Tale of two marriages- "till death do us part"

I literally heard the story of two marriages and the death of two husbands in two days.

I encountered an old acquaintance that I knew long ago in a church I used to attend. She quickly told me the story of how her husband had just died. In the process of her sharing she asked me if I had known they were divorced as if she felt everyone somehow knew this information. Considering I hadn’t seen or spoke to her for over 16 years I found this question/statement a bit odd. As she told me the story of the breakdown and demise of her marriage with this man I once knew, in truth I have to say I was silent and could only listen. She then shared how he had moved away to another city away from his family and that he had a heart attack in his small apartment all alone and after no one had heard from him for a few days- she had gone to his apartment and found him dead. She had a funeral for him the previous week and as she communicated this sad story to me I could feel and sense the regret and sorrow she was experiencing over the path and outcome of her marriage to this man during her season of grief. She told me that if they had still been together that he would have never died like that- alone and forgotten.

Then I attended a funeral the next day of a good friends father. I listened intently as this man's daughter did the most amazing eulogy with her 5 adult siblings lovingly standing beside her for moral support. Then as the service portion was closing the wife of the man that had passed away from a weakened heart condition shared the following words that I will never forget.

She shared her beautiful relationship with this man and why she was at such peace during all that had happened. She said that she had cared for her husband during the seven months of his palliative care at home with every last bit of love that she had to give to him. She gave him her everything during her last few months with him.
She said she had to do everything for him and it was as if he had gone from being her husband taking care of her to being like her child. She shared as everyone listening laughed out loud about how she had reassured him that when she had to leave him even for 15 minutes to go to the store that she wasn’t thinking about anyone else but him. Her heart was still fully his.
She did not seem resentful about having to do this in any way but quite the opposite, on her beautiful regal face there was a serene sense of peace and joy.
This man had his last days spent with what he treasured the most his family, they were all present when he took his last breath. He was surrounded with the treasures that he had invested in with all his life and they held him as he left this world and crossed over happily into eternity.
This marriage story made me cry and made my heart smile.

When I was pondering these two stories I was watching a Facebook post from a friend as he proposed to his girlfriend and future wife and it dawned on me the significance of these two tales of two marriages.

The investment to share your life with another is not just in the good times. Most wedding vows say something like “till death do us part”. This is a spiritual understanding that says that nothing but death can separate us. Marriage is forever. In a world and time where we have disposable promises and vows can easily be broken. Where honor and respect and love rarely ever intertwine, the covenant of marriage should result in the statement this woman that had been married to her best friend for so many years said, "I poured out all the love I had for him on him and in the end there was nothing more to give". She gave it all.

Wow! In an age where many men don’t honor or love their wives when they aren’t meeting their needs and some women are exerting their rights to be independent. When the fiber of marriage is being torn apart by the unraveling of a single interwoven thread, I received a message of “ till death do us part”.

I heard the message loud and clear and having gone through my share of difficulties in my own marriage through the 29 years, I renewed in my heart to love the man I made a covenant with 3 times ( we have renewed our vows twice) "till death us do part" no matter what the circumstance or situation. And most important to pour out all the love I have for him so in the end I can say "It is well with my soul"

If this story has impacted you like it impacted me then take a moment and pray for two marriages

today.

Freedom

I was taking a course to become a bereavement companion and was at my weekly training class and the instructor that week was running us through an exercise that taught me something so valuable about what I believe.

She handed all of the students, twelve small pieces of blank paper.  She then instructed each of us to write down three people we love , three things we have that are important to us , three activities we enjoy doing and three quality traits about ourselves, all each on a separate sheet of paper. This took a lot of thought for me and in a short amount of time I wrote down the following.

3 people I love - I chose Wayne my husband because he is my soul mate and very important person in my life. I have five children and could not choose between any of them and so I left them out. I choose my mother and one of my girlfriends.                                                                                                                                

3 important things to me - My wedding ring, my writings, my bible,                                                                                     

3 activities I enjoy- dancing, writing, talking                                                                                                                      

3 quality traits about me- intelligent, creative and free

After this she asked us to close our eyes and she began to walk us through a visual meditation and gave us instructions as we moved along.  

You are not been feeling well and have made several visits to the doctor and are now in his office where you have received a fatal diagnosis. Take a moment and breathe and pay attention to what you are feeling.  You leave the doctor and get in your car you are finally alone, what thoughts are coming to you? You arrive at your home and begin to process this information before sharing the news with your family. How will you tell them? How will they respond? What are you feeling now? Days begin to pass and you begin to experience the loss that comes with this illness. At this point she asks us to throw away any 2 pieces of paper.  

Now I am a very visual person and because I meditate often, I was very much involved in this exercise. My whole being began to see myself with a fatal illness and I began to experience the feelings of helplessness. I took time and thought in what I would throw away and discarded 2 pieces of paper.

