Today I read 50 blog posts written by another family about their dad’s four month fight with cancer. He died last August at 63, a year younger than Nate. Although I never met this man, his daughter is married to my cousin’s son, so we do have a link.

As I read through John’s story, I felt an immediate bond with this total stranger because his battle had so much in common with ours. What appeared in every one of his posts was a report on his daily confrontation with leg swelling and pain. Multiple blood clots could not be removed because of surgical risk, and nothing alleviated this acute pain.

When I finished reading his story, my leg hurt, too. The day-in-day-out pounding of pain in the very same bodily spot over weeks of time produces an exhaustion and discouragement difficult to overcome. One of my daughter’s friends battles constant head pain, and after two years of never being without it, she said she wished someone would just cut off her head. She was only half joking.

My thoughts wandered back to Nate’s ordeal with pain. Until the last week of his life, his greatest misery was always in his lower back. This was a group of non-life-threatening bone problems that tormented him with piercing pain that absolutely never let up, not for one minute. When a man with ferocious fast-growing tumors throughout his body voices his main complaint as back pain, it’s got to be excruciating.

As I thought about John and Nate with nearly unbearable pain pounding them every minute of every day, I felt awful. Did I sympathize enough with Nate? Did I have his pain on my mind continually? Did I remember to care for that pain with fresh ice packs as soon as the ones he was using got warm? Were there other ways I could have helped him? Was I impatient in my serving? Did he sense it?

As we grew closer to Nate’s death, my willingness to work hard for him increased. I became eager to please him in even tiny ways, and it was satisfying to do so. The question is, why wasn’t this true from the very beginning?

Tonight I’m realizing I could have done a much better job helping Nate, not just during his six weeks of cancer but during the 35 weeks of agonizing back pain before that. I could have done much more to show him love, and from this vantage point tonight, I feel badly. Why was it I could sympathize and serve tirelessly when I knew his time was short, but couldn’t summon up that kind of unfettered help when he had non-life-threatening pain?

We ought to be able to love our loved ones sacrificially at any time, not just when we know death is near. And it should be especially easy to help when we know the pain never goes away for the one who’s most important to us. I look back on 40 years of marriage and see plenty of self-centeredness on my part. It makes me feel even worse to realize Nate didn’t complain very often about his pain. Did I take advantage of this maturity by acting like a self-centered baby?

The trick in marriage is to figure this out from the get-go, not when time is waning. When I knew Nate’s life would soon end, I could cheerfully skip meals, live on four hours of sleep a night, forfeit showers. What would it have taken for me to eagerly surrender those same rights and many others not just when Nate was terminally ill or even when he had insufferable back pain, but also during our healthy years?

Jesus Christ was our perfect example of sacrificially loving others to-the-max. Because of my experience with Nate’s suffering and my often deficient serving, I’m increasingly impressed by Jesus and how he lived, how he loved. I have a better understanding of how hard it was for him not to self-pity or feel like he should have been served by others because of what he was about to do for them on the cross. Yet he never made that demand or any other.

Oh, how short I fall.

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5)

The word “sacred” is linked with deity and is not to be tossed about frivolously, but I like to use it to describe the small room where Nate died. Tonight, sitting in that room in a quiet cottage, my computer is illuminated by the glow of the same green desk lamp that served as Nate’s night light while he slept in his hospital bed here. The clock, ringed in small beach stones, still ticks away the seconds of each day just as it timed-out the minutes of his life.

When Nate and I squeezed two houses worth of furniture into one smaller home last June, the functions of several rooms changed. This cozy little nook became our “library”. Nate was a reader with a capital “R” and particularly loved political history. Our book shelves in Chicago bowed beneath the weight of hundreds of selections, many read multiple times. Before we moved, I asked him to cull out his favorite 100 books. This was like asking a child in a candy shop to pick just one piece.

The books he saved are now shelved in this room, a window into his thoughts: THE PATH TO POWER, NIXON AND KISSENGER, THE OREGON TRAIL, T.R., BEHIND THE OVAL OFFICE, WHAT LINCOLN BELIEVED, NATASHA’S DANCE, AN UNFINISHED LIFE, OUR FIRST REVOLUTION, and of course LAST TRAIN TO MEMPHIS (Elvis). As he lay in his hospital bed, strength draining away, he was surrounded by his favorite people and his favorite books.

The morning after Nate died, Hospice sent a man over to collect their equipment. Once the big bed had been removed, the library begged to be put back as it had been, pre-cancer. It was a quick way to eliminate the cavernous hole left when Nate and his bed were both gone.

I enjoy blogging in this room, remembering all that went on during those 18 days when the hub of our home became Nate’s hospital bed. In this room, volumes of prayer were spoken out, acknowledging God’s minute-to-minute involvement in Nate’s life (and death). This is where family members communicated deep love and respect for a man they loved.

