a true story

I had a memory wash over me yesterday. It hit me so hard, like a wave breaking onto the shore that lifts you up and sits you back down about a foot further back. I could not hold back the tears, they came and liquid love crested over my eyelids and the brim of my heart. It was an image that I will never forget, forever seared into my memory.


A dear friend of mine was in hospice the weeks leading up to her death last fall. Her body was frail and swollen with steroids, at the time. I remember coming to visit her one evening and the center was filled with about 20 people (men, women and children) beautifully singing hymns with just their voices. It was incredible. My friend was making requests and they would sing them for her. The truth of the hymns brought warmth and light to the entire place. It was a holy time and I drank up the moments visually, not knowing if they would be my last with her. When I walked in I found her upright, sitting in a chair, facing the window. Her husband was leaning on the window sill, facing her. Her father had pulled up a chair for me, to sit right next to her, my friend. He slumped down nearby in a love seat, exhausted. My dear friend’s husband leaned over and kissed her long on the forehead and said he loved her so much and straightened up to a slouch before leaving for home. He too was exhausted, weary. We all were. My friend had been in her chair for some time so she was ready to move to her bed, tired after a long but good day. Her face and neck were so swollen; she had taken on a much different look by now. Every day was a gift at this point. She wanted to live. She told me this. She told me she was going to live and not die. She wanted a chance to make right all she had done wrong. She wanted mercy.

As her father was trying to move her from the chair to the bed, she collapsed to her knees. She fell hard. She said, “I’m sorry daddy, I’m not strong enough. I’m so sorry.” She said it a couple of times, frantic, concerned. She was entirely helpless, her body more than her ankles could bear. Her father held tight, back wrenched over, pulling up with all his strength; holding his little girl, loving her, being what a daddy should be at that moment. We had to call in a couple of nurses to lift her carefully into the bed. She thanked them profusely the entire time. “Thank you so much. Thank you for helping me.” She kept telling me how gracious and wonderful the nurses were, how they were showing her extravagant grace and mercy. I was wrecked on the inside. Had she been a stranger to me, my heart still would have wept to see such a helpless and grateful display, mingled together. I will never forget. I will never forget the way she said, “I’m sorry, daddy;” the way her bare knees hit the cold, hard floor; the heap of weakness she was, apologies flowing out like tears. I will never forget the beauty of that broken woman, so thankful, so sorry, all at once. In that moment I beheld what a repentant heart looks like, when there is nothing but days separating you from heaven.

“I’m sorry, daddy. I’m not strong enough.” It echoes around on the inside, like speaking into a well. She did. She spoke into the well of me in that moment, though she had no idea. These are the simple confessions of a laid-low heart; of a weak one who is unable, appealing to her father and her Father, at the same time. And to watch her daddy hold her, with all of his might, and knowing that he was not strong enough, either. There is only one strong enough and He held them both in that moment because He said that a broken and contrite spirit He will never despise. Where you see suffering, Jesus is near. Where you find sorrow, Jesus is well versed. Where you find pain, He is in the midst of it. He is always so near, with a compassion and concern greater than we can fathom; He is our sympathetic high Priest. He is mercy.