Meeting Jesus (O Death where is your sting?)

I have started this blog over about 5 times already- never quite sure what will become of it or how to properly express the turmoil going on inside my head and the peace within my heart. 

It’s Sunday afternoon and I am at my parents.  The song “Magnify” by We are Messengers is on repeat, playing through my computer speakers.  Around me, my eyes pick up glimmers of white mini lights, hidden in the greenery, that mom has put up for this Christmas season.  To my right, flowery displays of exotic plants capture my sense of smell as I am drawn back to faraway lands; trying to forget the reason why the house seems to have suddenly become a mini flower shop in the matter of 48 hours…but more about that later.  Outside, nature is doing its part in helping bring a ‘white Christmas’, as I watch the frozen mix of rain/snow fall from the sky.  On the ground below, there are still remnants of summer days passed as the green grass is struggling to poke through the thin layer of snow that has fallen.  I find myself smirking; realizing the irony of it.  As much as I would like a snowy/cold white Christmas, I hate the crappy driving conditions and the debate of ‘should I go out on the road tonight…if I don’t have too’, that comes with weather like this.  

 Jesus.  Even in a season that has just passed…You were still GOOD.  In the season yet to come, Jesus you WILL still be GOOD.  Jesus, right here and now- you ARE GOOD.

Little did I know that a simple text Tuesday afternoon at 3:07 from my mom-asking for me to say a simple prayer for Grandpa-would be the start of a crazy, unexpected ending to an otherwise ‘normal’ week.  27 hours later, instead of finding myself getting ready for another evening of youth, I found myself caught up in a moment that I never thought I would ever have to experience.  With all the experiences that God has brought me to, and through, I had never experienced HIM quite like I did between 6:00-6:20 that Wednesday evening and I am having a hard time explaining it.   

Perhaps, one of the greatest honour's this side of Heaven, is to be in the same room when someone takes their final breath of their earthly life.  That moment when you realize that they are now face to face with Jesus…words cannot express it.  It is a humbling, tender and a very raw experience.  It is a HOLY moment like nothing I’ve ever felt before.  The power within the room, as a person is released from a broken body and a hurting world…into a complete healing and a pure FREEDOM…wow…

Death isn’t new.  In my own way, I’ve experienced it many times before.  Through the eyes of a 4 year old, not able to understand why mommy was so sad and why visiting Grandma and Grandpa on the farm now, would be different because Grandma wouldn’t be there.  Instead being told that, “Grandma would be with Jesus, watching you play and grow up, from Heaven”.  As a child, experiencing the first loss of a pet and the anger that came with that.  As a pre-teen; seeing the pain in close friends as they lost their grandparents but being jealous at the fact they HAD their grandparents with them for many more years than I did mine.  As a teenager, slowly learning to try and understand the death Jesus chose to die on the cross for me.  As a college-aged young adult-cramming through endless hours of papers and exams; discovering more of more of WHO Jesus is.  

As a college graduate with a B.A. in Mission, ready to ‘take on the world’, only to have to learn how to walk through the experience of death once again, as my brother dealt with the death of a high school classmate in a freak accident.  Being told while on my first mission’s trip to Africa, that the young child I held in my arms, would probably be dead within the week due to lack of human contact.  A year and a half later, being back in that same hospital in Africa and hearing the wails of a mother down the hall, whose baby was just born stillborn.  Losing my first niece to miscarriage and learning that 50% of (first) pregnancies end in miscarriages. Learning to deal with death from afar while in Serbia, when I got news of one of my youth girls dying in an accident.  Wrestling with wanting to hop on the next flight home, to be with my other girls who I knew were struggling, but knowing that God had placed me where I was for a reason.  Praying for a sick grandma to be healed while in the Philippians, only to hear that she passed away while we were on our way back to our contacts a short while later, brought about an anger within me towards God.  While back teaching in Africa, hearing news that the baby boy we literally just rescued, died due to constipation… tore at my heart.  Bumping along to his funeral…seeing mounds upon mounds of grave sights…it does something to a person.  It changes how one views life and death. Arriving home and learning my uncle was sick with an incurable disease that only 1 in a million Canadians have…seeing his health quickly decline in a matter of months.  Yet, having the honour of being asked to read his obituary at his funeral.  I will never forget that.  I took a moment to look up from the pulpit as I read-there was not a dry eye in that packed church.  One life but the impact it had on many…over a year later and those feelings are still hard to explain what I felt flow through me in that moment.  

Perhaps all those (and more) prepared me for that Holy moment on Wednesday.  