This is where Mary and I spent three consecutive nights watching out for death, not wanting Nate to leave without a loving send-off. This is where we all said our final goodbyes, and this is where Nate died. A bed in a library became his springboard to heaven.

The room itself isn’t really sacred with its walls desperate for fresh paint and its floor in need of carpeting. But what happened within this place was sacred indeed, because Divinity was powerfully active during those days. God was busy putting his flawless plans into action within the minds, souls and hearts of each individual, working one-on-one simultaneously and in detail, as only he can do.

Although our days and nights in the library with Nate were peppered with trouble and heartbreak, I saw and continue to see valuable fruit being produced as a result of them. The whole scenario was a God-allowed (possibly God-initiated) test for each of us, including Nate. Some of us will need to be tested again in similar ways as part of our life-training. Others passed their tests, gaining in maturity and godliness, and will be brought to new tests in order to make greater gains.

At first glance, this seems to be the manipulation of a cruel God. When we recognize, however, that his goal is to ready us for our “real” life in eternity, we can accept present-day testing as judicious. Life’s greatest gains seem to come only under heavy pressure.

Nate had a saying that could have been a life verse, had it been in the Bible: “Pressure produces.” During several periods of his life when he found himself in a pressure-cooker, he refused to fall apart, persevering through trials to the best of his ability. His last test was his most demanding, but we all agree he passed with flying colors. As a result, he received God’s permission to graduate from his somewhat sacred room to his supremely sacred new home.

“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” (James 1:2-3,12)

Adult children joke about the parental cautions of their childhoods:

1. Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!
2. You’re going to poke your eye out with that thing!
3. Don’t run with the scissors in your hand!
4. Stop that before somebody gets hurt!
5. You don’t know how good you have it!

Our parents didn’t use those exact words, but their ideas were the same. Dad cautioned us far more than Mom, lecturing us frequently on all things dangerous. One life and death issue he harped on during our childhood was not climbing the mounds of ice along Lake Michigan’s winter shoreline.

“Even when its frozen, there’s moving water underneath, making all of it unstable.” He was correct, of course, but we all knew if the right circumstances came along, we’d be on those ice mounds in a flash.

This weekend the right circumstances came along. Mary and I took our dogs to the beach where they love to run up and down the snow-covered dunes side by side like a team of miniature horses. Climbing up over the dune ourselves, we gasped at our first glimpse of the lake.

There were three rows of ice-mountains running the length of the shoreline, stretching for miles in both directions. These consecutive hills rose eight to ten feet with icy valleys in between, a frozen roller coaster toward frigid water, each peak less reliable than the one before.

Mary and I agreed the whole scene was calling us to its beauty. With difficulty because of glare ice hidden beneath the snow, we scaled the first ridge, crawling on hands and knees to avoid falling.

Vowing to go no further as we repeated Dad’s ancient lecture to each other, the draw of the second ridge drowned out his cautions and coaxed us to come. We had to sit on the ice to scoot down into the valley and then climbed up the middle ridge, teetering on its narrow peak while we took in a 360 degree postcard-perfect view. Looking back at the distant dunes, however, we calculated we were well “out to sea” over the swirling water Dad had assured us was beneath the ice.

“Only the dogs will witness our drownings,” Mary said.

“They’ll probably drown along with us,” I added.

From what we could see, the frozen water beyond the third ridge was clear and blue, a wonder we yearned to get close to. We slid into the second valley and as the wind whipped sideways at our parkas, talked at length about inching up the last mound for one quick look over the top. But the weather had been above freezing that day, and Dad hadn’t told us whether top-ice or under-ice would melt first. In the end, his warnings terminated our battle with temptation. We didn’t climb the third peak but turned back toward solid ground, two old ladies having had two-thirds of an adventure.

It’s good to know when to stop. All of us have gotten into trouble pushing the limits on risky behavior, which forced us to pay the piper when it was over. Taking chances for a valid reason is one thing, but taking chances just for fun is not good.

Some people risk the one thing that matters most, life after death. They’re sure death ends everything, then find out it isn’t true. By then it’s too late to do anything about it.

A second risky possibility is to postpone thoughts of spiritual matters with a self-promise to think about it in old age, but then to die young. Both scenarios are tantamount to walking on thin ice.

As Mary and I turned toward the dune, we watched Jack and Sydney race ahead in tandem. Sydney ran across the frozen creek but suddenly dropped through the ice up to her chest, quickly climbing out with a surprised look on her face. Jack’s path across had stayed solid. We were still laughing when I got my own chilly surprise. Despite following Jack’s solid paw prints, I went through the ice up to my knee anyway. Brrr! It would have been better to follow someone heavier than I was.

“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” (Isaiah 46:9-10)