week into it, Trevor asked, can we start singing My Homes in Heaven?
And do Lord?
(19:50):
And he's able.
And we would sing that with every ounce of strength in our human hearts that we could.
I began feeling God's presence very close, very tangible.
If you've ever experienced that in your life, no one can ever take that from you.
(20:10):
I I caught a glimpse that God understood how we were feeling because he watched the life of his own son slip away on the cross.
Thousands of people were praying for Trevor.
My dad was well known and loved in our denomination, so from the general conference across the country and particularly on the West Coast, thousands of people were praying.
(20:33):
We had two all-night prayer vigils at our church.
We had two anointing services for Trevor in the hospital with some very special ministers who came and did that and were long time
family friends.
I think if it was God's intention to heal Trevor physically, he would have done it from Trevor's prayers alone.
Trevor would say, Dear Jesus, I don't want to die.
(20:55):
Please come.
And place your hand on the part of my head that is sick and make it well so I can go home and be with my family.
But if that's not what you're gonna do, Jesus, help me not to be afraid.
He died peacefully Monday morning at 5 a.
m.
June 21
(21:16):
Nine of his nurses and doctors came to his memorial service an hour and a half away.
My life has been forever shaped by their compassion.
And their presence and their support.
I've come to believe that God's greatest miracle is his restraint.
How else could love not grant such a prayer?
(21:37):
In the way our human hearts want.
Philippiancy, in his book, Disappointment with God, states (21:39):
I decided I would rather be disappointed with God than disappointed without him.
I have learned that living here we will be chronically disappointed because we were made for paradise.
And God is some not not some cosmic candyman who just doles out goodies.
(22:00):
and blessings only to those who are faithful to him.
He never promised that.
In fact he told us that he would uh we would have trials and tribulations, but that he would never leave or forsake us.
I'm a nurse.
Um was a chaplain for years in a hospital.
I used to try and explain what God was up to as if he somehow needs our defense or our protection.
(22:26):
Trying to make sense out of my own and others' pain.
Of course, through chaplain training, you learn not to do that.
There is no sense to be made, and God has never answered those questions.
We live in a world where we experience more sorrow than we deserve, and we also experience more grace than we deserve.
(22:47):
I've learned that the most important question isn't where is God when I'm hurting?
It's where am I?
How am I going to respond?
How can I work this reality into my life so I'm enlarged by it and not diminished by it?
God's passion for us, Philippians says, is not to make us comfortable.
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It's to make us his
His passion is to make us his, and that seems to occur most profoundly in the dark nights of our soul when we're the most vulnerable and sense our need of him.
There's a quote that says, trusting God doesn't mean building a house in a land of no storms.
It means building a house that no storm can destroy.
(23:33):
I learned that it's not how long we live, but how we live.
That while we were praying for the only kind of miracle we wanted, although we said, Thy will be done,
There were miracles going on all around us, the miracle of some time together, of the outpouring of people's love and prayers of support, of our neighbor back in Santa Maria who went to all of the
(23:57):
um pharmacies in town and put out a a little jar like marcha dimes and put Trevor's picture on them and said help support a a local boy uh dying of brain cancer and his family
And I didn't even know that was happening.
I went back home in the middle of those two weeks.
Trevor was in the hospital for the final time.
I went to the CVS or somewhere to get something and I walked to the counter and here is this jar.
(24:23):
With Trevor's face on it.
And I just instantly began to sob.
And I sat down next to the counter.
And the cashier lady, God bless her, came around.
And I'm so glad she didn't say, what's wrong?
She just sat down and just sat with me.
(24:44):
When I shared a little bit of the story, she wept with me.
And she said, I'm honored to have his picture and have this jar here in our store.
Hot meals every day in our house for six weeks after Trevor died.
Um breaking into the house, people from our church paying our bills.
(25:04):
See if you ask people who are grieving what they need, they don't know.
It's too overwhelming.
It's too exhausting, too draining.
They're not gonna ask people to do things for them.
Would you would you come into my home and help pay my gas bill?
Right.
So just step in and do something.
People will let you know if it's intrusive.
