Into the Darkness

Sometimes, no matter how hard you fight, victory is not an option. I and my family fought with the doctors, sometimes with each other, and against death. We lost. For 23 days we did our absolute best for Jenni. We prayed for Jenni. We got our churches and Christians around the world to pray with us. We kept watch over Jenni. We sat with Jenni. We hoped in the best medical care and trusted in God. It was not enough.

Here are my words from the time from a blog entry called “Safe in the Arms of God.”

We just had a very sad conversation with Jenn’s Docs. Jenni’s condition continues to deteriorate. They are out of treatment options. Factor VII given through the lungs was ruled out because the doctors believe it would cause a very painful passing and not help at all.
Therefore, tonight when all of the family can be gathered, we will discontinue the extraordinary means that we have been using to keep Jenni going.
Jenni did not want to be on the vent for long, and she would not want to be on the machine if there were no hope of recovery. We are honoring her wishes.
Thank you for all of your love and prayers. The outpouring of support has been more than I can really comprehend. It has carried us through these difficult days. May God bless you.

Grace and Peace
Layne

Later that night I wrote,

Just a few moments after 9:00 Jenni passed. She went peacefully, surrounded by family and friends.

Grace and Peace
Layne

I cannot describe the darkness I plunged into. The days and weeks that followed were among the worst in my life. Just a few days after losing Jenni, I was to preach at one of our town’s community Lenten services. The title of my sermon was “Disappointed with God.” The sermon was based on one of the imprecatory Psalms. In the beginning, I noted that when people greet one another and ask “how are you doing,” the last thing they want is an answer. I said that at that point I was beyond niceties. If someone asked, I would tell them. I was grieving and I was not going to hide it. Worse, I was bitterly disappointed with God. I noted the promises of prayer, and that God had promised that He would answer our prayers. I described the biblical imperative to pray and my disappointment that God had not saved my sister. I then told the congregation that the only place to run with that disappointment was God. God was big enough to handle it. In my message, there was only raw emotion. I expressed no hope, for I had none to offer.

In looking back at the time, it was not only Jenni’s death that plunged me into the darkness. I was sick, and getting sicker. Five months before Jenni died, I suddenly lost my voice during a sermon. I and my family were terrified because the first symptom of Jenni’s lymphoma was when she lost her voice. The doctor, however, assured me it was not cancer. It was a growth on my voice box. He believed it was scar tissue caused by acid reflux and muscle spasms on my esophagus. He prescribed a muscle relaxer, Baclofen, and Nexium. I had surgery to remove the scar tissue, and the doctor believed that the medicines would prevent any further occurrence.

He was wrong. In a few days after Jenni’s death, I began to have some hoarseness in my voice again. The scar tissue had re-emerged. I went to the doctor and we scheduled a second surgery a mere 6 weeks after Jenni’s death. The second surgery was not effective. The third was not either, nor the fourth, nor the fifth. I had a total of seven surgeries on my throat. We began to consider radical options. I was getting consultations on a major surgery on my stomach to prevent any reflux from reaching my throat.

If the throat issues were not enough, I began to experience significant pain in my legs. I thought it was arthritis. The only help for the pain was warmth. So, I would put a sportcoat in my lap to keep my legs warm at work. I had constant muscle spasms. If I had to walk more than 100 yards, I probably would not have made it. One of our church members, seeing what was happening, bought me an afghan. The church staff started to call me “gramps.” The pain prevented sleep or any healthy functioning. I was barely holding on.

Those difficulties were visible to anyone who knew me. What almost no one knew is that my marriage was in free fall. Less than 18 months after Jenni’s death, my then wife left me for the first time. She left again less than 18 months after that.

I remember an event that changed how I looked at the situation. I was standing in my closet when I sneezed. The sneeze kicked off a massive muscle spasm in my torso and I collapsed in a heap. My wife at the time was in the adjacent room, and I did not find her presence helpful or comforting. Although I was not on the floor long–my pride got me up quickly–while I was down there I thought, “This is not life, this is death.”

In all of that time, I could not manage to forgive God. I know, I know. The mere idea that I have something to forgive God for is absolutely preposterous, ludicrous. I, however, was angry at God. Why did God not heal my sister? How is could He not see that the world is a worse place without her? I could not make sense of it in any form. I thought that I would hold this against God until I met Him face to face. Anything less would be a betrayal of my sister.

I had an image in my mind to help me explain what was happening. There is a movie trilogy, Lord of the Rings, (yes, I know this makes me a nerd) in which one of the major characters, Frodo, is stabbed in the first installment. In the last installment, he dies of the wound. That is how I saw my faith. I believed that my faith had received a mortal wound. I would carry on until I accomplished God’s purpose, but in the end, this wound would be the end of my faith. It was not that I stopped believing in God. I never did. I stopped trusting in God’s goodness. How could I trust God when my sister was dead, my body was broken, my marriage was dead, and I had no hope for the future?

Fortunately for me, God is bigger than all of what I suffered. God was even bigger than my anger at Him. In Baptist life, we hold on to an idea we call the permanency of the believer. What we mean is that those who are actually in Christ will remain in Christ till the end of their spiritual journey. They will hold on to faith for their lifetime. What I have found is that the faith held on to me far better than I ever held on to it. I have found that to be in Christ is to be safe in the arms of God whether in life or in death.