What I’ve Seen God Do In Tragedy
What I’ve Seen God Do In Tragedy
Hey everyone, it’s me again!
So I got to feeling like I need to stop preaching at the choir and take a week to be a bit more personal. I feel like every so often, I should introduce you guys to some of my own experiences, trials, and triumphs.
Mini warning- I am a firm believer in Christ and so some of these things may sound abnormal or like a stretch of reality. I, however, am an extremely skeptical person. And even I have been convinced that coincidence isn’t a thing by God. In fact, the unexplainable is often what affirms and fuels my beliefs.
So on that note- I’d like to dig in to a story that I’ve kept close to my heart: The passing of my Nana.
For those of you that have known me a while, you are familiar with the deep pain I’ve struggled to manage in regards to this loss. I still have more days than I’d like to admit where little things about her cross my mind or remind me of her and I often have to choke myself back, even though it’s been nearly two years. So today, my blog might feel a little heavier than It normally would. Thank you for bearing with me.
On February 2nd, 2018, I was in my dorm at school. I had recently woken up from a peaceful feeling the night before, but a somber feeling as well. Most nights in my prayers, I was ridded with fear of the inevitable. I would pray fervently to be at her side when the time came, fervently for God to take her ailments away and release her from the prison of dementia. But that night, I had a small nudge and this joyful feeling in my heart rather than an anxious one. It was attached to a sudden knowingness that soon, she’d be going home. I felt it very distinctly but tried to push it off. I had plane tickets to see her a week from then and I was hoping that she’d make it a bit longer.
My younger sister had just flown into town to have her weekend tour of Lipscomb, as she was planning to start college the next year. She walked into the room holding her phone with my mom on FaceTime. When I saw the puffiness on her face, I knew. She told me that Nana was aspirating and couldn’t breathe and that it was time for the heavy medications to make her more comfortable.
I got to see Nana’s face looking at me one more time, she looked scared. She never forgot who I was and knew it was me. I told her I loved her as many times as I could and that I was coming to be with her. I tried to take a few screenshots to remember my last cognitive moments with her. Then they put her under.
Wow, typing this all out is the worst. I’m sorry guys.
But now to after that, my parents were able to get me on a last minute flight home. So a few hours after the initial call, I found myself at the Nashville airport on the other side of security. I sat on one of those benches by the big windows and I was watching the sunset. I kept talking to God, I kept telling him that I wasn’t ready. My flight delayed a few minutes and with each passing moment, my fear kept growing that I wouldn’t make it. Luckily, I did. But really, it wasn’t lucky at all. It was a test of my faith and trust in God to deliver His promises. I definitely failed a bit, but in His mercy I still made it to her side.
I got home, dad picked me up, and we went straight to the dementia care unit where she’d been living and was now spending her last moments in.
After many long hours, little sleep, one of the nurses forcing us all to leave her several times for reasons that she had no authority to do so over (which was also a test my faith that God would let me be with her in her last moments, a frustrating and scary one), random visitors, and fights with the staff, we came to Nana’s last hour on the next day, February 3rd.
I had never truly experienced death before; I’d never watched the life leave someone slowly or at all. I won’t get into the details, I don’t want to remember them myself. But I thought I could handle it. I thought she deserved it, no matter the pain I knew I’d never fully recover from later on.
And so I sat, I held her hand, I hummed her favorite songs and hymnals, I sang them out loud, I talked to her, stroked her hair, put chap stick on her lips even though I knew it was a lost cause.
I will spare you the final details, but you should know that I got to hold her as she went on. Just as she held me first on the day I was born.
God had answered His promise to me; the prayer I’d prayed for the last ten years to return the love for her that she’d shown me. To be with her at the end as she was with me in the start.
But the most odd thing happened as she stopped breathing and I turned away to hug my mom- I was hysterical. But then, out of no where, my face broke into this dorky, uncalled for smile. And a rush of happiness fled through my body.
Trust me, I didn’t want any joy at that moment. And it was far from produced by me. And it didn’t feel like the joy I was familiar with feeling, but I still can’t explain exactly how it felt. Just ethereal and unlike anything on earth.
It went by in a flash and I didn’t think of it again for a while.
It was the next day when I was on Facebook and a random article popped up as they tend to do. It was about what happens to the body as you die; about how you don’t just immediately leave your body after the last breath. There is usually another minute or so before your brain stops functioning.
This confused me, but then I remembered- the random joy I’d felt. The joy that I didn’t understand at all; that was it. That was exactly when God took her. And so another prayer had been answered- for me to see or feel something when that small pinch of Heaven touched the earth to come and retrieve the woman who had meant so much to my life. I felt it, but I was too caught up in my selfish sorrow to notice the gift of that at first.
Now here is the weirdest part and one of the biggest lessons I received from God:
The next day, February 4th. I was at the office with my parents, they have windows for walls in that place.
And so I was sitting there, I couldn’t be alone but I couldn’t face school yet. A few hours went by and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something down on the pavement in the parking lot outside. It was a small dog.
I immediately told my parents and asked them to help me retrieve him, as he looked lost. Eventually, after he made his second trip around the building and I saw him again, I convinced my mom to help me go find him. I took to walking and my mom got in her car. Together, we went on a pursuit to rescue this pup. But the oddest thing was happening: he kept sprinting away. He looked to be a well kept dog, fed and taken care of. As if he’d just lost his owner moments ago. And i’ve never met a dog like that who would so adamantly run away from a human simply because he spotted them.
But I sprinted across streets, into other parking lots, and my mom was eventually lost in the chaos as I chased this dog over grassy medians and to other office buildings in the area.
We finally approached this section of bushes near a small pond. At this point, the dog was full speed and much faster than I was but I kept behind him. He leapt into the brush and quite frankly, disappeared. There was no splash in the water where he should have landed, there were no other sounds in the grass as you’d expect while he scurried away. He literally disappeared.
I was distraught, I felt like a failure. I couldn’t understand why this animal who I wanted to rescue wanted nothing to do with me. And I was already in such a vulnerable state as it was; I thought that maybe by saving the dog that I could redeem something.
It wasn’t until several months later that this was revealed to me in a sorrowful moment of prayer- yes, the dog actually physically disappeared. And it was to show me something: I can’t save people, I can’t save things. And I can’t change the will of God.
Now that sounds like a weird way to show me such a deep concept, but God is very creative and reaches us in ways we’d never expect which is why they stick with us forever. And so on my wild goose chase to save this dog, after months of confusion as to why that happened and where the dog went, I learned what God wanted me to learn.
To recap my experience:
I was again shown God’s intentional and creative nature.
I was reminded just how closely He draws near to us in our pain and suffering.
I was taught that prayers will be answered and that I am here to follow His plan… Not to forge mine into His will.
I learned to accept life; its pain and struggles and the grace that underlies it all.
Thank you all for hearing me and a story that means so much to my life. I don’t know that it makes sense or is a help to any of you, but I hope that at least a piece of it reminds you that you aren’t alone. And that God really is present in the orchestration of your life, from the valley depths to the mountain tops.
Till next time,
Lexi Cummings
10/14/19 https://linktr.ee/lexigailmusic
