Kevin's testimony

Here is Kevin's testimony from mom's funeral. Some have requested a copy and others weren't there to hear it, so he told me I could post it on my blog.

Dad, Kelley, and I have spent much of the last few days going through old pictures; and, trust me, mom took a lot of pictures for us to go through! Many of you were able to see some of these pictures at the viewing yesterday and share in the memories of mom that they capture.

Mom was many things. She was a daughter to “momma” and “daddy,” as she called them, or “Kelley Grandma” and “Kelley Grandpa” to us. She was a big sister to Kathy and a little sister to Nancy. She was a quiet high school student at Allen Park High who graduated early at 17. As she walked home on the last day of school with her arms full of books, a nice guy offered to give her a ride home and later got up guts to ask her out as they stood next to each other in the high school graduation line. She would eventually be this nice guy’s wife, but before that she bought herself a Mustang (red, of course) and attended Wayne State University, where she studied art and loved to roam around the Detroit Public Library. Rumor has it that dad would type all of her papers and she would write all of his! Mom was an optician, working for Pearle Vision and later for Henry Ford Hospital. She loved to work with her hands and she loved to work with people. After marrying Gary, she was eventually a mom, although she only knew she would have twins two weeks before we were born! She invested countless hours taking care of us and drilling us on our times tables. Mom was also a reader. She loved to read. She loved to read around the campfire. She especially loved to read around the campfire with the cat on her lap.

But more important than all these things, mom was a Christian. The word “Christian” may mean different things to different people, so maybe I should explain what she meant by it. Mom believed that the Bible is true when it says that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. She believed that all of us, even exceptionally nice people like her, have rebelled or sinned against our holy Creator, and that God’s wrath is against sinners, condemning them to death in this life and after death, to the lake of fire, what the Bible calls the “second death.” But she also believed in the gospel, or the good news that God sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to die as a perfect sacrifice to take away our sins! If we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus, mom wrote, “we will have eternal life”! These words are from a journal she kept as she read through the psalms and the Gospel of John over these last ten months.

So when mom was diagnosed with cancer ten months ago, her deepest hope was not in her family, or her work, or her hobbies, or even in her doctors but in Jesus and in his Word. Yes, she continued to trust dad to take care of her, and she continued to enjoy working with her hands in needlework and quilting, and she trusted her doctors, following their instructions meticulously; but ultimately she trusted in God, that he answers prayer and that he could heal her. That is why she loved these words of an obscure hymn by John Newton (author of “Amazing Grace”): “Come my soul, they suit prepare: Jesus loves to answer prayer; he himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not say thee nay. | Thou art coming to a king, large petitions with thee bring; for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.” She was always so encouraged to hear about all of you praying for her. As I glance through the journal I mentioned earlier, a couple of her notes stand out because she underlined them or used an exclamation point—for example, she wrote “the Lord is loving and kind. He hears my prayer!” (Psalm 6); “the Lord is a stronghold in time of troubles and will not forsake those who seek him!” (Psalm 9); “God can HEAL people” (Psalm 30).

So since God chose not to heal her, was her trust misplaced? Were her prayers and our prayers in vain? No. Mom did not trust in God only when he answered “yes” to every prayer. She trusted that God could heal her and that God hears her prayer because she believed the Bible. Let us not forget that this same Bible tells us that Jesus himself prayed before he was crucified, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” And yet he was still crucified. God answered “no” to the prayers of his own Son so that he might set mom and us free from sin and death by punishing her sin and our sin in Christ’s death. But three days later—and this was mom’s great hope—God exerted his mighty strength by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. A few weeks ago, mom and I were talking on the phone about the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” and she (rather adamantly) complained that the movie missed the end of the story—Jesus was raised from the dead! And his resurrection is the first resurrection guaranteeing the her future resurrection and the resurrection of all believers in Jesus. I hope we don’t confuse mom’s solid confidence in the resurrection with a vague hope that “she’s in a better place.” Mom believed that when she was absent from the body she would be present with Jesus Christ and that in the future God would raise her body from the dead. This was her deepest hope as she fought cancer.

So what will be our hope as we think about mom’s death? Do we grieve? Yes, this is only natural—Jesus himself wept over his friend’s death. We will miss mom so much. But let us not grieve like the world; let us not grieve as those without hope, because she believed in Jesus, and “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). As he said, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). This was mom’s hope, and, if we believe him, it is our hope as well.