The Last Laugh

Twelve days ago I sat by my friend’s bedside and fervently prayed death would come swiftly. The doctor has told her she has weeks, maybe months, to live. That evening made me question if that window had shrunk to days. She passed in and out of sleep, occasionally moaning in pain, while I sat by her bedside and wept silent, ugly tears of overwhelming sadness and grief.

And I thought, “My God, my God, it is not supposed to be like this.”

Between the moans of pain, she asked me to read out loud to her some verses from a prayer guide I had recently written. Our pastor is on sabbatical for a couple of months, so I decided to write a day-by-day prayer guide for the people in our church, a way to collectively gather everyone around a series of common prayers. She had a printed copy on the table next to her bed, so I picked it up, flipped to the first page and began reading the passage on the very first day, Psalm 126:2-3 (ESV):

“Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, ‘The LORD has done great things for them." The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad.’”

My mouth was nearly filled with laughter, but not because I thought the moment was funny like I find Tim Hawkins funny. It felt like a cruel and insensitive joke. I was forced to declare out loud with my mouth words which felt so very contrary to what I was experiencing in that moment. They seemed almost absurd to me, outlandish in some way. Our mouths are filled with laughter? Our tongues are filled with shouts of joy? We are glad?

I was watching my friend suffer, and my mouth was not filled with laughter. I was not glad, and I was not shouting for joy.

I eventually left her bedside hours later, and I found myself wanting to sprint down the seemingly endless hallway, desperate to escape the sadness still going on behind me. I climbed into my car, and wept like I had not wept in quite some time. The kind of weeping where you think you might be on the verge of hyperventilating. The kind of weeping where it hurts to breathe. The kind of weeping where you feel like your eyes are going to pop out of your head. The kind of weeping where you really just need a towel to wipe your nose because a tissue will not be sufficient. The kind of weeping where a low-grade headache settles in and lurks at the base of your skull. I sat hunched over the steering wheel, sobbing into the darkness and the silence of the empty car, shoulders shaking, eyes so blurry I probably should not have turned on the ignition and driven anywhere. I woke up the next morning looking like I had something akin to a hangover, complete with puffy and swollen eyes, tinged red at the edges.

My mouth was not filled with laughter because my heart was filled with pain.

I’m not alone in these sentiments. All of humanity lives stretched between moments like that. We live stretched between cancer and cures, healthy babies and miscarriages, suicide and life, laughter and heartache, mountaintop-joy and valley-like sorrow.

I have a friend who is announcing her against-all-odds pregnancy, while on the other hand I have a friend who just weeks ago stood over the grave of her aunt who committed suicide. I have a friend who is celebrating a dream job, while on the other hand I have church family grieving over the loss of their mom and wife who lost the battle to cancer. I have a family member who doesn’t know why there is a mass the size of a tennis ball in his belly, who was told by three doctors he would never be able to have children again – only to flash a picture of an ultrasound showing he and his wife are expecting. I have a friend who received stunning news that her barely 40-year old friend and mom of four kids has an aggressive form of cancer, while on the other hand my grandmother celebrates her eighty-sixth birthday in just a few months, practically healthy as a horse.

When I sat by the bedside of my friend, I wanted to give into the sadness, to let it have its way with me.

But after I had a good cry and after I somehow managed to drive home safely, I stood in my apartment, arms stretched toward the heavens, and declared out loud:

Jesus, I believe you are the God of life – even in the midst of death.

And there’s only one reason why I can make that claim: because my God is the God who overcame death.

“Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:51-57 ESV).

Oh death, I feel the prick of your sting. And so do my friends and the people I love.

But only for a moment.

Thanks be to God, who has given us victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Satan thought he had the last laugh on that day over two thousand years ago when my Savior hung on the cross, blood pouring from his hands and feet.  Death seemed the victor that day.

It may not always feel like it, but Psalm 126 is true. Maybe not here, now, in these moments. But there will come a day when there will be no more cancer, no more miscarriages, no more famine, no more war, and no more death.

And there will come a day when our mouths will be filled with laughter, our tongues will shout with joy, and we will be glad. Always and for all eternity.

Because for those who are in Christ? We get the last laugh.

The joke's on you, Satan.

To Myrt

Myrt and me at an Ohio State men's basketball game

We were practically friends at first sight. Nine years ago this past January, I walked into a women’s Bible study being held at the local church I had only recently started attending. She had snow-white hair, cropped short, and she walked up to me and grabbed me by the arm and exclaimed, “You’re a DG? I’m a Pi Phi!” I had an old sweatshirt from college on with a Delta Gamma logo and she spotted it from a mile away. Myrt and I have been friends ever since.

And what a sweet friendship it has been. Some days Myrt makes me laugh so hard I cry, and she’s not even trying to be funny, which makes her even funnier. She’s feisty, full of grit and gumption. She uses the word “golly” a lot, which I adore. She will talk politics to anyone who is willing to listen, and she will not be the least bit afraid to tell you exactly what she thinks about Democrats. She has traveled the world and has collected no shortage of stories and adventures from far-off lands. And she loathes the color orange. So much so I found her one Sunday, years ago, standing in the church lobby with a plastic bag in her hands and some orange lilies sticking out the top of the sack. These poor flowers had somehow managed to bloom in her yard, and she simply was not going to have that, so she ripped them out of the ground - bulbs, dirt and all - stuck them in a bag and brought them to church to give away. 

