This (Life) Too Shall Pass

There were some days, years ago, when I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I had several children underfoot, some not neurotypical, and there were days when I didn’t handle the stress very well. I cried out to God for help, but it so often seemed like he wasn’t listening. I wondered sometimes how I was going to make it through.

And then my mother-in-law would come over for a visit and in her calm, gentle, non-judgmental way, she would say to me, “This too shall pass.”

It wasn’t a Bible verse. It wasn’t even focused on heavenly things or on God’s plan for my life. It was simply her wisdom from a lifetime that had started 28 years before mine. A lifetime of joys, yes, but also sorrows, disappointments, and suffering. And oh, how that simple sentence helped me, over and over, through the hard times of parenting. It gave me hope, it pointed me toward the future, and it bonded me to her in a loving and empathetic way.

I learned quickly when I married into my husband’s family 31 years ago that his mom was something special. From the very beginning, she treated me like I was her own—there were no awkward moments with her that I can remember. She told me often that I was the perfect wife for her son, which was incredibly validating for me. As the years went by, she taught me so much … first about how to be a mom, and then later, about how to be a mother-in-law and grandmother.

She loved me just as I was, despite all my quirks and all my flaws. (I’m not always easy to love—or so I was told in childhood—so that says a lot.) She taught me how to love others in this same way.

And now she is gone from this earth. It doesn’t even seem possible.

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As we watched Mom decline rapidly and sometimes painfully over the last several weeks of her life, my husband, Rick, and I talked about the purpose of suffering. I didn’t research the theological explanations for it. I couldn’t remember, in my grief, what Elisabeth Elliot, C. S. Lewis, or Tim Challies have said about it (even though they have influenced me and I’m sure that’s all in the back of my mind somewhere). I didn’t look up “suffering” in a Bible concordance or call my pastor or the hospice chaplain about it, though I knew I could have. Rick and I were in the trenches, watching Mom suffer and watching every member of the family suffer in their own different, individual ways, and we told each other this: Suffering has but one purpose, and that is to bring us closer to God.

And oh, how we saw this over and over during those final weeks. How many prayers, how many tears, how many moments fraught with intense emotion! How many times we said to each other, “God is with us in this” and “Thank God for orchestrating that” and “See God’s perfect timing!” Our suffering brought us closer to God.

Over the years, my mother-in-law told me many times how she prayed faithfully for every member of our family. I never actually heard her do this, but I know that she did. Then, in her last few weeks, bed-bound and trapped in a body that didn’t work in any of the ways she needed it to, we heard her pray out loud, thanking God for his faithfulness and calling him magnificent, over and over. It’s something I will never forget. Her suffering brought her closer to God.

“This too shall pass” isn’t a Bible verse, but this similar thought is: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Suffering, from an eternal, heavenly perspective, is for the Christian a “light momentary affliction.” It doesn’t feel that way in the moment. But from God’s perspective, which will one day be ours, it is.

Just as my very challenging years of early parenting have indeed passed (as my mother-in-law promised they would), our sufferings on earth, whatever they may be, will also pass. Even in our grief, we can rejoice that our loved ones who know Jesus will meet him in heaven, and that we will one day join them there.

Thank you, God, for this dear woman whose legacy of love and laughter lives on in our ever-expanding family. How we look forward to the day of heavenly reunion with her, to see her face light up at the sight of her loved ones once more.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” (Revelation 21:4–5a)

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