While I don’t ‘wish’ that experience on anyone, I am thankful to God that I was able to experience it.  In its own way, even in death, God revealed His ultimate love to us (me) in a very real, tangible way.  After all, wasn’t it God’s ultimate display of love for you and I that sent Jesus to the cross to die?  I know what I felt on Wednesday evening…how much more powerful, more HOLY, more filled with LOVE must it have been when the Son of God died.       

Although there is a season to mourn and grieve, I rejoice knowing that someday I too will experience an earthly death.  It is in that moment, that I look forward to seeing all those who have passed on, before me.  More importantly, it is in that moment that I await, with great anticipation, to hear the words spoken to me (a servant) by my Master…words that I know my Grandpa heard Wednesday evening… “Well done good and faithful servant.  You have fought the GOOD fight to the very end.  Welcome home to eternal glory”. 

Jesus, Heal our Nations

My head is spinning, my heart is hurting.

My head struggles with reason, with a countless number of questions regarding the pointless loss of life that seemed to rock America, a Nation less than 15 miles from my very home, this past week.  As an American friend and I struggle through the questions, one text aroused within our conversation that captured my attention the most.  It is a question that has been on repeat on my mind, it is “Really though, how do we fix this?” Even from thousands of miles away, I can hear the pain in her heart for her country and for all the lives lost.  From there, the conversation continued as we debated/questioned/wrestled together, with the thought of how one country (America) is so very different than its neighbour to the North (Canada).  Especially when we, Canada, are literally like a ‘hop, skip and a jump’ away.  Do I have an answer?  My brain wants to give one.  My instinct is to mention the difference in policy, governments and even the mentality of the people themselves, but my heart is quiet.  It is truly weeping for the lives lost regardless of age, nationality, gender, and skin colour.  

I saw a series of post on Instagram recently by a white humanitarian photographer whom I follow.  The posts were simple.  Each post had a black background with one simple word in white making up one of the most popular, current hashtags. BLACK LIVES MATTER.  His message was clear, but as I read the caption below it, tears began to flow from my eyes.  I could relate, somewhat, on a personal level.  He talked about disliking his white skin colour, to the point where he was even ashamed of it and how he wanted to ‘rip it off’.  

I get it.  I do.  I get it in a very personal way.

I cannot even begin to explain to you the number of times I have been approached throughout my travels, by someone of a different skin colour, who simply wanted to ‘touch my skin and absorb the ‘purity’ within it’.  What about the number of times street kids have singled me (or the group of friends I was with) out?  Begging for money or anything else we had to offer, simply because of the skin colour we bore.  I’ve been to African markets with national friends of mine and without national friends of mine and I am tired of being taken advantage of simple because of my skin.  More so, I am tired of how local vendors were completely rude and obscene to my friends but yet ‘as respectful and helpful’ towards me simply cause they wanted to make a sale (needless to say, that vendor did not get any business from us).

What about that time in a Thailand pharmacy when I almost bought a SKIN WHITENING shampoo/lotion?  Seriously, what would have to be IN something like that to physically lightening the skin? The sight of rows upon rows of products like those; further broke my heart. Or that time in India when a gang of men on motorbikes, showed up screaming at the store owner of the small tailor shop we were picking our Punjab’s up at.  The men on bikes were threatening the store owner simply because he was doing business with people of white skin colour (us).  On our way back home, we were caught in a riot of protestors and forced to walk over fire (literally) that was burning across the street.  

Africa is the hardest for me though.  I’ve heard story upon story from those of coloured who have lived through racial tensions.  I recall a conversation I had with Oma, my host grandma during my time in Capetown.  If anyone understood racial tension, it was this sweet, 80+ year old lady.  She had personally lived through the Mandala era and experienced much more in a single life time than anyone should.  Yet here she was, sharing her heart with me, saying how she wouldn’t ever change her skin colour for anything.  How she is proud to be a lady of colour and everything that comes/came with it.  Her dream is that her two young grandchildren could grow up in a world where fear ceased to exist when it came to skin colour and racial tension.  

The single hardest conversation in regards to skin colour, which I have ever had was with one of my grade 10 female students in Zambia in 2015.  A year later, and it still brings tears to my eyes as I think about how her body physically trembled as the pain beside me and how the pain in her voice came through as she shared her one wish with me.  She wishes that she would have been born white instead of black, born North American instead of Zambian.  I could hear how the distaste she had for herself simply because of her skin colour.  This young, beautiful 16 year old, ashamed of who she was simply because of her skin, unaware of the power that her life really held.  As I sat next to her, I prayed for words to encourage her with.  None came.  Instead, we simply cried together.  Black and white.  White and black.  

