Storm Stories: When The Dam Breaks

Today, once again, you have opportunity to hear from a man I am grateful to call my spiritual brother.  His passion and his drive and his commitment to Christ often astound me.  He is not a man who just talks, but a man whose acts of faith match his words.  He has counseled me many times on Sunday mornings, offering new and different and even challenging perspectives to my own trials and tests.  His contribution to this series is no different.

THERE WITH MY MOM

by Dale B.

My mom was a stoic woman who dearly loved her husband and children. For about twenty years she had chronic headaches and back pain. At age sixty-five we found she had a hereditary disease called polycystic kidney disease or PKD. With PKD her kidneys filled with cysts and became painful. Her kidneys then became unable to function. 

My mom needed dialysis to cleanse the toxins from her blood. Three days each week she went to a dialysis center and had a needle inserted in her arm for three hours. Her blood was pumped through a machine where it was cleansed then returned to her body. She was very weak each time she left there. For five years she endured this and never complained. 

After five years my mom’s weak and frail body could no longer tolerate dialysis and it was stopped.  She needed medication constantly and it broke my heart every time she cried in pain. Our family was told she would only live for one to two weeks without dialysis. I stayed by my moms side around the clock. As difficult as it was to see all the pain my mom experienced, there was also a blessing in it.  

Her illness gave us time for closure and time together. We talked about a lot of things, read a lot of scripture and prayed together. Shortly before dawn almost two weeks after dialysis stopped I was sitting with her holding her hand. Her eyes were closed and she hadn’t spoken in hours. The nurses told me the end was close. Then something unexpected happened. 

All of a sudden her eyes, which were jaundiced yellow, opened and stared forward. I wondered if she could see. Her lips began to move quickly as she talked in an inaudibly faint voice. I tried hard to listen but couldn’t understand what she was saying. After talking about thirty seconds she stopped and closed her eyes.  

Her breathing slowed and she took her last breath…. I felt like a dam of repressed emotion was bursting. I fell to my knees, held her and cried uncontrollably. The strange thing was that my tears were not tears of sadness but rather tears of joy! I could not stop repeating over and over “Thank you Lord! Thank you Lord!” because her long road of suffering had ended and I knew she was now in the safe and loving arms of the Lord. 

In the gospels of Matthew and Luke it says that Jesus told his disciples “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Bible scholars interpret this as Jesus way of telling his disciples about his coming change of appearance with Moses and Elijah eight days later referred to as the transfiguration.  

It seems Jesus words applied to not only his disciples but also my mom. I am convinced that my mom saw Jesus “coming in his kingdom” and was talking with him before she went to him. I feel blessed that the Lord gave me this opportunity to be there with my mom!