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When Jeremy was first diagnosed and we shared it publicly with everyone, his mentor from his teenage years reached out to him and shared something that Jeremy held on to throughout all of this. His mentor said that when his wife was going through cancer, she had said she didn’t want her pain to be wasted. This statement resonated with Jeremy and he told me on several occasions that that was what he wanted. He didn’t want his pain wasted.  And I think by many of you allowing me to share the pain and hurt but yet the hope and the light in all this allowed for that.

I spoke to a dear friend a couple days after Jeremy’s passing and she said that she had been shocked to hear that Jeremy was going home on hospice and that only a few short days later that he was gone. She said she knew it was bad but she didn’t realize how bad it was because of the hope that she read in my posts.  I found it interesting that she said that because of the words that God had given me through all this.

If you have read the Caring Bridge posts I share with everyone how God had given me two words, Trust and Watch. Trust was pretty simple to understand…practice? Not so much. There was a constant intentional reach for Trust throughout this.  It wasn’t until further into Jeremy’s illness that I understood Watch to mean Watch for the light in all this because that was where we, particularly me, would draw our strength.  However, I knew throughout this that there was one more word. But I didn’t know what that was. I thought maybe it was Endure but that didn’t feel settled in my spirit as to that being the word.

It wasn’t until the day before I signed Jeremy’s hospice papers that I knew what the final word was.  I had received a message from one of Jeremy’s sweet IR Wives (the nickname we used for all the beautiful women who took such incredible care of both of us during Jeremy’s frequent IR visits at the hospital) that she had come across Psalm 42 twice and she thought of us each time and encouraged us to read it.  I read it out loud to Jeremy and the third word that I felt was promised to me leapt off the page.  Hope.  

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
³ My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember
    as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
    under the protection of the Mighty One^[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
    among the festive throng.

⁵ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

⁶ My soul is downcast within me;
    therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
    the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.

⁸ By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.

⁹ I say to God my Rock,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
    oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
    as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
    “Where is your God?”

¹¹ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
    Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
    for I will yet praise him,
    my Savior and my God.

I realized while reading this why I wasn’t given the word Hope earlier. I know that Jeremy and I would have held onto that word thinking that it meant hope that he would be cancer free here on earth.  But the reality is that our hope really lay in God showing us his true love every day. Our HOPE was in the WATCHing to see his love every day and TRUSTing Him that it was there.

TRUST. WATCH. HOPE.