I didn’t write this post to ‘stir anything up’.  Rather, as a way for myself to process current events, along with past situations both global and personally. 

In parting, I would like to leave it with two simple quotes that have been challenging me lately.  My prayer is that they will challenge you as well and together, we can be unified voices in a world that is crying out for something more, BEFORE another life is lost.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” – Elie Wiesel; survivor of a WW2 Nazi concentration camp and author of the autobiography “NIGHT”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” by Desmond Tutu, a black South African social rights activist.

Hands (Finding JOY in death)

On April 23, 1992, I had just turned 4 thirty five days earlier.  From what I remember, life was good.  I mean, I was only 4 years old so how ‘bad’ could it be right? When I woke up that morning, little did I (or anyone in my family) knew of the somber day that laid before my entire family. April 23, 1992 is the day that my grandma went to be with Jesus.  It has been 24 years since that day and the pain of the loss, is still there.  As a 4-year old, I didn’t understand what had happened and I especially didn’t understand words such as ‘Chemo’, ‘cancer’, ‘death’, ‘heaven’, ‘God’.  I didn’t know what a funeral consisted of or why people wore black and gave things called eulogies at them.  Cemeteries and caskets were something that my eyes hadn’t seen prior.  I lost a bit of innocence that day, as the reality of the world I was/am growing up in, became a bit more ‘real’. 

As a 28 year old, I now understand what ‘chemo’ and ‘cancer’ are and, although I don’t think I will ever fully understand the words; ‘death’, ‘heaven’ or ‘God’, I do have a greater understanding of them and most importantly, of WHO God is.  I have been to more funerals than I can count, both here at home and while overseas.  Funerals of people I’ve known my entire life, and funerals of people whom I literally just met.  Through these various funerals; the reality of just how fragile life truly is, has been a stark reminder.  From witnessing my own grandma’s funeral when I was 4, to seeing row upon row of small grave sites as I listened to the wails of African women at the funeral of a month old ‘dump’ baby last spring, in Zambia.  Having been asked, and then giving the eulogy at my uncle’s funeral this past fall became a stark reminder that when death comes, death comes.  This past week, we lost a precious individual at work to death.  A young man of 35 years of age, whose smile lit up those around him.  Although I didn’t know him long, I am going to miss seeing his smile each and every day and the joy that came with it. 

I have walked on many cemetery sites locally and aboard, and I have seen many different sized caskets since my grandma’s 24 years ago. Truth is, it still isn’t easy.  Death isn’t easy.  Don’t give me the line, “at least they are no longer suffering” or “I am sorry for your loss”.  I have long since lost all innocence that my once 4 year old self had.  I understand pain and I understand loss.  Reality is; Death sucks no matter the age.  Period. End of story.

However, today I choose to have a different perspective on death.  Today I chose to be thankful for life, for my own mom and the gift she has been/is in my own life.  Although we don’t always get along (what mother/daughter relationship does?!?) I am thankful that, at the end of the day, I know she is here and I know I can hug her one more time.  Those hugs, any time spent with her, will forever be cherished.  Mom, I love you so much!Today I am thankful she is two provinces away spending time with her grandson, laughing and making priceless memories.  I am thankful Peregrine HAS the chance to spend time with his grandma.  He truly had no idea how blessed he is to have her as his grandma.  I am thankful for the love that my mom already has for Peregrine’s younger brother or sister, set to grace us with their presence in July.  

Today I am thankful for the gift of ‘hands’ my own grandma instilled in each of her daughters (my aunts) and son (my uncle).  Yes, they are a ‘crazy bunch of Brauns’ but their hands of ‘touched’ more lives than you or I will ever know.  I am thankful for their teachings and influence upon my life, encouraging me to use my ‘hands’ no matter where in the world I am.  As I take a moment and look upon my own hands, I marvel at the stories they could tell.  In 28 years, my hands have been on some incredible adventures all around the world.  They have held countless of kids, in all walks of life.  They’ve been that support, whether physically helping a young lady girl off a pole in Thailand’s Red Light District, or lifting my local youth girls up in prayer as I looked down upon the beautiful smile of an 8 year old African child who has forever changed my life. Thank you Jesus, for the gift of hands that you have blessed my family with.

Thank you Jesus; for dying the ultimate death so that in YOU, we may have life eternal.