Hello loyal readers! Let me extend a heartfelt thank you for your patience over the lack of posts while navigating a difficult season. Though my hope for this blog is to facilitate a passionate connection with our Judeo-Christian roots of our faith, it is a tremendous blessing to use this post to update you on recent events in regards to my Ema as a testimony to her walk with El Roi (the God who sees).
Wow. Where to begin. If you recall a post titled “Ema” in July of 2023, Ema (mother in Hebrew) had been diagnosed in March with metastatic cancer spanning from the brain to the kidneys. The doctors, Hospice staff, and others projected a few months to live at best… but God. There it is again, ‘but God’….two of my favorite words in the Bible. Yahweh had other plans and blessed us with almost a full year. Before diving in, a quick detour may add some context.
Five years ago, Ema came for a visit to Chattanooga, and she joined us for a church service. Although a born-again believer from a young age, the previous 55 years she had been in the Catholic church. During that time, the basic tenets of her faith eroded. She no longer had a personal relationship with the Lord, the Author and Finisher of her faith (Hebrews 12:2) and forgot about the critical importance of verses like John 3:16. In place of the Gospel message was a ‘more than one way to heaven’ theology.
Her faith became religion-centric, focused on traditions rather than the Word of God. This led to quite a tumultuous time in our relationship. For a number of years, debates led to arguments, creating a wedge between us. Finally, godly wisdom was drilled into my thick skull that winning hearts never occurs when trying to win arguments. Understanding that was a catalyst that changed everything.
When she came to visit, we asked her to join us for a service at our place of worship, Calvary Chapel Chattanooga. Because the music is loud, I suggested that Ema and I sit and watch/listen to the service from the monitors in the lobby area. To my delight, after the first song she said, “Let’s go in.” Yeah!
The Holy Spirit worked through the music, the praying and the pastor’s message. After the service, Ema was different, changed, as if the Lord rekindled something in her spirit that had for too long been asleep. I’m not sure exactly what resonated with her, but she asked if I could find a similar church in Owensboro…and thank God almighty, we found one. Owensboro Christian Church (OCC) became her new church home and faith family. She jumped all in, as if making up for lost time. She was in Sunday School, volunteered, watched services from multiple churches, and was diving deep into Bible study. When COVID hit, even after OCC resumed in-person services, Ema didn’t feel safe being in crowds because of her age. Still, she watched services every Sunday and throughout the week without fail. Ema grew closer to the Lord and we became closer to each other.
While in her 80s, Ema developed an insatiable love for Jesus and his Word. After she went home to be with the Lord, we found notebook after notebook of Bible study notes, volunteer communications, iPad bookmarks for numerous Pastors’ sermons, and so much more. She had a prayer journal and a loaded book-marked Bible to the point that the binding was coming apart. Her Pastor, a key figure in this story, held up both books for everyone to see at the Celebration of Life service, saying, “this Woman loved Jesus” as tears rolled down his face. The faith of this woman, for which I prayed over her for years, led to a woman of God that I now pray for me to one day be…the substance of things hoped for (Hebrew 11:1).
Another quick detour. Several years ago, Ema and I had a conversation about ministry. She sadly stated that she was too old for God to use her. I remember telling her, “When God is finished using you, He will bring you home to Him.” And that is exactly what God did. Ema passed away on February 22, 2024, less than two months before she would have turned 86. I’m still in awe of the powerful way he used her during her time at OCC and especially during her illness.
After the diagnosis in March 2023, I made numerous trips to Owensboro to spend as much time together as possible. These visits allowed us to reminisce, to pray, and to prepare for what was coming. The day following her diagnosis, I contacted OCC, who immediately sent someone to her house from their Care Team. Enter in, Pastor Tom Harrigan. I was present for their first visit. What a hoot. They instantaneously formed a bond, not only as shepherd and sheep, but over time, like son and mother. Little did I know then how God would develop their relationship and use the two of them to positively impact each other and many others.
Pastor Tom visited faithfully as did other members from the Care Team, the Senior Pastor (who affectionally referred to Ema as “Techy Grandma”), and ladies who volunteered with her. Pastor Tom brought his wife to meet Ema, who visited multiple times as did their dearly loved daughter when home visiting from college. Ema had a wonderful church family around her. When the time came to transition to a care facility in September, the visits grew to include more people from the church because the facility was right across the street from OCC. God is good. Another blessing was my sister, who also lives in Owensboro and is a nurse, specializing in geriatric care. Yes, God is good indeed. Still, I didn’t understand why He was allowing her this unexpected time. I was concerned about how long she was going to have to suffer. In other words, the plunge into the world wide web of worry blocked the panoramic view of what God was doing.
On one particular visit in January, I finally started to see it. Every person that entered her room was warmly received, encouraged, prayed for, and poured in to. I used to tell her that I pray to be the kind of person that uses every encounter to encourage or be encouraged, to bless or to be blessed. And that is exactly who my Ema had become, and God was using that in a powerful way. That Sunday morning, before I stopped by to see Ema before heading back to Chattanooga, I attended service at OCC. Visiting with Pastor Tom and Senior Pastor Scott afterwards, they told me how much they had fallen in love with my Ema and what a beautiful spirit of gratitude she showed. They also encouraged me to to watch the New Year’s Eve message that Pastor Tom provided. I’ll get to that later.
