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Barbara's first hint of trouble came with coughing and pain in the chest. The X-rays and following biopsy confirmed the worst fears and marked the beginning of her long slide toward death. "Lung cancer," said the doctor. "We'll remove the lobe immediately and follow with radiation." But it was not to be that easy.

The surgeon found a fibrous tissue intertwined through the chest cavity making removal of the lung impossible. The tumor itself was removed as well as possible, and in spite of the inevitable hair loss due to radiation, Barbara and Doug went back to work and to living their lives in the strength of their mutual love and faith.

At forty-six the specter of death seemed doubly upsetting. Barbara had found real happiness for the first time in her life. In childhood she had been abused and had seen her mother mortally burned in a gas explosion in their home. After the failure of her first marriage, the second marriage was a dream come true. "Why?" became the incessant question over the next eighteen months.

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in thee my soul takes refuge;
in the shadow of thy wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.
Psalm 57:1

Together we explored the heights of heaven and probed the depths of hell. No small part of the exploration was the uncovering of the deep childhood hurts which had so attacked her self-esteem and led to heavy cigarette smoking. Having learned something of the meditation techniques used to relax cancer patients, I made a tape recording for her to listen to three times a day, with a special adaptation of prayer fit for her condition. While she found great comfort in the process, nothing stopped the onslaught of the disease. Six months after it was first diagnosed, a tumor in the brain made itself evident. Excruciating pain began to radiate through her body.

It was then that Doug, Barbara and I began to work on their funeral plans, and what role God had to play in all that was happening. After a hospitalization, the insurance company allowed twenty-four hour private nursing care at home, a miracle in and of itself! It was necessary to administer morphine in increasingly large doses to ease the pain. Hallucinations and disorientation were the results, but Barbara was able to rise to moments of lucid awareness each time I visited, except for one day when I found her comatose.

"We don't think she will live another forty-eight hours," the nurse had said on the phone. "It would be helpful if you would come today."

Doug seemed resigned to the inevitable, caught between the prayer that she be released from suffering and his sense of losing his beloved.

Let me dwell in thy tent for ever!
O to be safe under the shelter of thy wings"
Psalm 61:4

"At a time like this, anointing is appropriate," I said.

"Do you have any olive oil?" There was none, but "God understands corn oil," I volunteered. With anointing and laying-on-of-hands we released Barbara to the passage which is eternal life. "If you want to see Barbara before she dies," I told her best friends, "you should go as soon as possible."

"Tell us again," said her friends Joyce and Lois, when they returned from a visit the next day, "what her condition was yesterday. You must have misjudged. She walked in the yard without assistance for fifteen minutes today!" Indeed she had.

The reprieve did not last long, but it once again invigorated our faith. She lived another three months. Morphine was being administered in huge doses and the last remnants of hope for recovery were realistically put aside.

Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, thou art very great!
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, who coverest thyself with light
as with a garment, who hast stretched out the heavens like a tent, who hast
chariot, who ridest on the wings of the wind.
Psalm 104:1-3

On the day before Easter, Barbara spoke to Doug about two hours after her 8:30 a.m. medication.

"White feathered wings came to me with a message. They said I was to take no more medication and that I will have no more pain."

Doug and the nurse knew if the medication were stopped it would be terribly difficult to regain lost ground on pain control and that the withdrawal symptoms would be terrifying.

"What should we do?" they asked both the doctor and me, and we concurred that at this point Barbara needed to have some control over her fate. No more medication was given that day.

"The wings wrapped themselves around me and made me warm," she told both Doug and her friend Lois.

"Where are they now?" asked Doug.

"They went away," she murmured, "but another pair came to me. I can't see them, but I know they were here."

"Did they have a body?" Doug wanted to know.

"No. They were just white feathered wings."

Between worship services on Easter, Doug called to say that she had had no medication or pain or withdrawal symptoms for over twenty-four hours, and he wanted the congregation to know. She had slept peacefully through the night of Easter Eve, able to lie on either side, something she hadn't been able to do for months. During the day her conversation was totally lucid and filled with recollections and easy talk with visitors.

In the week that followed she received just one more injection of morphine, not for pain, but to ease heart fibrillation. She had no other signs of pain or withdrawal symptoms during that time. With a clear head at 1:55 a.m. on the following Saturday, she took the wings of the morning and flew to her eternal rest.

Wither shall I go from thy Spirit? 0 wither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend into heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me ...
Psalm 139:7-10