Every Tuesday Anita and I help out at a recovery program that our church hosts. Anita is actually the secretary of the guy who runs it, so she’s very involved. I just teach a class (more like a guided conversation) with a handful of men. We serve dinner, worship a bit, and then break into small groups. Everybody is a former addict, alcoholic, prostitute, or has been abused, etc. The stories are just amazing.

Anyhow, every Tuesday I see Donna. Donna is about 55 years old and is doing chemo for stage 3 or 4 cancer. She uses a walker. Looking at her you just know she doesn’t have much longer. She’s not educated and had a very rough background, yet she comes to recovery because she loves hanging out with her friends, worshipping, and she still wants to grow spiritually.

I love going to recovery just to see her. When she sees me each week she pushes her walker on over to kiss and hug me. I say, “Hi Sweetie. How ya doing today?” like “I” can give her anything. SHE is the one dispensing encouragement and blessing to everybody. She’s always happy and positive, knows she’s going to die soon, but can’t contain her joy.

Last night she told me, “I’m not afraid of death, Tom. Simply not afraid, at all.” And I just knew she wasn’t speaking Christianese. She was really sharing a reality she had embraced and was living in. I just watched her during worship. So sincere. So in love and so full of life, all the while standing right on the edge of death. She’s starred right into the eyes of death and look right through it to what lies beyond. When I get bummed out about not being able to kill all the dandelions in my yard, or to afford to fix my gutters, or saddened by my struggles with employment, I just think about Donna and all my troubles disappear. No depth to her intellectual grasp of philosophical or theological concepts. She can't spell hypostasis. But she possesses the truth of the deepest theology in experience and sincereity of worship, trust, and oneness with God.

Tom