Ten years ago, on June 16, 1999, tragedy struck our family again. My fun-loving, faith-filled nephew, Jantsen, died suddenly at the age of 15. There was no warning. He went to lift weights with the football team, laid down to rest, and his heart failed him.
A while back I asked my brother, Randy Cope, to reflect on these years since the death of his son. I’ve only changed the time references from “seven years ago” to “ten years ago” — though it’s interesting that the whole Ghana story has happened since then, validating again what God has taught them through this suffering.
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Ten years ago today my life changed forever.
Actually I knew that it had changed the moment the doctor came out of the emergency room and told my wife and me that our 15-year-old son had passed from this life from what we later found out was an undetected heart problem.
I had enjoyed my life up to that point – a healthy family, a good job, and a bright future – but as I stood in the hallway of Freeman Hospital there was no doubt that things would never be the same. Before I left my son’s side that day I prepared myself for a life that resembled a scorched forest after a wild fire. The hillsides filled with lush trees and the valleys filled with wildflowers would now be smoldering ashes.
As the fog lifted so did the reality of what had been lost. Each new act brought new pain – the first trip to the store, the first Sunday at church – even the first time I decided to make oatmeal and had to figure out how to make it for one person, since he and I were the only breakfast eaters in the house.
And such was my life – for a season.
Yet one day, months later, I caught myself whistling. There wasn’t much life in the tune, but it surprised me just the same. As I look back on it now I see that moment as a sign of the renewal that was to follow.
From that first sprig of life has grown not a forest, but a park. I say park because my days are not only filled with life, but an increasing measure of purpose and meaning.
Don’t get me wrong; to call my life a park is not to say that there are no weeds. Our enemy is relentless and is not even above using my grief against me to pull me down from time to time.
Yet as I look back over these last few years I see many wonderful lessons:
• God is creative and lavish in the gifts He sends to bring comfort. He brought friends I hadn’t seen in years, books, music, nature, and even complete strangers to bring healing.
• God taught me not to fear life in the valley. The valley of suffering to me was a place to be avoided at all cost. Now I see that it is strangely a place of peace. God dwells with His suffering people in the valley – in green pastures and beside quiet waters. The Bible reads completely different now that I have this perspective of suffering.
• There is nothing more beautiful than a friend that comes running to help, even when the emotional fallout is intense. Friends like Todd, Warren, Tracy, James, and Cary, who all jumped in to save us – and a brother and sister-in-law who came to sit beside us in silence and later whispered lessons they had learned, having started this journey of grief with their own daughter five years earlier.
• With a treasure of mine now in Heaven I see life much different. It is like studying a Magic Eye drawing and suddenly seeing a beautiful scene in what you once thought was simply a meaningless mess of color.
• With Jantsen on the other bank, the water that separates this life from the next is a brook, not a ragging river – one I am anxious to step over once my work here is done.
I see the work of restoration most in the life of my wife. On that day ten years ago I prepared myself to care for her through the years. I knew she would never recover.
Yet she did.
After a season of intense suffering I watched as our Lord lifted her up – not to her old self but He transformed her into a daughter who has a passion for those that suffer. This new perspective on life has led her to start a ministry that dries the tears and brings smiles to the faces of orphaned children in countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, and Nicaragua. God also brought her – us – healing through our oldest daughter and our two young ones, whom we met when he led us to them half way around the world.
Some days the pain returns – not the intense “I can’t breath” pain that I remember from the early days, but a heaviness that I guess will be with me all the days of this life. Maybe, however, this heaviness is in some ways a blessing. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When a loved one dies, God comforts us enough to sustain us, but God leaves enough of the void and enough of the loneliness to help us to anticipate the reunion.”
And so it is, ten years later.
I can’t leave this reflection without thinking of a song by Stephen Curtis Chapman that helped inspire me to get up off the ground and “dive in” to what Got has in store for me:
The long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried here to where the river flows.
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That’s telling me it’s time to take the leap of faith…
So here I go I’m diving in, I’m going deep in over my head, I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head, I want to go
The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive
So sink or swim, I’m diving in
There is a supernatural power
In this mighty river’s flow
It can bring the dead to life
And it can fill an empty soul
And give a heart the only thing
Worth living and worth dying for.
But we will never know the awesome power
Of the grace of God
Until we let ourselves get swept away
Into this holy flood
So if you’ll take my hand
We’ll close our eyes and count to three
And take the leap of faith
Come on let’s go
…
Lord, I thank you for bringing peace to the valley – and for what awaits us all around the next turn.