A Tribute to Theresa Desmond-Chiarello

First published in the monthly newsletter of St. Mark's UMC of Daleville, VA in the summer of 2010. Over at the Daily Fast Fuel, I've been writing and thinking about how service has affected my life. My musings have brought Terry to mind this week. Reprinted here to honor the memory of my dear friend.

It's been almost a year and I still think about you all the time.

I miss you, gal.

Terry died on July 4^th, Independence Day. She was my friend. We usually caught up with each other one or two times a week. Sometimes we’d just chat about our days. Sometimes we’d share photos, she of her family, and me of mine. Terry was one of the first people to know I was pregnant. She fawned over my ultrasound photos and looked forward to meeting my new son. She prayed for my husband, Phillip, when she learned that his cancer had returned. I prayed for her when she struggled with health problems of her own. Sometimes she and I would talk over food. The last time I saw her, we shared a big bowl of watermelon. Sometimes we’d watch T.V. and try to guess “whodunit” on “Law and Order” or gab about the latest celebrity on “Oprah”. Other times we’d just talk…laughing about the silly things in life, sharing our individual struggles and challenges, and even pondering together God’s purpose for our lives. Terry was my dear friend and I’m still trying to adjust to the idea that she’s gone.

You might be surprised to learn that while Terry was such a dear friend, we never spoke on the phone – not even once. We never texted or emailed each other. She was not my “friend” on Facebook or Myspace. We never caught a movie together or went out to eat. I never had her over to my house, and she never had me over to hers.

I met Terry on December 24, 2009 as I was delivering Christmas gifts from St. Mark’s Youth Ministry to a rehab facility in Fincastle. Terry was a 50-year-old resident who had a tragic fall down a flight of stairs about a year and a half ago, and was paralyzed from the neck down, breathing only with the help of a ventilator. Though by the time I met her, Terry’s body was failing her in many ways, her mind was just fine. She had been a talented nurse before her accident. For reasons I think only God can explain, I felt drawn to get to know her.

What began as a simple visitation became a friendship with a closeness that seems to have defied the circumstances. Our first meeting was certainly fun, seeing as how it involved presents! However, the next three or four visits were rather uncomfortable. I often found Terry crying, missing her family, or enduring great pain and calling for a nurse. Then, as if those things weren’t challenging enough, there was the issue of reading her lips to communicate. The ventilator prevented most of the sound from coming out of her throat when she spoke. Not to mention that when Terry tried to speak for long periods of time it became difficult for her to breathe because of the phlegm that would build up in her ventilator. Early on, it wasn’t unusual for Terry to cut our visits quite short by telling me she was “tired and needed to rest” but, “oh, by the way, can you turn the T.V. up on your way out?”

Awkward situations and the fear that I was intruding in her world were tempting reasons for me to discontinue my visits to Terry. After all, I could hardly understand what she said to me anyway. Then somehow, slowly, something changed. I can’t put my finger on what. One day, Terry didn’t hint for me to leave so soon. I began to read her lips more effectively. She smiled as she told me about her life and her family. I think we shared a joke or two. And after a few more visits like that, occasionally an hour and a half or more would go by before I realized how long I’d been there. She began to ask me to wake her up if I came by to visit and found her sleeping. She didn’t want to miss our time together. She told me she loved me. And I discovered I had grown to love her too. Ultimately over time, when I visited Terry and we talked so easily together, it was as if the ventilator had disappeared and her body wasn’t broken and immobile. We were just two friends who cared deeply for each other, lost in a world of our own conversation.

I never dreamed when I delivered gifts to Terry back in December what a gift she would ultimately be to me. And in her death, Terry gives to me still. Through the process of mourning her death, it has occurred to me that hers is not the first friendship I’ve had of it’s kind. I can think of another friend who I seemed drawn to but with whom, given the circumstances, it seemed impossible to connect. I can’t call or spend time with Him like I can my other friends. But given time, persistence and faith, I have come to love my friend, Jesus. Just like with Terry, I found that Love crept up on me and surprised me with its power.

Spiritual skeptics often ask, “How can you believe in and love a God you can’t see or hear?” I don’t have an easy answer for that. Nor can I easily explain the gift Terry’s friendship was to my life. The only answer I can provide is this: Love often comes unbidden… and in unexpected places. It doesn’t follow worldly expectations. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails… And God is Love. Praise be to God. Amen.

