Today was Mom’s celebration of life. There are lots of things I can hardly believe. I can hardly believe it has been three weeks since she passed. I can hardly believe how my life and schedule have changed in those three weeks. I can hardly believe Brenda will be returning to her mission in The Netherlands next Thursday. I can hardly believe the changes I see yet to come.
Today we gathered at the family plot in Silver Lake Cemetery in Athol MA. It was a beautiful Spring day spent with family and friends. The last members of Mom’s generation were present for the celebration: Uncle Tom and Aunt Carol from her side (Mom’s last remaining sister and brother-in-law) and from my Dad’s side: his cousin Barbara and her husband Bob, Dad’s cousin Dana and Dad’s cousin Dick with Dick’s wife, Elise. I think everyone else is gone from that great generation. My sister and I along with our cousins are now the elders of the family.
My grandson, Sevy (Joseph Elon Lillie VII) took up a place next to his namesake as soon as we got to the cemetery.
My father always called himself Jr. He was really Joseph Elon Lillie IV. It was really sweet how Sevy took up this spot and just kind of stayed there through the service. At least until the bubbles started.
The service began with “Amazing Grace” and ended with a Lawrence Welk favorite of my mother’s, “Goodnight! Goodnight!” complete with the bubble machine. I am thinking my cousin Terrie was not enjoying the bubbles as much as the kids.
The church threw us a wonderful family reception after the graveside service. Here is Brenda and I with our cousin Renee at the reception.
It was a day of mourning and a day of laughter. It was day of closure and a day of beginning.
On Thursday last week, Mom’s health took a stark turn. She woke with intense pain. She went through two bouts of shaking and then descended into unconsciousness. We were told she had days left to live.
Brenda and I together with all the kids prepared ourselves for our vigil with Mom over the Easter weekend. As the world faced Good Friday and looked forward to the Resurrection, we were facing our own very personal deathwatch. The themes of death and resurrection were very real to us as we prayed Mom through to eternity.
I don’t know how it feels for anyone else to wait with someone who is walking in that space between life and death. I imagine it must feel different for everyone. For me the waiting was a tightening of my chest and a pressure behind my eyes. It felt like I was holding my breath underwater and my ears were filled with sound of the ocean for days.
On Friday we received more bad news that our one remaining Uncle had a heart attack and was being life-flighted to UMASS Medical Center in Worcester Massachusetts. It was almost more than our hearts could bear as a family.
I have to say I am so grateful for a church family these days. So many congregants reached out to us during this time with prayers and with food (our refrigerator had no more room). Our deacons rose to the occasion for Uncle Tom, knowing that I could not leave my mother’s side for a five hour hospital trip. They visited Uncle Tom and his family at the hospital and prayed with them. On Easter Sunday as Brenda and I waited at mom’s bedside, my daughter Amanda opened the church service and my daughter Melanie led worship for Easter Sunday. One of our Deacons, Jody Clapp and our Church DLT Coordinator, Carrie Hackett preached the Easter Sunday sermon. Amanda officiated the Easter baptism.
We thought Sunday would be Mom’s day to leave us for Heaven, but she was not ready. At about 5 A.M. on Tuesday morning Mom finally entered Jesus’ arms.
We got news that Uncle Tom was doing well and was expected to make a full recovery.
On Tuesday night I began to get sick. My body I guess had had enough of waiting and pressure and up and down. On Wednesday, my son’s birthday, Brenda commented that I looked very unwell. Truth be told I felt like I was hanging on by a thread. Thursday I was flat on my back for the entire day. What started as a cold turned into a stomach bug.
On Friday we got news that Brenda’s dog, Oliver, in The Netherlands, had eaten some poison and was at a veterinary specialist trying to save his life. Oliver went into renal failure this morning and needed to be put to sleep.
It has been a week of bad news, more bad news, Good news, more good news, bad news, good news and more bad news. To say that we don’t know how to feel, to say that we are stunned, numb, hopeful and discouraged is perhaps the most accurate description of our emotional state at the moment.