(25:26):
At one point I had 32 boxes of cereal in the garage.
And I enjoyed taking them to the homeless shelter.
Just miracles of God's strength and courage that were bestowed on us.
Love with skin on it, you know.
And I learned that it's a gift not to know the future.
Trevor is buried in the cemetery where in Santa Maria where he learned to ride his bike two years before.
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What a blessing not to know.
Sheila Walsh says, true spirituality can live with unanswered questions while empty religion confines God to a box with neatly packaged answers.
I learned that someone else's love and silence and presence heals and comforts.
What does not comfort are all of our attempts to fix it, even though we're well-meaning.
(26:17):
Or spiritualize it with a quick scripture when the wound is fresh.
Try to make other people feel better.
They don't need to feel better.
We actually need to wrestle with deeper life questions when we're going through challenging times.
What we need is people to companion us.
We don't need explanation.
We need consolation.
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We need to know someone that can stay in a season of grief and sorrow or our anger and not try to judge it or fix it or make it different or make it seem like a lack of faith.
Just let it be the tragedy that it is and be present and be kind and listen.
Even if people are telling their stories over and over.
(26:59):
Every time we retell our stories of struggle, we're not going to be able to do that.
We reframe it a little bit more into this newer chapter as we need to move forward.
I experienced God most profoundly when I held Trevor and his little life slipped away.
What does also not heal or comfort are the phrases that we say, and we'll talk about this more uh after potluck this afternoon.
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But we say them meaning well, but they really serve to distance ourselves from someone's pain that we can't fix or comprehend.
No one can ever understand what someone else is going through.
I could meet a mother who lost a son 38 years ago, who was seven years old, who died in the same week of the same month of the same year of the same diagnosis.
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I don't have a clue how she feels.
Not a clue.
I know what it was for me.
I can't possibly know what it is for her
We all come with different life experiences and backgrounds and and sometimes limiting beliefs and traumas and things we've experienced, things in our DNA that those before us have experienced.
(28:09):
We carry all that around with us.
And we move into our experiences with that.
Grief is not an illness to get over or a problem to fix.
It's natural, it's necessary, and no two people experience it the same.
Again, this afternoon, we will learn more about that together.
How desperately we want life to be fair, don't we?
(28:31):
Especially as Christians, we live in the disparity of how things are and how we would like them to be, sort of a chronic state of grief.
We want more than anything else to be comfortable and to have relief from our hardships.
And maybe even holding God off at times because He doesn't seem to dream our dreams.
(28:52):
Or bring us the wholeness and the satisfaction we long for.
Larry Crabbe in his book Finding God, I think if your last name is Crab, you have to write a really good book.
And and he did.
Finding God is an extraordinary book.
He said, when we pursue the satisfaction we think God can give more than we pursue Him, we get neither.
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We crave relief while he craves relationship.
And we miss realizing that what we actually crave is what he craves.
Because he made us like him, wanting connection and intimacy and safety.
But here's the thing, our definition of safety demands that God fix all the brokenness now.
(29:35):
Something he never promised to do.
Our doctrines, our tenets of faith, do not protect us from life's painful experiences.
Neither do they answer all of life's questions or contain everything that has ever been known or ever will be known about God.
(29:55):
They're a beautiful framework and sort of map, if you will, but they are not the whole territory of God.
God is not captured in my understanding of his character or my dreams of what he will do for me.
I was at a large well-known church a number of years ago, and people got up to talk about their encounters and experiences with the power of God in their lives.
(30:23):
And I want you to listen to this carefully, because it's still an unfolding lesson for me.
They told stories of finding something lost.
or praying for something and having it come to pass, or surviving a car accident, or recovering from a serious illness.
And the leader ended with this phrase, he said, you too can have a real encounter with God.
(30:51):
So I understand that.
And we need to praise God for those things.
But listen very carefully.
I held my seven-year-old son as he was dying, and thousands of people were praying for him.
And we had all night prayer vigils and anointing services, and he died, and I had the most profound experience of God I have ever had in my life.
(31:16):
Period.
I had the picture over my bed of the angels keeping the two little children from falling off the bridge, as I said, and I'm sure that thousands of times in our lifetime our angels keep us safe.
