three funerals and a wedding.

If my current life were a movie, it would be titled much like Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Do you remember that one?  Hugh Grant and the movie in which the first dozen words are all curse words.  The movie in which there are four weddings and one funeral.  If it were my movie, it would be called Three Funerals and a Wedding.  By next Sunday at 4pm, all of those will have taken place. 

One funeral has already been.  A funeral for a four-day old baby.  I hate Marilyn, the admin assistant, for saying, “Your first one.  There will be more.” but I also know she’s right.  Seeing the baby in the tiny white casket, born months early and weighing under two pounds, was absolutely heartbreaking.  Absolutely.  I know the family has a long road ahead of them as the healing begins and my whole heart goes out to them.

The next day I was called to the hospital.  I walked into the room and this member, a member long knowing she would die soon, greeting me by saying, “I won’t be in church on Sunday.”  It was her sense of humor and if there is peace in any of it, it’s knowing that she was ready to die.  She’d said it many times.  She was ready and at 90 she had lived a great life.  They were making plans to put her on hospice and bring her home, but she died only a couple hours later.  She was ready.

The day after that I was called to the care center and sat with a couple as they watched their sister/sister-in-law struggle for breath.  This member, nearly 90, was the sweetest, tiniest little lady.  She died shortly after I left.

Thus my week is heavily loaded on the far end.  Funeral, wedding rehearsal [with three baptisms included], wedding, Sunday morning worship, a two-hour youth meeting, and funeral.  If you don’t hear from me, you know why.  But knowing how crazy and tired it will make me aside, it’s been quite the holy, emotional week.  I’ve been invited into places and spaces at the end of life.  I feel humbled that my call reaches those places and that I can comfort, pray, and deliver the news that death is not the end.  Holy places, indeed.