As she walked us through the rest of the exercise going into detail about what someone who has a fatal illness experiences and then gave us the choice to throw away pieces of paper that represented “you” it became more difficult and harder to throw away. I also began to understand that this was all about the loss that comes with death. We were finally down to three pieces of paper and all this time I had been thinking and prioritizing the order of what I would choose next and slowly letting go of the loss of things that I thought represented me. Then suddenly she sprung a surprise on us that caused me to gasp so loudly that everyone in the room looked my way to see if I was ok.

She was going to come and take the next piece of paper.

Right then I lost something that I realized was very important to me. I didn’t have any more choices. This profoundly impacted me and I began to pray as I had three things left that were very important to me.  The three pieces of paper were Wayne my husband, my Bible that represented my faith and the quality of free which represented my freedom.

I quietly under my breath began to say take my Bible or Wayne , take my Bible or Wayne , please don’t  take my freedom. I wanted to be left with my freedom, because I felt I knew the word in my heart and that was enough for me. I knew I was one with Wayne and I was willing to let him go as well.

Sure enough she picked the piece of paper that said Bible and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was even sweating at this point and was very heavily invested in this challenging pretend exercise.

Now she had come to the end of our journey and we were near death and at the hospital and she would come around again and remove another piece of paper. I was a bit more relaxed this time around as it worked out ok the last time and I just believed that just the thought that I wanted her to take Wayne was good enough and as I looked at the last piece of paper in front of me- there was the word Free. I was so happy that I had my freedom and that no one could take that away from me.

Then she told us to rip up the last piece of paper because we had now died. She told us that everything was gone and nothing was left.

As I slowly ripped the paper containing my freedom I had a thought, then a feeling and then a revelation. I would never lose my freedom even in death I would still be free or maybe even freer than ever before, because of my faith and my beliefs about death. I would gain back everything and more of what I had lost. I was so happy and relieved at this point that my heart became full and I began to smile with my teeth showing!

She gave us a few moments to sit quietly and to process this exercise and then asked us to share with the group anything about how we were impacted by the exercise. I shared what happened to me and was able to use this as a platform to share my faith in the midst of this class that had many different types of people with different beliefs about death and the afterlife. But this would also set the undertone for my work in bereavement. Freedom would be a pillar of my belief surrounding death and loss. I would use it to frame my life work in every way as I could now see the importance of this state of being to me. This thread has been woven throughout the course of my life and is my eternal message to the world. I am free to be me, you are free to be you and no one can take that from you.

I would have never imagined that one of the greatest lessons I would learn in my life would come from a pretend exercise to help me understand how to be a compassionate bereavement companion.

From Tomb to Womb

There is a womb that will appear the moment someone enters the tomb, for out of death life will arise.

But you must resist a tomb appearing in your womb.

For those of you that are in a season of carrying a promise and are preparing to birth your future, you must resist the spirit of abortion that happens in the heart of death. It desires to render your hope dead and to release a spirit of disparity over your life.

You were created to bring forth life and to be a perpetual life source. The many wombs of the spirit and the wombs of this world are constantly creating, harvesting your seed, producing fruit and birthing life.

But death looms to carry you to the tomb. 

In your surrender to the source of all life is the creation of a womb. 

This is not a mystery under the sun or the moon. 

For your birthing process will happen very soon. 

If you surrender to death you will see nothing but doom.

But believe ...

Believe in the One who  entered the womb of this world to love,to live, to bring life, to die, be resurrected to conquer death and to live again to create the womb of the Spirit that all may enter to be born again.

Hope . Faith . Love

The party had just begun but she was already tired of all of the people and the celebration activities.
It was great to be around everyone but she needed just a moment of silence to catch her breath and to take in all that was happening. Everyone was here in honour of her grandmother who was 90 years old today. She saw so many faces that she hadn’t seen in while and her face hurt from smiling so hard. Truly she was happy to be in the midst of all these amazing people but her heart wasn’t in it, not today
She found an empty pathway down the hall, opened the door and snuck into the room. Then she let out the breath that she had been holding in and her shoulders loosened as she locked the door and lay down on the bed. She curled up in her favourite position holding her body closely as she grabbed her knees and tucked her head down in foetal position.
Then the tears began to flow. It was like a wellspring inside of her that she couldn’t turn off. She didn’t want to turn it off. It was hurting so badly on her insides but somehow as the tears flowed she felt herself letting go, just a little bit. Then it came. The voice she didn’t want to hear but couldn’t stop lately. It kept asking her questions but in a way that sounded like it was her very own voice. “Why me? What did I do to deserve this” “ am I not a good person?” “ how can this be happening”, with every question she felt the situation becoming more and more helpless. She instinctively put her hands over her ears as if doing so could stop the thoughts from invading her. But the thoughts were not coming from outside, now they were coming from within. She was wishing she could turn back the hands of time and do everything differently. But what could she do to change what the doctor’s report said to her. Then more questions came as doubt and blame began to settle in.

