Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 91. I Lost Someone Twice (who I am not done loving in Christ Alone)

Hello human.

This BUOY is about someone I lost twice. Someone I am not done loving yet.

And my commitment to reflect on shared memories together.

It is the right time to praise the power of Jesus to raise us up with His peace.

It is the right time to praise the power of Jesus to heal the brokenhearted.

It is the perfect time for His power to heal, to bring peace to a fragmented relationship.

You too, human. Listen, and think about the emotional shards in your relationships that leave parts of your life broken, bleeding, splintered by conversations unspoken, dialogues that went downhill, moments and memories on hold, and for some, the abrupt call of mortality to cut it all short.

Think about how you are not done loving.

It is in the middle of all this that Jesus administers His peace, long before any resolve settles in. Before He brings any enduring connection back to a relationship. A peace that requires only Him. Solus Christus. In Christ alone.

And ultimately, that I am not left alone in this world. When someone I love leaves it.

Today is the second part of a two-part episode about two people who died too young in my life. The first was Christine, someone in my life for a couple of years (e90).

The second is my first cousin, who was my big sister the first 6 years of my life. My big sister forever in my heart. Embracing the power of “in Christ alone” redeems me from the brokenness of losing someone twice, someone who I love so much that her absence made me feel alone in this world.

Lost the First Time

When I was less than a week old, I became her little sister. My crib was in her room. A little brown house with three bedrooms and one bath, wood floors, small white kitchen, fully, no, overly stocked with goodness-in-the-making. She would always be five years older. Until she died. Then I caught up with her. I outlived her earthly ending.

But I started life as her little sister. She was all I knew about sisters. 5 birthdays and Christmas mornings. 2,190 times I was tucked in by the same mother. Thousands of stories, half as many drinks of water. Matching little & bigger green satin dresses that surely meant we were sisters. Begging her not to go to summer camp until the last second before she got out of the car. Surely that was sister stuff.

I lost her to go live with my birth mother at age 6. Without any understanding of how to leave a sister. Or why anyone would do that. She stayed back with everyone and everything I knew about life, everyone and everything I loved. My young heart broke in very deep places. It felt like a sinkhole that I let sink deeper and deeper. The only thing that stopped it from falling into my stomach was reality. I did not have her to talk to morning, noon and night. Eventually, I had a best friend. But not a sister.

Eventually decades of life got in the way. While I had less and less weekends with her that pretty much stopped when I left for college in Texas at 17.

Then many years later, she was attending her daughter’s graduation from the Naval Academy on the East Coast. So, we met her at the graduation, and brought her back to NYC with us for three glorious days together.

Just like that.

Found

Dinner in the City, a Broadway play with pre-show drinks and appetizers, shopping, Central Park, Metro North. Dinner on the rooftop of The Met. I had just celebrated my birthday and she had brought gifts with her, thoughtful, history-between-us gifts.

What else? Oh, a running joke, a bet that I would not let her spend one dollar during our time together. And that remained true until we got to the airport. She said she would just pop over to the closest airport convenience counter to get a treat for the flight, that I could stay with her bags before she went through security. She thought she had just won the bet, but I tucked a $10 in the pocket of one of her bags… which she found when she unpacked.

Again, I felt like I was 6. Before the move. We were back. Like we had never been separated.

I did not know yet what I did not know.

I just knew that I had been brokenhearted for 4+ decades. A very long time.

Who Comforts Our Broken-Hearted Ways?

So, who comforts our brokenhearted ways? Jesus read from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue on Sabbath Day in Nazareth, fulfilling a Biblical prophecy. His call to heal the brokenhearted.

Luke 4:18

New King James Version

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He has anointed Me

To preach the gospel to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

The Greek word for “broken-hearted” depicts shattered, fractured by life. Fractured by a relationship that does not find its stride, but it does not mean that there is no love. Like a highway that has a missing piece… that keeps you from getting to the other side.

The Greek word for “heal” speaks of a release from the destructive effects of brokenness.

Jesus alone frees us from the emotional bondage we put ourselves in when relationships have not found an enduring way to love with an authentic, sustainable connection. Or our love is sporadic, occasional, fragmented. Holidays only. The death of a shared family member. Someone gets married. Or your lives went separate ways. Opposite directions. Or somehow drifting away, not toward, an enduring connection.

Whatever the life circumstance, someone you are not done loving.

