Joy Comes With The Mourning

Mourning the death of a believer can be such a strange thing.

When I was in college, I landed a job in the campus post office.  It was a pretty sweet gig.  I got to miss chapel (seemed pretty sweet at the time), I made enough money to buy the latest Steven Curtis Chapman cdsI became friends with all the faculty and staff, and I had an amazing boss.  Her name was Jackie Long.  She was short, round, and had a smile as big as a southern Missouri sunrise.

Jackie's funeral is today, June 11th.   Cancer took Jackie quite rapidly these past few weeks, and my wife and I drove to Springfield, Missouri to see her one last time.

In the hospital room where she laid sleeping and unresponsive, I held her hand and simply looked at her face while my mind flooded with memories like: the sound of her voice, the ring of the bell at the front desk of the post office, the smell of mail bags, and the taste of Jackie's chili.

I've cried more than once over the last several days when thinking about her, and of course when you weep because you've lost someone, you realize that you're weeping for yourself, not for them.  Still, I always try to work out exactly why I'm crying at times like these, because all of my memories of Jackie are good ones. So why the tears? 

I'm pretty sure I cry because death is still such an enemy - the final one, Paul says.

I know I cry for her husband, who will miss her terribly.

Probably also the tears flow from a sense of honor, as a tribute, because in Jackie's case, she has finished her work on earth, she has done it well, and this guy right here was granted the privilege of being a product of her efforts.  I can point to certain stones that make up the structure of my life and say, "that one there was set in place by Jackie Long, and that one, and that one."

What truly endears my heart to her is how much she loved this bumbling college kid who worked for her in the campus post office. She cared for me and the handful of other students that worked there like a mother. She scolded us if we needed it, she had us over for supper, she called me "son", and she loved my firstborn child and my wife. Her home was always open to me, even when I'd visit years later and need a place to spend the night. "There's the fridge, have whatever you need!"
And so as I looked at her laying in the hospital bed, I thought, that is a person who loved me unconditionally.

She genuinely was my mom away from home.   And although I use that term, she doesn't occupy the real estate in my heart that my own mother does, but she was among the few human beings that have had profound influence on my life.  Her secret to success wasn't because she read a stack of John Maxwell books, but simply because she was a sweet, sweet woman who loved Jesus and knew for sure how good He is.  Thinking about all these things, there definitely is joy in the mourning.