As much as her cancer-ridden brain would allow, Ema would remember names, their family members, events going on in their lives and would ask how she could pray for whoever entered her room. She showed a level of gratitude for every…single…thing, big and small. Any time someone would do something from her, from changing her sheets, combing her hair, transferring her between bed and chair, meals, snacks, water… It didn’t matter what it was, she showed extreme kindness and gratitude. No one left her room unaffected. It was beautiful to witness, yet at the same time, convicting. There she was, completely helpless in the bed, unable to do anything for herself, yet she had a thankful heart. She knew Jesus was with her and stated numerous times that she has never felt so close to God. There I was, healthy, mobile, with a good quality of life, and what I thought was a healthy spiritual life, yet seemed altogether spiritually desolate from fussing about things that really do not matter. Ouch.
I called Ema daily and would read to her from the Bible. After my visit in January, I asked if she would like to go through a devotional book together and she was excited to do that. We journeyed through my favorite devotional book, Thirty Days in the Land with Jesus, by Dr. Charlie Dyer. The cancer progressed and her quality of life continued to decline, but she did not want to miss a single devotional, each which were fairly long, but she loved every minute of it and never dozed off while I read. Her condition, however, was rapidly deteriorating. It did not seem that we would make it through the full 30 days. She was slipping fast so I drove back to Kentucky in February to help my sister relocate Ema to a beautiful Hospice facility. After heading back home, we finished day 30 of the devotional, which was 8 days after she arrived at Hospice. That evening, she slipped into a coma. It was as if she needed to finish the walk with Jesus through His Holy land before she could let go. About a week proceeding that, it became very difficult to understand what she was saying because of slurred speech, but I always could tell when she was asking to walk with Jesus through the land.
Daily updates from my sister revealed that Ema’s status had not changed. She was still in a coma and went days without food and fluids, yet she still hung on. I’m not sure exactly what prompted me to leave on that Thursday (Feb 22) to get back to Kentucky. Once on the road, the Enemy seemed to be Hades-bent to not allow me to get there. That was the day there was a nationwide outage of AT&T cell service. I couldn’t communicate with anyone and couldn’t use the GPS. As I was leaving Lebanon, TN, heading toward Bowling Green, I was pulled over for speeding. Yes, I was speeding. Rather than pulling over for the 5th time to try to figure out what the heck was wrong with my phone (not knowing about the outage), I wasn’t paying attention to the speed limit. I cooperated with the man in blue and explained what was going on, asking if he would help me with directions. Despite making that trip numerous times, I was still uncertain on some of the turns going the back way. What seemed like an eternity later, the officer helped me map out my turns….and also gave me a ticket. Lovely.
Finally arriving at the Hospice facility to give my sister a break, nothing had changed with Ema’s condition. Alone with Ema, I told her that I was here now, that I’m fine, the family is fine, and that it is OK let go so she can be with Jesus and be reunited with Dad, her parents and others she loved. Several hours later, my sister and I were going through the obituary and the photo slide show I pulled together for the service, when Pastor Tom and his wife popped in for a visit. Somehow, we all knew this would be the last time he would see her alive. He prayed over Ema, sobbed, kissed her on the top of her head, hugged us, and left with a heavy heart.
We resumed looking at photos, then my sister abruptly said, “Her breathing has changed!” Puzzled, I look at her, asking how in the great wide world of sports could you tell that? We had the TV on, there was noise in the hallway, and we were looking at the laptop screen, yet she sensed it, and she was right. Ema had started Cheyne-Stokes respirations which is deep or gasping-like breaths that become further and further spaced apart. My sister looked at me with tears in her eyes, and whispered “it won’t be long now.” We pulled up our chairs to both sides of the bed and each held Ema’s hand. I prayed Scripture verses over her as the gasps became further apart to the point I felt led to pray Psalm 23 over Ema. When the last verse “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever”, was spoken, Ema took her last breath in, and exhaled in the presence of King Jesus. What a privilege to walk our sweet Ema to the Throne of Grace.
Looking back, the events seem surreal, and time was needed to process it all. The way these events were strung together, how everything was orchestrated by God, was nothing short of miraculous. Along with these precious memories is the timeless reminder we have from the New Year’s Eve service message I mentioned earlier given by Pastor Tom (https://www.owensboro.cc/past-sermons?sapurl=Lyt3N3NnL2xiL21pLyt2ejJ5eWI0P2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZSZyZWNlbnRSb3V0ZT1hcHAud2ViLWFwcC5saWJyYXJ5Lmxpc3QmcmVjZW50Um91dGVTbHVnPSUyQjlmd20zZ2Q=). The link with take you to the 30-minute sermon, but if you are short on time, feel free to jump to minute 23:00 where shortly thereafter you will hear about my Ema. This message, which reached over 9,000 people on December 31st, shares the story about a godly woman, my Ema, who once said she was too old to be used by God. God writes the story and fashions our days (Psalm 139:16). He makes the impossible, attainable, the unthinkable, fantastical, and the hopeless, fruitful. When we finish doing what He has assigned us to, He too will bring us home.