How Our Jesus Brings Comfort

For me to get to the center of how Jesus comforts us, I have to return to the story of Lazurus.

This is our Jesus, human.

John 11

The Death of Lazarus

11 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”

8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”

9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”

11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”

12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.

14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Jesus Comforts the Sisters of Lazarus

17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.

A quick pause here: What would it be like to hear “The Teacher is here, and is asking for you.”? I think that if I can hold what Martha told Mary, that “Jesus is always asking for me,” I will be in the center of His peace.

32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.

35 Jesus wept.

36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.

Jesus went on to ask them to take the stone away and he called Lazarus out of the tomb, shrouded in burial clothes. What comfort, what peace He brought to Mary, to Martha, what love He had for those women and Lazarus. Jesus was fully human.

Lost Again. Lost Twice.

My big sister had a different earthly ending. She passed on July 22, 2006, age 56.

But Jesus is resurrecting my heart from the fragments of a relationship that had so many missing pieces, so many missed conversations. So many gaps in connecting the love we had for each other.

What was fragmented? That I couldn’t forget, I couldn’t unlive what I experienced at age 6. So I kept my distance for decades because I couldn’t bear to lose her again. For any reason. And with our time together in New York City, sitting side by side, close enough to the stage to see the make-up detail on Alan Alda’s face, I learned about her love, her passion for the theatre, and how she had wanted to go that direction in high school.

It seemed like something she was saying out loud for the first time. The sound of regret, disappointment, as if her life would end with this sadness in tow. We sat close, shoulders touching in those red velvet seats. And it felt like I was not quite 6. Before she stayed behind.

She was already sick then. I did not know.

How do I bring this to a place that makes us want to jump off the BUOY and swim in open water—braver, more confident, more at peace with what life has brought to us. More at peace, with relationships that wash up on our shore unannounced, only to go back out to sea, and those that ended with mortality.

Like this relationship I just shared with you. This isn’t about you running to someone and trying to make amends. It is not about forgiveness. This is about connection. To the only One who can bring you comfort and peace. What follows from that, is completely up to His Will. What follows from that is enduring.

And this is about mortality. Christine was 57. Bev was 56.

Earthly life reveals how we work through our mortality in God’s story about His eternity. For His Glory.

Like I said, being mortal is a solo act. Ultimately, we each go it alone separate from every other human. But we are Solus Christus. In Christ alone.

Immortal Look, I Am Not Done Loving

I leave this BUOY today with my personal window slightly ajar, with something precious to me, a short excerpt from a memoir chapter about experiencing my “big sister’s” cancer journey with her. Because I am not done loving her. It’s not long, but if you are short on time, skip to the final section and closing scripture.

EXCERPT from Immortal Look (working title)

When I returned to the room, Bev was awake. The early evening hours were spent talking about great hair conditioners, washing her hair, editing her will, watching a movie on my computer (alone, she fell asleep), laying beside her, and listening to her detailed explanation of the surgery she was having done and how it would help her quality of life. She thought it would allow her to go back to work. She insisted on it. I was engulfed in the improbability of her words, sinking deeper into the crevice of a caving mental mattress….

That night, we did not talk about her feelings, her dying, or my feelings about her dying. I wanted to. I thought it was the only way to show her how much I loved her. I was in despair that the conversation never turned that corner. That night, the cold walk back to my hotel redefined what feeling alone was for me. I was alone with her dying…

Surgery took longer than expected and a couple of extra hours in recovery before the medical team brought Bev back to the room. I was running out of time to catch my plane. The day was pressing hard on my chest. My breathing was strained. I felt like I was suffocating. The surgical team came in to report on her condition. Nurses were swarming around her, and it seemed there would not be a private moment together to connect before the very last minute I had to leave. I needed privacy to hold her precious, to stake my love claim on her.

I was trying to stay out of the way, mentally scrambling for words, struggling for composure, all to define that one moment together to make sure she understood how much I loved her, that I was going, and that my brother would be there by early evening. I was about to tell her, thinking I had gained control enough to speak, yet feeling completely overwhelmed with love, leaving, sadness and the thought of her dying. And the thought of living on an earth without her. Alone. It was all about me.

At that moment….

The Great Comforter Brings Peace

Maybe this will prompt you, human, to go to the great Comforter to heal, to find His way to connect your fragmented heart to His wholeness. To sustain an enduring connection with someone, we must first connect with the One.

Solus Christus.

Because Jesus is our peacemaker.

John 16:33

33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”