Reflections on God and Suffering from Cathy Benson...a woman who has seen both.

Today's post is from another voice gathered around the Firelight, guest contributor, Cathy Benson. Cathy is a writer for the Botetourt View in Daleville, Virginia, a United Methodist Youth Director at Fincastle UMC and my dear friend. Knowing a little bit about Cathy's story, I asked her to respond to the following question:

“If we believe we worship the One who can calm a storm with a word (Matthew 8:23-27), then how are we to respond when it seems He allows the storm to rage?”

I pray you will be blessed by her courage and the journey she shares with us today. Thank you, my friend.

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I became a widow at 33. Bobby drove out of my life on a January Tuesday morning at 8:15 a.m. He was killed in a car crash at 1:20 p.m. I never saw him again. My boss was a preacher’s wife named Betty and her husband Gene went to the hospital to identify the remains. What a tough job a pastor can have on oh so many levels.

Gene came back to my living room and cried. We had a closed casket as I could not bear to remember Bobby as anything but how he was vibrantly alive. Gene helped with the funeral service as did our pastor Arthur and my father’s pastor Ron. All three knew Bobby well.

I told my three- year- old daughter Brittany that her Daddy had died and we wouldn’t see him anymore and I assured her that Jesus would fix him in heaven. She said “Why can’t Jesus just send us a new Daddy?” My son Brian was only 15 months old. Six months after Bobby died Brian asked me, “Who is that man in the picture?” What a travesty the bad times in life are for a child.

Faith got me through. I have been A Christian since I w as 14—40 years this summer! Life goes on. I remarried. I had two more kids and my husband George was a good father and step father as the four have grown up. I have every faith that Jesus did heal Bobby in heaven.

Yet we have to be careful as Christians. Bobby had been mistreated by church members when he was a child – his mother was not married to his father and he had a dark birth mark on his leg. The church ladies treated him as a dirty little boy during a bible school week at a country church. He didn’t believe in God for years after that. I think all of us should examine our “holier than though ways” whether that is dealing with the gay issue, the racial issue or other denominations within our own Christian religion. Too many people are spinning the hate of God rather than the love of God and it can have long term unintended results.

Bobby was baptized in the United Methodist Church two years before he died on a confession of faith. We were married for 11 years. We dated for 4 years prior, before I ever got Bobby inside a church and that was for our wedding. Thankfully, the Lord surrounded him with Christian friends in Texas and Virginia and our bout with infertility took me back to church with him kicking and screaming in tow. But the Lord had a plan for him and it was for him to be saved and a member of the Kingdom of God.

I will always be sad about his death and I will miss him until the day I die. I will always praise God for saving him. After Bobby’s death, I tried my best to fill in, as did George. It was not until this Christmas that my older two children, Bobby’s daughter and son said how rough it was not to have your own father. That George was good, but like Splenda—sweet-- but you can’t replace the taste of real sugar. I was sad, very sad but over the past couple of months have pondered a response.

Jesus said life would be hard. He never promised that following him would be easy—look what happened to the disciples, but his Word carried on. It has for over 2,000 years carried by many who suffered, but all who have His love. Jesus is the single most important character in religion or history. He was the love of God on Earth sacrificed for our sins. Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

I argue that the love of God will get us through anything and pray one day they will see that HE loves them unconditionally. He has always been there to love them for their missing earthly father and has guided them through a step father. No, they didn’t get the best start, but many have it far worse and in the end, if you believe that Jesus Christ offered Himself for all of us that no matter the disease, car crash or just old age, you too will be healed in the Kingdom of God. That is what the love of God does for us. It offers each of us a place in eternity with those we love who have gone on before and to wait for those we left behind. It offers each of us on earth a refuge from the bad days, a leg up on the worst day because of the promise of tomorrow—sheltered in love. Most importantly, one day I will join Bobby and all of my kin in heaven-- singing and praising the Holy name of God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. Eternity with God is the place to be and I have my eye on the prize! Amen

Thoughts on God and Suffering from Banda, Aceh Indonesia

Speaking with us 'round the Firelight today is Megan King. Megan, 35, is the Head of Mission for Caritas in Banda Aceh. Aceh is a region on the north tip of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. Banda was the epicenter for the South Asian earthquake of 2004. The tsunami, which followed the earthquake, killed 200,000 people and destroyed the entire west coast.

