Victory After Death: What My Mom's Passing Taught Me About Jesus

This COMMENTARY comes from contributing writer Ashley Muse, a recent graduate from American University's School of International Service who now works for Congress.

In July 2016, my mom was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. She died 16 months later, on November 13, 2017. 

You will never hear me say she "lost the battle to cancer." My mom didn't lose anything. In fact, her death was a victory with eternal consequences. 

The cancer was in her left lung. Adding to our shock and confusion, my mom was not a smoker. The doctors told us this form of cancer was extremely rare; 1-2 percent of patients with small cell lung cancer were never smokers. 

At the time, my sisters and I saw her illness as Satan's attempt to prevent the way in which my mom most enjoyed worshipping the Lord: through singing. Every year, my mom would participate in a community performance of Handel's Messiah – an oratorio of the life of Jesus. With this, she had essentially presented the Gospel of Jesus Christ for nearly three hours to an audience of 2,400 people, every year for more than 35 years. And although that year was particularly difficult for her, being the determined and strong woman my mom was, she still managed to participate in Handel's Messiah in the fall of 2016. We didn't realize this would be her last performance. 

 
A few months after being on Tarceva (an oral treatment for lung cancer), my mom began to get a lot worse. In January, she experienced rapid heart palpitations and was rushed to the hospital. She was put on additional medication and sent back home. A while later, we found out that the cancer had spread to her spine, and they decided to begin chemotherapy treatments. She didn't react well to the chemo. She was constantly nauseous, tired and in immense pain from migraines. She had lost her appetite almost completely and every bone in her body ached. In late October/November, the possibility of death became more real than ever. Yet still, I held hope in Jehovah Rapha. On Nov. 10, she suffered a seizure and became paralyzed and unresponsive. My sisters and I flew into Orlando on Friday evening. My intent was to bring her comfort and surprise her; lift her spirits. I was not mentally prepared for what happened next. 

The image of her as I walked into the ICU for the first time will forever haunt me. Her face was paralyzed with a look of terror and her body had shrunk to half its normal size. Yet, although she seemed unresponsive and unaware of her surroundings, she immediately grabbed for my hand the instant I approached her hospital bed. The next 48 hours were the scariest of my life. We sang to her, prayed for her and just sat with her. 

When I arrived at the hospital on Monday morning, I noticed that something was different. Her eyes, cloudy and swollen, no longer met my gaze. About an hour later, as I was working on homework next to her, I noticed she began gasping for air. I looked at her vitals and saw her respiratory numbers decreasing rapidly. I ran out of the room to grab a nurse and began calling my Uncle Johnny who had stepped out for lunch. All I could think was that I was NOT going to be alone for this. If she really was about to die, I can't bear to experience this alone. 

The nurses were working on her as my Uncle Johnny and I were praying. They finally told us that she had passed, but my countenance had not changed at all. I didn't fall to the ground; I didn't start screaming or crying. And I say this not to imply any strength on my part but to give you an idea of how convinced I was of her healing. Even upon news of death, I was confident that God's will was to heal her, bodily. So, my Uncle and I spent the next 45 minutes praying for Him to raise her from the dead. 

Uncle Johnny called his brothers and put them on speaker phone to join us in prayer. I sent a mass text to my close friends and prayer warriors asking them to join me in a prayer of resurrection. But the more we prayed, the more guilt I felt about bringing her back. If she was already in the presence of Jesus, surely she would not want to be back on earth. So, I accepted the reality. I was in shock for the rest of the night and the question that kept running through my mind was: "God, I don't know how to defend You in this. Her healing was supposed to be our testimony."

The days and months that followed were filled with anger, doubt, anxiety attacks, and spiritual pain. There were moments when I felt like God's silence was deafening. At first, it was painful to worship or pray. What happened to me felt very personal. Like He didn't care about me enough to heal my mom. So, one day I decided to write down all of my questions. They weren't specific questions about my mom's suffering, but they were scriptural questions and questions about God, the nature of His character, His will and His involvement in our daily lives. Today, exactly one year later, I don't claim to have all my questions answered. But I do believe God has graciously given me a better understanding of who He is and how He operates, which I hope to share with you now.

First, I found healing in recognizing that what happened didn't mean the Enemy won this battle. Through my mom's refusal to reject God, she is the one who came out victorious.

God is teaching me to live with a "kingdom mentality." This means seeing life through the metaphysical. The devil is primarily after our eternal souls. Destroying our physical (bodies) is meaningless unless it is used as a means through which he can win our spirits. But if we refuse to reject God, the Enemy has lost. The demon in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters drives home this point by asking, "What permanent good does it  [suffering]  do to us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below?"

The months following my mom's death, I did not feel God. I felt pain, loneliness, and abandonment. There were nights I just sobbed on my bedroom floor begging Him to comfort me or somehow speak to me. I felt/heard nothing. I was seeking more answers from God, to reconnect with Him and feel His presence again. I wanted that spiritual high that I used to thrive off of before my mom got sick. Why wouldn't He grant me that? A good friend of mine suggested that maybe my relationship with God wasn't supposed to go back to how it used to be. Maybe it used to be naive. The minute he said this, I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom. What I saw as the "silent treatment" from God, now began to feel more like a period of refining. God isn't ignoring me. He is maturing and strengthening my relationship with Him so that I'm not relying on a feeling, a highly unstable measure of stability in a relationship. 

This reality is addressed beautifully in another passage from Screwtape Letters: 

"Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best...He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore, take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles." Screwtape, the demon, continues, "Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Ashley Muse is a recent graduate from American University's School of International Service, where she earned a master's degree in U.S. foreign policy and national security. Now working for Congress, she is also an alumni of the Philos Leadership Institute 2017 program and currently serves as President of the Philos chapter in Washington, DC.