“Empty chairs at empty tables…”
“We don’t die Christianly on purpose. We have to practice dying. He set his face toward Calvary. It was deliberate. I can set my face toward Calvary. I put one foot in front of the other. It’s the hardest thing in the world.” These were the words of my graduate assistant of four and a half years, Jessica Martin. She shared them during our last meeting together over Christmas break at her parents’ home in South Carolina. She died on February 21st from a brain tumor after enduring her road to Calvary. She died Christianly.
She also lived Christianly. She loved God and others deeply, served her church, and undertook her Ph.D. student vocation with vigor. Jess served faithfully as my graduate assistant in the midst of fighting a brain tumor. She wrote a bit about her journey on this blog here. For those of you who have contributed posts during that time, Jess read, edited, and posted them. In addition to helping edit the blog, Jess wrote for it a couple of times.
This past year, she was living near her parents in South Carolina. Having been through health issues within my family, I know you do not want people always asking about how you’re doing. It gets exhausting. So, Jess and I had a practice of connecting at the beginning and end of each semester to talk about her health. Then, this past December, during our usual health meeting, I knew she was near the end.
On the worldly level, I have often screamed in my head regarding Jess’s journey, “Life is not fair.” Jess was young, smart, witty, strong, capable, and most of all, a faithful and loving follower of Christ. Instead of fighting a brain tumor, she was supposed to be finishing her dissertation, which would have been fantastic, spending time mentoring young women (she was fantastic at that), falling in love, raising a family, and making a difference for Christ in the world as she grew old. That some of those things won’t happen seems unfair. Your graduate students are not supposed to die before you do.
Yet, in this fallen world, life does not happen as it is supposed to. But Jess still made sure the other most important parts happened. Jess showed everyone not only how to live well but also how to die well. She told me during our last conversation what she told the young eleventh-grade girls she mentored until the end: “I know I look like everything that scares you. A single woman without children who also never completed some of her dreams (the Ph.D.) and launched a career. Yet, I want to tell you that I have lived the good life. Walking with the Lord, even through the valley of death, is better than all of those things.” Indeed, she lived the Good Life.
She spent the last few months, just as she had lived her life, loving God and loving other people. Even in the last weeks before her death, she was ordering donuts for friends on Valentine’s and dinner for her parents. She talked to her pastor about caring for her parents after she was gone. She met with friends who came to make their last visits and inspired all of us with her wisdom, strength, wit, and fortitude. She shared how she walked with the Lord through the valley of death.
Jess’s mother reminded me of this Scripture when we spoke about her going to be with the Lord. The glorious news is that we do not simply mourn an empty chair at an empty table:
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. I Thessalonians 4:13-18
P.S. Baylor University will be awarding Jess her Ph.D. posthumously this May.