I stand at this moment on the shoulders of the Apostle Paul and declare, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-11
It is quiet now. Joe has gone off to work at school and the rest of the house is still asleep. I can hear the quiet rattle of mom’s breath in the other room as she walks the In Between place between life and death.
We are in the last days, now, of this hospice process, at least as far as any of us can predict this kind of thing. Mom awoke yesterday with great pain in her arms. Her right arm had swollen again. Mom’s kidneys are shutting down and she is retaining fluid.
Her arms have swollen before, but yesterday was different. There was shaking and more confusion, much, much more. Then she went to sleep. Pain and shaking came back a few hours later and we began medicating to stay ahead of the pain.
The nurse came to put in a catheter because Mom’s body cannot void without help now. She has been resting quietly since. Her oxygen level is very low but her breathing is not labored. She seems peaceful and that is our prayer for her, that she may depart in peace.
On this Good Friday, our family is standing vigil with Mom. We are in the In Between with her watching, as watchmen on the walls, for the time when Jesus will come to take her unto Himself.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God[a]; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. John 14: 1-3
In my last coaching session I used a couple of similes to describe how my mother’s hospice care makes me feel. I said it makes me feel like Nemo at the edge of the reef staring out at the open ocean.
I also said it felt like the training wheels were about to come off of my bicycle.
In ministry, I have always struggled with not getting consumed by the expectations of others. It has been hard to navigate the waters of what other people think I should be doing as. minister. I have a problem with approval addiction.
Since I moved in with my mother over a decade ago, her health has been a concern and a governor for the amount of ministry I could do. As her health has declined over these last three or four years the ministry has become more governed. I have had to prioritize the things I really felt God telling me to do, THE FOUR THINGS, and let the rest of people’s expectations go.
Now as our family faces Mom’s passing I am faced with a question about how I will navigate ministry after her passing. Without her health concerns to guard, guide and keep me focused, will I fall back into old habits of being consumed by the ministry expectations of others? Will the old monster of approval addiction once again rear its ugly head and take control of how I work?
My coach asked me a good question in my last session with him: “What will be the new governors of your ministry work?”
I do worry about my ability to say “No!”
I do worry that my agenda will not be enough.
I know I need an intentionally thought out plan or I may just go back to…. old ways….old days.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU USE TO KEEP YOURSELF FROM GETTING DISTRACTED?
One of the things I do to “sharpen the teeth” of my leadership saw, is a monthly coaching session designed to help me talk through issues I am concerned about. In these sessions I do almost all the talking. The coach is my “thinking partner”. He helps me by asking questions regarding my take on the subject matter I am discussing.
I realize that with the imminence of my mother’s passing, I am at one of life’s thresholds, one of those places where life changes from one thing into another.
From past experience I know threshold experiences can be jarring, even emotionally violent. Going back I can think of four or five threshold experiences: My Conversion
In the past I was mostly unaware that I was standing at a threshold. I was certainly unaware that with a little forethought I could have turned change into a self directed chance for the life God wanted for me and deeper fulfillment. I just kind of walked through the doors and let life play out in all its glorious confusion.
Don’t get me wrong with most of my thresholds I have ended up mostly where God wanted me to be. I am living the life He desires for me now. I think some of my thresholds were unnecessarily painful… maybe even entirely unnecessary. The past is past and the only thing it is good for is as a lesson. With this threshold I feel like I am Nemo at the edge of the reef getting ready to launch out into open ocean. There are many things I know this time that I have not known before. One of the those things is that as I near this threshold I need to be more intentional than ever before about how I intend to walk on the other side of the door.
Mom slept for twenty eight hours, waking only once for the bathroom and a bowl of ice cream, all of which she did with her eyes closed and a great deal of protesting. Even washing her face with her PCA was difficult.
