The Dilemma
Sally was likely dead before she hit the floor. One minute she was laughing with co-workers. The next minute she lay crumpled at their feet. They called the paramedics,who rushed her forty miles to the hospital, where thedoctors and nurses kept her heart beating for twelvemore hours. Long enough for her son to call the churchand ask me to come. Time enough for family to gather,to grieve, and to ask why. The doctor called it a stroke. Icalled it a mystery. Neither answer brought much comfort.Whatever the explanation, Sally was likely dead beforeshe hit the floor.
Sally's death shook me. She was my age, our birthdaysonly a week apart. I thought this the cause of mydiscomfort when they asked me to speak at her funeral, but in preparing her eulogy I faced far more than my own mortality. I learned many secrets about this woman whom I'd often judged, sometimes condemned, and never respected. I discovered her life had been as cruel as her death. I realized my opinion of Sally had been unfair. At her funeral, I would bury my self-righteousness and arrogance. I would leave next to the flowers arranged around her grave a belief I'd held since I was a child.
Let me tell you about Sally.
Sally's father deserted her when she was three. Hermother filled the void with a parade of temporary replacements, none of whom wanted Sally underfoot. She was discarded. Passed from aunt to cousin to grandmother and back again, staying only as long as their patience allowed. Shuffled from school to school, from town to town. She made only acquaintances, never a friend. Longing for a stability she'd never known, Sally married young, and poorly.
Her husband abandoned her with three small children, no job, and no diploma. Her dreams withered away as she struggled to survive. All her life she'd been neglected, and now she began to neglect herself. Like dominoes falling, bad jobs were followed by worse ones; a poor husband was replaced by abusive boyfriends. Alcohol and drugs sped her descent. When the last domino toppled, Sally was thirty-two years old, the mother of five, unemployed, and living off the leftovers of neighbors and relatives. That domino tumbled the day she slept in with a hangover and woke to find her youngest daughter drowned in the pool next door.
When her son came and through his tears told me the news, I could barely contain my rage. Unaware of Sally's sad past, I saw only a mother who had failed her child, and I despised her. It was with great difficulty that I preached her daughter's funeral.
Before the funeral, Sally told me she'd been abandonedby God. I assured her God hadn't forsaken her. I told her, "God loves you. He knows your pain. You're not alone." But I offered those words through gritted teeth, certain she neither heard nor cared and doubting, myself, whether in her case it was true.
After the funeral Sally stood by her daughter's casket,clutching a wad of tissue and crying. "There's no reason to live," she said. "No reason at all."
She was wrong.
The last five years of Sally's life were her happiest.That's what everyone said at Sally's funeral. That's whather children said, what her mother said, what her friendssaid -- Sally's last five years were her best.
How could that be?
In the days after her daughter's death, Sally repented.Now by repentance, I don't mean she fell to her knees at a church altar and confessed her sins aloud. Idon't mean she affirmed a set of spiritual laws or accepteda Lord and Savior. By repentance, I simply mean what the word itself means -- Sally turned. She turned from thoughts of suicide. She turned from crippling self-pity. She turned from despair. She turned.
Sally moved to a...
