How God’s grace and Jon's legacy continue shaping my heart
Jon’s battle with cancer was a long, difficult journey. Yet he wanted to use his experiences to bring others to Christ. He longed for God to use his life for His glory. He often said, “I don’t want to waste my cancer”. Throughout the years of treatments, surgeries, hospital stays and many days of feeling ill, Jon shared the hope of Christ with others. During his darkest times, he often would read the book of Job. He felt a kinship to Job, especially after being hospitalized with severe shingles in the midst of radiation treatments. He understood when Job talked about scraping his boils with broken pieces of pottery. He had felt that pain.
After Jon passed, I chose to have Job 1:21 engraved on Jon’s gravestone. It says,
“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
This is something I am still learning. Being thankful for what God has given is the easy part. Being thankful for what God has taken away is much more difficult.
I am so thankful that God gave me Jon. He was a wonderful husband and father, a Godly pastor and a loyal friend. He saw the best in others and shared that with them. I have pages of letters he wrote me when we were dating and after we were married of the qualities he saw in me, and the things he appreciated about me.
After he passed, it felt impossible to thank God for taking him. It didn’t seem fair. I didn’t understand it, and for a long time, I was angry with God for taking him and leaving us here to try to manage life without him.
As time went on, the anger lessened, and God did tremendous healing in my life. While I still can’t say I am truly thankful that God took Jon, I can see the ways God has worked in my life and the life of others because God took Jon.
God used my deep grief to bring me to the end of myself, so I would have no where to go except to Him. He showed me that I was relying on myself instead of resting in Him. And He is graciously using my journey to help others who are going through devastating loss.
God always does what is right, and for that I am thankful. And I choose to say with Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
If you’re walking through grief and need a quiet place to process, I have created resources specifically for you in my Etsy shop, HOPE & HARMONY PAGES. These three digital printables work on their own and hand in hand with each other:
30 SCRIPTURE CARDS FOR GRIEF. If you know someone these might encourage, I would be honored if you’d share these resources—and my blog—with them.
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