Peace Amidst Wreckage

“He will be our peace.” (Micah 5:5 NIV)

My big brother was admitted to the ICU on Saturday. I hadn’t even know he was sick until he was terribly sick; too run down to talk, even. We got a few garbled ‘I love you’s’ over a fuzzy phone line the next day in the last seconds before sedation and intubation. And then he went silent.

Somewhere in the devastation of this week, I came across this scripture. I think it was my advent reading; a life preserver in the sea of loss again. “He will be our peace.” My heart: a strange mix of sister-mother, has felt far from peaceful. I’m so glad Peace is a person that promises to ever extend Himself toward us.

It’s always alarming to me how when someone important passes away, the sun still rises, the coffee still brews, the the laws of physics hold steady and the world moves on even without our loved one in it. We have gone still in grief and shock but everything and everyone around us marches forward as though their life meant so very little in the grand scheme of things.

My big brother passed away yesterday. My older, braver, smarter, funnier and far more charming brother is no longer with us. He was my first accomplice but also my bully and tormentor. He’s literally known me my entire life; one of scarce few on the planet at this point.

It was a complicated relationship. I was his first sister, but also his snitch and the object of much of his torture and the punchline to a few of his jokes. We grew up and apart; plunging ahead into totally different objectives. He fought wars overseas and I raised little people. We had only just begun to deal with one another as adults when he was in that terrible fire that altered his physical frame forever. A few years later, he came to live with Rob and I full-time. In some ways I feel like we fostered him; a great hulk of a man reduced to a wheelchair and tremors, his brain injury from the flames leaving him with the impulse control of a much younger child.

In those latter years; Chris and I drove thousands of miles together. We faced the estate of my parents with perseverance . I pushed the papers and made the phone calls and he commiserated. Chris and I had countless discussions about heaven and hope. I brushed his teeth twice a day and took him to the dentist for the first time in ten years. He grinned wide at me when he told me had ten cavities. We got them taken care of and he told me how he refused to brush his teeth in ICU because it was the only choice he got to make each day. He talked. I cried. I talked. He listened. Mostly. We went to church and the doctor and Walmart and endlessly out to his shop with spare parts. We gave each other gifts and made each other laugh and we loved one another as best we could: two broken people with a whole lot of shared history and the gift of fresh grace.

Quite honestly; I’m wrecked. If my frame and heart were steel and glass it would be all wrapped around itself right now. Chris insisted in living at a level speed of risk that my seatbelt-wearing-self could never quite tolerate. Yesterday’s impact has made a mangle of our forty-some years together. I have questions, regrets, shock and so much sadness. I’ve been missing my brother for a long time and now he’s gone and I’m left to sort out the scene on the side of the road.

Last night I was praying again; it feels like I’ve spent my whole adult life praying for my big brother. Over and over I have wondered if I made any impression on his heart, or if our love and sacrifice for him had gone unnoticed because of his brain injury. Was I remembered, was I appreciated; was the surrender worth it? (I realize these are terrible questions; please forgive me, but one still asks them.) As I was crying out to the Lord in my grief, I began take stock of the tremendous impact Chris had made on me. Living with him, caring for him full-time afforded me a level of sanctification that I have known by no other means. I died to self daily while seeing to the most basic needs of my disabled brother. He caused me to lean on the Lord in ways I had previously thought impossible. In some measure, he brought out my best self, but most of the time he exposed my stubbornest stretch of flesh to the light of God’s Word. Chris made me crazy but he also moved the needle on my holiness in a profound way. I am a different person because of the years I spent caring for my big brother. I believe I’m a better person because of our time together, and for that, I will always be grateful.

I keep coming back to this text in Micah; it’s been on repeat in my soul for full days now. “He will be our peace.” When we have questions, when we have heartaches, when we have regrets and no more time on the clock, Jesus somehow enters our wreckage and whispers His peace into the tangle of emotions, ready and able to help us sort it all out.

May You know the peace of Christ this season, dear ones. <3

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27 NIV)