There are so many possible beginnings, but we will pick the one that originally inspired my sister Brooke to start “His Grace Abounds.” Five years ago from the day I’m writing these words, cancer entered into our family. Much of the details of those years are seen here in the posts written by Brooke.
Then cancer was fought and seemingly beat, but came back with a vengeance. It moved, it grew, it tried hard to steal hope and joy. But as you will read it never succeeded, for the joy was fixed in something bigger.
Cancer wasn’t enough to steal hope and joy, so death entered in. Death stole Brooke’s earthly rock, her husband. So now physical suffering was intermingled with the despair of grief and the overwhelm of parenting and fighting alone. But even there, a little at a time, joy sprouted and a richer eternal hope emerged. Even as her body weakened, God was near.
And on February 2 of 2020, healing came as she was taken to be with her Heavenly Father and with her beloved Justin.
Parallel to this story was our story – the Fishers’. This is a story that was always interwoven with that of the Turners’ but with its own challenges and different breeds of suffering. This story gradually became indistinguishable from the one above until that day in February when the two stories became one. This story resides mainly on the pages of a dozen journals a few scattered word documents, a few facebooks posts, but mainly in our memories.
And now with a houseful of blessings (‘couslings’ as we call them), the story continues.
The moral of these stories is God’s faithfulness. The power that God and Only God has to redeem the ugly and make it beautiful. In some of our sister chats in Brooke’s final weeks, I asked her to talk some about her wishes. During that chat, I assured her that we would have lots of family experiences, we would love her children just as our own, and that I would continue writing, in hopes that people would know that even when her time on earth is finished, His grace STILL abounds.