No question.
I also know of a family, close friends, five of them, piled in the car, had just had a prayer service, uh, they were retiring and leaving, but they were on their way to Bible camp.
(31:46):
They had their grandkids with them and off they go.
And all five people were killed in a car accident on the way.
Now what do we do with that?
Nothing trips us up more than trying to explain that spiritually.
And we tend to avoid it.
Because here's the thing, God is either who he says he is, operating 24-7 in in our time
(32:13):
Uh out of love and mercy and grace and wisdom and all that, or it's the biggest crock that's ever been played on humanity.
There's nothing in between.
Jesus Christ was either who he said he was or he was insane.
And we get to choose what we follow and what we believe.
(32:36):
Scripture tells us the kingdom of God is dwells within us.
He doesn't just fly down from the realms of heaven.
And sometimes make it in time and sometimes not.
He's present with us always.
And there are simply times when we sense him more clearly, and that has more to say about us.
(32:58):
And it may be at times of finding the lost dog we were praying for.
And it may be at times when we pray for something and it does not go that way.
Again, Larry Crabbe with this amazing quote that says, We have become committed to relieving the pain behind our problems.
(33:19):
rather than using our pain to wrestle more passionately with the character and purposes of God.
Feeling better has become more important than finding God, and worse yet, we believe and assume that people who find God always feel better.
We've learned to praise God the way we tip an especially attentive waiter.
(33:40):
Good treatment we expect, but exceptional treatment deserves special recognition.
And after all, God qualifies for extra notice.
He's gone to great lengths to feed our souls and bolster our self-asseems and and give his life.
And
We therefore leave him a big tip and we feel benevolent and noble.
And he in turn beams with humble appreciation as he hears us say, Well done, Lord, you have served us well.
(34:09):
Larry Crabbe says, until we're moved to know God with a passion we feel nowhere else, we will never use the struggles of this life as an impetus to experience God.
His ways are not our ways.
There's no figuring him out.
And again, after all the years of being a critical care nurse and a chaplain.
(34:33):
being at the bedsides of hundreds and hundreds of dying people and their families.
I'm all done trying to explain them because I realize I'm not called to.
I'm called to reveal him and be his arms and hands extended to others, to let him live his life and transpose it through me to others
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We can relax.
He wants our willingness to let him show up through us
I'll say one more thing and it just gives us all food for thought.
I've had people come to me when I have shared this story.
I don't think I've done it for about three years.
Um thank for thank you, Ellen, for giving me the opportunity.
(35:18):
But some folks would come up after I'd done a concert and combined it with this story.
And they'd say, listen, Sandy, one lady said, be very careful.
That you that that you say it right because God didn't cause Trevor to die, he allowed him to die.
And I looked at her and I said, How do you know?
(35:40):
Have you read the Old Testament?
We are creatures.
He is God.
He's wild at heart.
He's not always predictable.
His love is and his mercy is.
But the methods aren't always.
He used a donkey to speak to Balaam to remind him to use a jouse of a whale to to you know for Jonah to have his awakening.
(36:08):
I mean these are things I mean Jesus came into a world when people wanted him to be their uh the Messiah to them was for someone to come and relieve them of of Roman
Oppression and suffering, we do the same in many ways today as humans.
As humans.
So whether God allows something or whether he causes something is not the right question.
(36:32):
It's not the right thing to dwell on
These conversations serve to keep us from the only response as creatures to a creator, which is to rest in his arms and trust him and make the journey a little bit lighter for someone else.
The appropriate response to suffering is found in the life of Jesus.
(36:56):
Look at his last hours of life.
His cry, can this be accomplished in some other way?
Can this cup pass from me?
Not my will but thine, and then he had the courage to let those around him, and we're going to talk about this more this afternoon.
Had the courage to let those closest to him, those three disciples, know how they could best support him.
(37:17):
And he said, I'm anguished and my heart is ready to break with grief.
Stay and watch with me.
The creator of the universe needed comfort and presence and compassion and companionship, and they fell asleep.
(37:39):
Human beings are God's love language.