Mom and Melanie last week
Last night at family prayer we discussed our next steps, what the future might look like. We always have two of us “on shift” now at the house as Mom’s health fails further. We reviewed the hospice protocols with everyone and talked through what Mom’s funeral will look like according to her pre-planning.
Moms graduation photo
Today, Mom woke up at about 8:30 and has been a bit more more wakeful. She has eaten a few bowls of ice cream and an egg with most of a piece of toast. She is also drinking again. The PCA says that the back and forth is to be expected at this stage of the hospice journey. But it does seem with each occurrence she slips a little further away from us. Even her “wakefulness” is different from what it was a week ago.
Moms nursing school graduation photo
Amanda and I are on shift today. I have been sitting quietly with Mom as she naps and have begun going through old pictures.
Our family back in the day at a Women’s Club old fashioned fashion show
The time is drawing closer, I think when we will need to be putting these pictures together on memory boards.
Mom and her friend Ginny
It is a bitter sweet time as I rehearse memories, retelling myself and the kids the old stories of our family in this place we call the Vicarage. It is a sad time. It is a sweet time. It is violent with inevitability and quiet with a rhythm that feels so deep…so poignant. I sense this quiet planning time is some of the most consequential time I will ever spend.
Our congregation spent a month in prayer to come up with what we are calling the congregational sentence. It reads…
“Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! Prepare you Spirit (come out of the decay of your strongholds). Prepare your Souls(Prepare to practice and feel compassion). Prepare your facility (your structures, infrastructures and plans). Prepare for the storm (Pray for action plan, Pray for a spirit of perseverance). Prepare your witness (know your gifts, earn the right to speak, build your relationships with those outside the church, build your example). Prepare your hope and faith (think hope, speak hope, act in hope). Prepare your love (love each other, love the people in your towns, love those who disagree with you, love through the doors that open).“
During these next weeks these seven prepare statements will be broken down into twenty-one brief devotionals the congregation is praying into.
Today we begin talking about Preparing our facility ( structures, infrastructures and plans)
WHAT ARE WE PREPARING FOR?
This next step of preparation seems to be intensely practical and external. We are being asked by God to prepare our facility…our building(s). We are seeking to prepare our hearts, to make internal changes that will help us to be spiritually and emotionally ready for what is to come. This preparation is different. We are being asked to prepare our church building and our personal homes. For what?
FOR GREATER USE- I don’t know all of what we will be approached for, but I do believe our community is going to need our building for public uses. We need to make sure our building is ready for increased usage
FOR HOSPITALITY- This goes for both our homes and for our church building. The Scripture over and over calls us to show kindness and hospitality toward fellow believers and to strangers. We must prepare to have open doors.
FOR SACRED DUTY- I guess this goes back to more of a mental and spiritual preparation, but we must never forget what God has given us a building and homes for. We have what we have so that we may share the good news, the story of Jesus Christ. We must always look for the God connection as we prepare our facility for use, hospitality and sacred duty.
What does God really want to use our building and our homes for?
Ugghh! Yes! It is this weekend! It makes church an hour earlier for me. Less sleep than usual. I will not be crabby! I will not be crabby! I will not be crabby!
4. Do you spring clean your home throughout, change furniture around or keep to a normal routine?
I don’t change inside furniture around much, but part of the Spring routine is uncovering the lawn furniture and getting it put back in place for the summer.
Gratitude: I am thankful for another week with my mother and my family gathered around her. Here is a picture of Mom and my daughter Melanie taken while Melanie was here taking a turn watching over Mom.