“If only I had gone to the doctors sooner and paid more attention to the signals my body was giving to me, maybe then I wouldn’t be facing this.” “Maybe I should have asked for more tests at my physical last year?”, “ I’m not ready to die yet” and finally the question she really wanted answered “ Doesn’t God love me? what have I done to deserve this?”

A sense and a feeling of hopelessness entered the room and settled on her like a blanket covering over her. She closed her eyes and decided to just sleep underneath this feeling as she was drained, tired and feeling unloved. Just a few minutes of rest and she would get up and join the people that had come to celebrate.

She had almost dozed off when she heard a thud at the window. It sounded like something had hit the window pane and had fallen. She got up and opened the screen , then slid the glass pane open. Looking down she saw a bird that had fallen onto the rose bush just outside the window. It was brightly coloured and very unusual looking. It almost looked tropical but the color of its wings were the most vivid forms of light. The bird was obviously injured from its recent collision with the clear glass. She was not an animal lover, didn’t even like having pets, but her heart was huge and she couldn’t leave the injured bird there to die or even worse be found by an unknown predator. She grabbed the table covering off of the dresser and scooped up the lifeless looking bird into her hands and the moment she did this the most bizarre thing began to happen. Colors of light started shooting everywhere, they were so bright and brilliant that everything became blurry around her and she became dizzy and started falling backwards. She felt the sensation of falling backwards but again this was weird because she never hit the ground, she just kept falling. As she opened her eyes she realized she wasn’t falling at all but that she was floating. Her body had become light and as she looked down at herself she saw that she was covered with bright coloured feathers, the same feathers that were on the fallen bird. The bird? Where was the bird? Where was she?

She was no longer in the room and she no longer felt all the same emotions and feelings that she had a minute ago. Her eyesight was becoming clearer and she could see past all the colours now and there just a short distance from her head was the bird flying just above her. Flying? A minute ago this bird was lifeless and injured, now it seemed healthy, alive and vibrant. But where was she? What had just happened?

The bird began singing the most beautiful heavenly song. That was the only way to describe it. And as it sang her heart began to beat rapidly. With every beat she could understand the words that were being sung.

“ Hope is my name, Hope is my name,
And I have been sent to you this very day.
Nothing could stop me, or get in my way
For heaven has heard you, the moment you prayed.”

The sounds that filled her being now caused the coloured feathers that were around her body to begin to float together creating a sort of canopy around her and the bird she now knew as “Hope”.
Then she heard a majestic booming voice say these words “ Faith is the substance of things hoped for The evidence of things not seen” then she heard “Without hope there is no faith”

In an instant she remembered her prayer to God. It was right after the doctor visit as she sat in the car trying to put together the words that had just been spoken to her. She didn’t know what else to do but she remembered what her grandmother had taught her all those years. So she bowed her head and said a prayer to God to please help her to have faith.

Faith? What was she really asking for? Faith for what? To believe that she could be healed ? To believe that God really loved her and that He didn’t want her to die? Faith to remove this awful death sentence that had been placed over her life? Faith for a miracle? Yes she wanted faith to believe all of these things.

The bird began to sing again, or maybe Hope had never stopped singing but she was tuning in again to understand the words being sung.

“Hope in the colors of spring,
Hope in the joy that I bring,
Hope when you cant see anything
Hope is the song that I sing”

There was something special in the words in those lyrics that spoke to her about new life and creation. It brought revelation and understanding beyond what her natural mind could comprehend. She knew that in order to see the things the way they truly were that she would have to grab a hold of this gift of Hope. She reached out and for the second time she put her hands delicately around this fluttering creature that she dared not to call a bird.

As her hands grabbed a hold of “Hope” all the color that was imbedded in the wings of this supernatural creature was now coming into her hands and surrounding her body and filling her with the greatest feeling of knowing, a sense that everything was the way it should be. Instantly she knew that God was in control and that He loved her and had a plan for her life. Everything changed in that moment she now was the sum of the total and not the end of a beginning. Then she heard the bells ringing ,large church bells tolling as if they were chiming out the time. She closed her eyes and tried to focus as she didn’t want to let go of this new sensation that was tingling all over her body... hope. But the sound of the bells was jolting her and she began to float again.

Suddenly she opened her eyes and she was back in the room on the bed and the telephone was ringing, probably a guest calling for directions. She lay there for a brief moment wondering if what she had just experienced was nothing more than a simple day dream. As she sat up on the bed something floated out of her hand and instinctively she grabbed at it.
It was a feather, a beautiful multi coloured feather laying in the palm of her right hand.

It answered all of her questions, but greater than that was how she now felt and what she now knew. She  knew that He who took care of the birds of the air, loved and valued her so much and she could trust Him to take care of her too.

With that she jumped up off the bed, took a tissue and wiped her face, breathed in a deep breath and as she unlocked the door she purposed in her heart to go back to the festivities and to celebrate today with Hope, Love, and Faith.

Charmaine Hinds September 2012