Martin Luther once said of the story of the Good Samaritan that the first question the priest and Levite asked, who were of the same faith
If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?
The Samaritan, who had every social reason to walk by, stopped and said, if I don't help this man, what will happen to him?
(38:06):
To live with God's promises and the contradiction of them is the most heroic challenge in the walk of faith.
Another quote I love says, faith is not our ability to hold on to God.
It's trusting his ability to hold on to us
Trevor said that if only one person came to know God more through his story, he said, Mommy, then it's okay what's happening to me.
(38:32):
And I'm that one person.
He said he wanted to be a greeter at the gates.
There's gonna have to be a lot of gates there one day, right?
Because there's just gonna be like throngs of people there.
And I can't wait to hold him again and hear his voice.
What a reunion day is coming.
Remember the scripture that says, say to them that are of a fearful heart, fear not, be strong.
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For behold, your God will come and save you.
Then shall the eyes of the blind be open, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as a heart, and the tongue of the dumb will sing.
And God will wipe away all tears and sadness, for the former things are passed away.
Behold, all things are new.
(39:17):
There is a day that is coming, Some Holy Morning.
Years ago, Tim Crosby at the Voice of Prophecy wrote this song, Some Holy Morning.
He sent it to me.
This was a year or two before Trevor ever got sick.
He said, I wrote this song with your voice in mind.
He said, I just I just hear you singing it somehow.
(39:38):
And it was on a cassette tape.
Remember what those were?
And he sent that to me.
And I never listened to it.
I don't know what happened.
I got caught up in the day.
I put it on a shelf and there it sat.
Three or four months after Trevor died, Lonnie Malishenko called me from The Voice of Prophecy.
I know him well for years.
(39:59):
He said, Sandy, I'd
I'd like to do um I just interviewed a woman uh on our radio show about when God says yes and answers prayers in that way.
I'd like to do I'd like to do an interview um with you and your journey around when God says no.
And I said, well, first of all, and I could speak with him this way, um, let let me correct you on something.
(40:24):
Um
God didn't say no.
He said not yet.
Because God can heal now, he can heal over time, or he can heal when he comes
He is in the work of healing.
And we can claim that promise.
How it takes place, we don't have the wisdom and the end from the beginning to know how that's best.
(40:49):
Um and so I, you know, he laughed and he said, I know I'm still gonna call it that.
I said, that's okay.
And we had fun talking about it.
He said, why don't you sing the song at the close that Tim wrote?
I said, what are you talking about?
And he said, I don't know.
It's called some holy something or other.
And um
(41:10):
I pulled out my earphones.
I found that cassette tape.
This was four months after Trevor died.
I sat in the beanbag chair and I cried my eyes out.
And I knew what it had been saved for.
I'm not even sure I can make it through today.
I haven't sung it for a while.
It's never been published
People write me all the time and say, where can I find that?
(41:31):
And I just say, you gotta find someone like a Kelly Maurer or someone who's extraordinary on the piano who can listen to it and then play it for you because it's not published anywhere.
So I offer this to you as a reminder that some holy morning, soon, and very soon, we will be in a far better place where there will not be any more tears or sorrows.
(41:56):
And we will agree with God in his wisdom for how our lives went.
As Ellen White says, if we could see the end from the beginning.
We would not have chosen for it to go any other way than how it went some holy morning.
Father in heaven, we are whew
(42:17):
We are in awe of the reminder that we are creatures and you are the creator.
How fortunate we are that you call us your children who gave your life.
We'll spend eternity trying to really understand and get ourselves around what that kind of love really means
(42:41):
We want with all our hearts to know you more, to love you more, to serve you more
And to be your arms and hands extended to others.
Live out your life in us, O Jesus, King of kings.
And may we be held by your grace, by your courage, by your power until that day when we are in that better place of no more tears and no more sorrows.
(43:12):
Singing with the angels on the sea of glass.
May it be so and may it be soon.
And we are better for having been here today in your presence.
Give us your spirit to go with us now as we go, and for those staying for Potluck.
We are praying over the food here too.
And we thank you for the ways that you nourish us and care for us.
(43:36):
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
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