Somewhere along the way, after a few adventures around the world, she went on a blind date and met a man named Paul. And not just any man – the love of her life. The rest is history. People want to talk about relationships goals, or use the hashtag on social media #relationshipgoals. I suppose if I had Facebook or Instagram, I would post a picture of Myrt and Paul, and simply write in the caption #relationshipgoals. You can’t find a marriage any better than theirs, and I’m not sure you can find a woman who adores her husband more than Myrt adores Paul.

Two years ago this past December, Paul passed away. Myrt was already cranky about turning 80 nearly four years ago and still being alive. She had always said she never wanted to live long enough to see that age, mainly because if you’re 80 years old, you’ve probably lived a pretty good life, and so she figured there was nothing more worth sticking around for. And then when Paul died, not only was she unhappy she was still alive past that age, she was now still here without Paul. I have no doubt she has shared a few choice words with God over this fact.

And in the months and years since Paul died, I’ve often heard Myrt say, “I just don’t know why I’m here. I just don’t know what my purpose is.” And it always broke my heart. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and talk some sense in her, to explain to her all the reasons why.

So, Myrt, can I tell you why God has kept you around here on this big blue marble called Planet Earth?

You are still here because there is a girl who has got an occasional thick head and hard heart, and she needed someone like you to talk some sense into her.

That girl is me.

I needed you tell me to stop over-thinking life, and to stop making it way more complicated than it needed to be. I needed to sit with you over dinners at the Village and show me what it looked like to love the same man year after year, decade after decade. I needed you to remind me when I wanted to have a pity party that life was not all that bad, and to stop dwelling on all that was going wrong and focus instead on all that was going right. I needed your jokes and your sense of humor. I needed to witness your feistiness and your attitude. I needed the gift of friendship and conversations shared over rice bowls at Bibibop. I needed time with you at Ohio State basketball games, sitting in the car two hours before the game starts, chatting about life and sororities and whether the Buckeyes are going to be any good this year in football or not.  

I needed your no-nonsense attitude that made faith so black and white – either I trust God or I don’t, either I believe he is good or I don’t. I needed your example of what it looked like to live as a single person well into her thirties, and still find there was so much to do even without a man by her side. I need you to tell me to stop taking myself so seriously. I needed to laugh with you as you yelled at “Alexa” to turn the lights off or the music down.  I needed you and your big mouth to tattle on me to Paul, to tell him I had asked you in the wake of a break-up, "How do you know you have found the one you are supposed to marry?"  Because I also needed Paul to come and tell me, "The Holy Spirit will let you know that you know that you know."  I needed your homemade birthday and greeting cards to brighten my day. I needed your example.  Some days, I just needed your hugs and your hand in mine. 

Alexanne, Myrt and me at the dedication
of a wing of our church, in honor of Myrt
and Paul.

Most days, though, I really just needed time with you.

But when we stood underneath the branches of the tree at church last summer, the one just outside the kitchen door, when you said you wanted to walk around the building and pray for all that would happen within the walls of our church?

That is when I knew I needed you most.

Because I was ready to bail on my church family, to walk away, to call it day and say, “I just can’t do this anymore.” I was full of bitterness and resentment, and my hard heart and my thick head were winning that day. And yet there you stood. There you stood by that tree, a tree you remembered being planted decades before, long before our church became what it is today. You stood there, recounting the many seasons of life you had witnessed during your time as a member of this church, and all the other previous versions of it. The years past and the tree grew, you along with it. You and Paul had made a decision this church was your family, and come hell or high water, this is where you would stay.

As I stood there underneath that tree, fighting back tears and fighting back an equal amount of anger and frustration, I watched you. I listened as I heard the resolve in your voice – you made a choice to stay all those years ago. You made a choice to weather the storms and the changes and the growth. Because in your mind, what other choice was there?

And in that moment, with you standing next to me, held up by your walker, the sun shining down from above, I thought to myself, “Jesus, help me to be like that. Help me to be like this woman standing beside me, and make me like this tree standing before me. Rooted and established. Confident. Steadfast. Ever-hopeful.  Help me to sink roots here. Help me to dig deep. Help me to hold on, to fight tooth and nail to follow you. Because if she can do it – if Myrt, at 80-something years old can choose to put her trust in you above her own personal preferences – then I can do it too. Because this church is my family. And you don’t just walk out on family.”

Myrt, I know you are ready to go home to Jesus and be reunited with Paul. I know. You tell me so often. You always said you wanted to die five minutes after Paul, just long enough to tidy up the place and be on your way. I know you are less than happy that you haven't gotten your way.  Your life has been one well-lived, and I’m honored to call you friend and “Queen.” Your friendship has been a prized possession.

But for purely selfish motives, I want you here, with me, just a little while longer. 

I’m not ready for Jesus to take you just yet.

But when that day does come – and it surely will eventually, whether I want it to or not – I want you to know this:

You had a purpose, and your life had a meaning.

Because you spoke purpose and meaning into mine.