My Huckleberry Friend

She is grace under pressure. She is beauty admist sorrow. She is grateful in affliction. She is soft spoken. She is kind. She is generous. She has a quiet and gentle spirit. She is a wife of noble character. She is a mother fervent in prayer. She is a lover of our Heavenly Father.

I watched her stand lovingly, with a servants heart full of compassion, by her husbands side as the C-plague was stealing his precious life away. For six long, heartbreaking months she was his wife, his love, his nurse, his prayer warrior. His wish was to pass away in the comfort and love of his own home with his own people and at great sacrifice to herself, my friend made this happen.

They lived in cramped quarters as they shared their adults children’s condo on their summer furlow from their home in Hawaii. Having no idea this small home would become a hospice with a hospital bed in the middle of the tiny living room, as summer melted into fall which finally froze into winter.

Just one more Thanksgiving she prayed. Just one more Christmas she prayed. Just one more birthday she prayed. Please not during the family wedding. But he did not make it to the one more anniversary and one more Valentine’s Day she prayed for. And now she is bravely facing a scary new world without her best friend, lover, husband, father to her children and friend to all whose lives he entered.

But she is most definitely not alone. Even if she didn’t have her precious children and grandchildren and loyal friends, she has a God that promised to never leave or forsake her. This is not a promise of no grief or sorrow or pain or suffering but it IS a promise of enduring comfort to get her through the darkest nights.

She has known great loss in this life as a car accident claimed her only mother and only sister over twelve years ago. She always asked me, it’s all about my response right? My children are watching for my response to all this. Will I let my sovereign Lord comfort me and grow my faith or will I crumble into a heaping mess? She chose the former. And I know she will this time too.

She may not appear to be strong tomorrow, or next week, or next month or even next year but underneath the sorrow and the loneliness will be a woman of great faith and strength, confidently forging a new path because she doesn’t have any other choice now. And I will endeavour to be there by her side, to hold her up and to learn from her example because she is my huckleberry friend.