THIS YEAR OUR CONGREGATION IS FOCUSING ON DEVELOPING 7 PRACTICES ARRIVED AT THROUGH A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS WE HAVE BOILED DOWN INTO SOMETHING WE HAVE DUBBED THE CONGREGATIONAL SENTENCE, WHICH SAYS … “Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! Prepare you Spirit (come out of the decay of your strongholds). Prepare your Souls(Prepare to practice and feel compassion). Prepare your facility (your structures, infrastructures and plans). Prepare for the storm (Pray for action plan, Pray for a spirit of perseverance). Prepare your witness (know your gifts, earn the right to speak, build your relationships with those outside the church, build your example). Prepare your hope and faith (think hope, speak hope, act in hope). Prepare your love (love each other, love the people in your towns, love those who disagree with you, love through the doors that open).“
I HAVE BROKEN THIS SENTENCE DOWN INTO 21 DEVOTIONAL THOUGHTS TO SHARE HERE THROUGH THE COURSE OF THE YEAR. HERE IS OUR 6TH DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT. THIS WEEK WE WILL… PREPARE OUR SOULS TO PRACTICE AND FEEL COMPASSION.
Is it always necessary to feel compassion before we practice compassion? Is there a place where we practice compassion simply because it’s the right thing to do regardless of how we feel about it?
The answer to that question is….OF COURSE. The book of James teaches us, “17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” James 4:17
There are many things we do in our Christian walk that go against our “feelings”. Walking in the Spirit means letting the spirit (that part of us that connects to the Spirit of God) lead rather than our souls (our logic, personal will and emotions). We begin walking in the Spirit by coming to know and obey the commands and principles of the Bible. After a time of such practice we can begin to hear the voice of God directing us in the place of prayer.
What I have discovered is that when I practice walking the way the Spirit leads, my emotions line up with the Word, but if I wait to obey God until I feel like obeying Him my “feelings to want” godliness never grow.
Our church is comprised of small groups of people we call Doing Life Together Groups. Each group is encouraged to
STUDY THE BIBLE TOGETHER/ TO PRAY TOGETHER/ TO FELLOWSHIP AND BUILD DEEP RELATIONSHIP WITH EACH OTHER/ AND TO MEET NEEDS IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE COMMUNITY TOGETHER.
One of our “DLT” groups is a group of men called The Steadfast Sons. This year they chose to minister to the greater community of men in our church though and event called “BE A GODLY MAN”.
About 40 men from 8 different DLT groups showed up for breakfast lunch and five breakout sessions
Andy Ross and Stephen Sandoval were our co facilitators in Doing Life Together for the day.
Here are some of my take aways from the day.
BOYS CANNOT CONFER MANHOOD ON THEMSELVES. MEN NEED TO CONFER MANHOOD ON THE NEXT GENERATION OF MEN.
WORRY IS ANTI-PRAYER.
JESUS NEVER OFFERED US A COMFORTABLE LIFE. THERE WILL BE CHALLENGE AND PAIN.
YOUR PROBLEMS ARE NOT OTHER PEOPLE. TROUBLE IS ALWAYS CENTERED IN THE SPIRIT REALM FIRST AND FOREMOST.
MEN MUST CONTINUALLY “GOSPEL” THEMSELVES ACCORDING TO EPHESIANS 6.
THERE ARE NO CHUBBY BREASTPLATES IN THE ARMOR OF GOD. THE ARMOR MAKES US FIT AND ENCOURAGES US TO STAND IN THAT FITNESS.
THE ARMOR SHOULD MAKE US FILL THE WORLD AROUND US WITH PEACE.
THE ARMOR OF GOD IS MOST EFFECTIVE WHEN LINKED WITH A BAND OF BROTHERS.
PRAY THE WORD NOT JUST THE NEED.
Our men had a great day of fellowship together. I was greatly blessed by all the relationship building I saw going on.
In our final sessions I got a few more thoughts to think about.
STRONG MEN ARE SABBATH MEN. ADAM RESTED FOR WORK NOT FROM IT. REST IS FOUND IN JESUS NOT IN “REST”.
GOD LONGS FOR US TO BE IN RHYTHM NOT NECESSARILY IN BALANCE.
GOD HAS CALLED US TO PERSEVERE.
GOD HAS CALLED US TO HUMILITY AND SUBMISSION
GOD HAS CALLED US TO SERVE.
It was a great day of worship, spiritual reminders and challenges, fun, and fellowship.
Notes From the Vicarage 