I quit eating and started praying. For several days I fixed the family meals, then retreated to my bedroom to pray and read the Psalms. Starting with the first Psalm I made my way verse-by-verse through the book and David’s words became my own. When he prayed for strength and mercy I put Lori’s name in the verse and asked God to heal her completely. Every day I followed the same pattern: Read the Psalms and claim the promises for Lori and her family. 

On the third day of prayer and fasting I came to Psalm 116:15 “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” My heart froze and somehow I knew I had just read God’s answer to my prayers. 

“Precious.... is the death of His saints” That’s how I always read that verse and I hated it. I couldn’t see anything precious about death. The cold clutches of death left me with empty arms and a broken heart. It haunted me with sleepless nights and daily reminders of what I no longer had. There was nothing precious to me about the hurt and horror that death delivered.

One day I saw the words “…in the sight of the Lord…”, words that I had always skipped over when reading that verse. Then it hit me: That verse wasn’t about my perspective of death, it was about His. God can see the results of death on the eternal side. He sees no night, no pain and no more crying. God uses death to rescue a Christian from this life of trouble and take them to a wonderful place of beauty, where they will never suffer again.  

Lori did graduate, and has been in Heaven for sixteen years. My husband and my brother have joined her there and their days are endlessly lit with brilliant light glowing from God’s throne. They are living in a land where there is no more night.