If you want to know what I love about Nehemiah, skip to the end.
“They said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who survived the captivity are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire.’ When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.” Nehemiah 1:3 – 4
Hearing Bad News
I started this blog with the opening line:
“Mom’s in an ambulance on the way to the hospital” in my post entitled “What to remember in the struggle of life.”
Losing my mother was the climatic blow in what had already been a very tough two years of loss.
Her death was completely unexpected – we found out later that she had suffered a massive brain aneurysm and that no amount of care would have brought her back.
I didn’t cry right away. I couldn’t because everyone around me was crying and I felt I had to hold back to be strong for my family.
Instead, I internalized and boxed those feelings up until later…
Responding to Bad News
I got the call about my mother going to the hospital unconscious around 4pm in the afternoon.
My wife arrived home from work shortly thereafter and we jumped in her car and raced up the freeway’s carpool section, weaving in and out of traffic at breakneck speed.
We spent most of the night listen to doctors and specialists massage the message and dance around the inevitable – my mother was dead.
Finally, just before the dawn of the next morning, we all went home to get cleaned up before meeting back at the hospital.
It was in this precious moment alone with my wife that I finally cried for the first time – my wife and I just held each other and cried.
3 Ways to be a Donor:
There’s three ways to be a donor – something none of us knew about until my mother died. This is what was being explained to us within hours of learning she’d never be waking up from the bed she was on…
- The body dies, and some parts are viable for donation. But, the vital organs mostly likely aren’t usable.
- You keep the body alive until right before ‘harvesting.’ Then, the doctors kill the body and ‘harvest’ what they can.
- The doctors do everything they can to keep the body alive through the operations to maximize the harvest.
What they won’t tell you is that if you choose option 3 (like we did to honor my mother’s wishes and personality) is that it takes a long time to get everything lined up.
30 or 40 hours later, we were still in the hospital room. My mother’s body being held up on life support so the admin staff could line up the recipients needing organs.
We wept, mourned, fasted, prayed, and sang worship songs to pass the time. It was transitional and restorative in some ways…
Feeling Bad News
It’s ok to cry – to sit down like you’ve been punched in the gut and just sob. It’s ok to weep, and to be silent in the pain, or wail out loud. Expression of emotion in times such as this is ok.
This is what I love about Nehemiah!
He didn’t wait for an appropriate time to be sad.
He was sad then and he let people know it. His authenticity is amazing.