The main focus of Megan’s role with Caritas is to work with NGOs that support democratic transformation by trade. In briefly describing Banda, post tsunami, Megan says this: “The city was entirely rebuilt. Everyone in Banda Aceh lost part of his or her family. Many lost almost everyone.”

Megan describes herself as more of a philosophical Christian than a religious one. She’s a fan of Jesus, though. When she examines ancient cultures who seem to embrace the idea of a wrathful God, Megan says, “suddenly, smack dab in the middle is some hippie in the desert telling everyone to stop worrying about life, relax and be good to one another. Maniac. Somewhere in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is the passage about the sparrow [Matt.6:25-34]. Jesus, in a shocking precursor to Bobby McFarren, gives us ‘don’t worry, be happy’. If God has designed a system so perfect that it provides for the simplest creatures, ie the birds, then of course he is going to provide for something much more complex like humans. Of course the Bible passage does not talk about simple or complex life forms, it talks about the love that God has for man.”

Katie: How do you respond to the following question: “If we believe we worship the One who can calm a storm with a word (Matthew 8:23-27), then how are we to respond when it seems He allows the storm to rage?”

Megan: The earthquake in Japan, and before in Aceh, was not the act of a vengeful God. Many in Aceh thought that was the case. They thought that the Aceheneese had moved too far from Islam, causing God to destroy the coast and kill hundreds of thousands of people.

God, in my humble opinion, did not destroy the coast of Aceh because teenagers were going on dates or every once in a while someone was getting drunk or having an affair. God caused the earthquake in Aceh because the pacific tectonic plate had built up too much pressure that had to be released. God was following through on his perfect design of this planet of ours that requires such releases of tension from time to time. The core of our planet is heated and alive, and so are we as a result.

The down side of that is that from time to time, earthquakes will happen and natural disasters will be a dramatic and horrible reality to people in certain areas. It is the consequence of life and the constant renewal of the planet. If we hold tight to our ego and believe that God only cares for humans, or cares the most for humans, it becomes a horrible act of punishment. If we let go of the ego and realize that disasters like the quake in Japan are the consequence for so much beauty on this wonderful planet called earth it makes it easier to understand and to relate to. Earthquakes suck. Tsunamis suck. A cold lifeless Earth sucks more.

Knowing that disasters are part of life, I believe that someone who works to live his or her life according to the teaching found in the new Testament prepares for them if he/ she lives in a disaster zone, and reacts to aid victims when disasters happen. A Christian in a disaster tries to stay calm and not let fear overwhelm the desire to be compassionate. A Christian works hard to hold on to empathy in disasters. A Christian acts out of love not out of terror. A Christian knows that he/ she can live in the Kingdom of Heaven at the same moment that others are living in hell.

The empathy and compassion that Jesus teaches also applies to people on the other side of the planet. If you want to live according to the teachings, you cannot turn off the TV because you have seen too much and want to think about something else. Someone trying to “do what Jesus would do” puts themselves in that position and asks “what would I want someone on the other side of the planet to do.” The answer might be as simple as just keep the victims in mind and don’t forget them. Pray for them, in other words. Or maybe, keep the victims in mind and act with more love on the other side of the world. Be better to friends and family. Stand up for someone in need. Go out on a limb to help someone. Send love into the universe by living more fully in the Kingdom no matter where you are.

Katie: What words of hope do you have for the people of Japan?

Megan: I don’t think words help. They'll see hope or they won't. Some people don't come back from that kind of trauma; the vast majority does. It happens as they start to rebuild. The thing that we, who are not in the area, can do is impact how we respond. What we do and think. This is the best advice on giving that you could find: It is an article by Annie Lowery from Slate Magazine, “Japanese Tsunami: If you donate money to help the recovery, let the aid groups decide how to spend it.” I think it is spot on.

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I would agree, Megan. Giving indiscriminately so that others can move forward into a new life…that sounds just like something that little hippie in the desert would say.

Thanks old friend, for sharing with all of us around the firelight.