Sometimes the parallels in a person’s life to the life of the Messiah strike a chord. In this case, it was a symphonic masterpiece punctuated by precise timing that only the Master can orchestrate…
My only sister Marsha was and is an awesome lady who was obviously loved beyond measure by her Creator. After all, she epitomized the role of selfless servant in her own strength for sixty years. She did not have the empowering benefit of the Holy Spirit to compel and propel her to good works until the very end of her physical life. But her final earthly demise was such a testimony of the Savior’s faithfulness that it is a real life story that could never be replicated in the studios of Hollywood. After all, have you ever seen a human production of a simultaneous glorious sunrise complimented by a harvest moon sunset over purple mountain majesty?
Of course, timing is everything and Marsha’s life and death were pot marked with events that memorialized their uniqueness and permanently cemented fond memories in her family and multitude of friends and acquaintances. From a Biblical perspective the timing of her departure was beyond impeccable. Because the feasts of the Lord (Leviticus 23) confirmed and forecast critical landmarks in the life, death, and return of the Messiah Yeshua, witnessing aspects of their duplication irrevocably indicates the Father’s fingerprints on their occurrence whether already fulfilled or yet to come.
Hence, when the eight day feast of tabernacles (booths or Sukkot) began this year on September 23 (15th of Tishri) with a high holy day (Sabbath) and the home going of Marsha’s soul and spirit, there was no doubt that she was indeed one of the many honored guests at the heavenly rehearsals for the ultimate wedding feast of the Lamb to His precious brides/saints at some yet future date. One can only imagine how the innumerable Believers since Adam and Eve were practicing and awaiting the culmination of world history. For this host of heavenly witnesses undoubtedly applauded how Marsha tricked the Devil at the culmination of her earthly sojourn. Somewhat like Yeshua fooling the Devil and the wicked earthly powers, who if they knew the results, would never have crucified Yeshua, pouring out His sanctifying blood to cover the transgressions and sin of those who believe in Him!!!
In August of 2009, through the remainder of the year, her husband, family, and close friends thought Marsha’s breast cancer was finally going to steal her of life. But Marsha was no ordinary person, because her lust and gusto for life ignited a fight for survival that extended her earthly days for just over a year. Somehow (in God’s timing) a spiritual seed was sown in her heart around December 2009 that some nine months after the gestation period, blossomed into a flower of spiritual life just weeks or maybe days before September 23, 2010. In many ways this reminds us that like Yeshua who was miraculously conceived around the winter solstice or Chanukkah (December 21-25 according to the Levitical records found in Luke’s gospel and the order of service of the priests particularly John’s father Zacharias (reference)), and physically born nine months later on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles (foreshadowing His second coming at some future Feast of Booths (wedding feast of the Lamb with the redeemed and/or resurrected Saints), Marsha in many regards spiritually followed the same pattern and did likewise.
The struggle with breast cancer that metastasized in her bones was legion. The ability for this horrific disease to literally wring out the life in a body like a tattered washcloth is difficult to witness. But this was Marsha’s journey and perhaps the only unique way that she would finally come to terms with the Savior Who for decades was knocking at the door of her heart (Revelation 3:20). For He so loved her because of her human efforts to give of her unconditionally that He knew that she needed some unique circumstances to bring her to faith in the Light of the world. And before the end, her faith was initiated because of not only the love of Yeshua, but the love of the other Saints who faithfully and consistently prayed for her healing. Of course, most prayers were directed at her physical healing, but those targeted on her spiritual healing finally hit the mark and brought forth eternal life!!!
Marsha always knew that there was a physical diet component to healing the body. The only problem was that her implementation of a plan to give the body the live food required to combat the cancer and heal itself came too late. She was too far gone. The ravages of breast cancer beginning in May 2001 and continuing with seemingly interminable ascites in 2008-2009, culminating in it metastasizing in her skeletal structure by the summer of 2010 was too much to overcome physically. But she battled on and on because she had a destiny with the Messiah and the company of witnesses this fall.
Please recognize that after the seventh Hebrew month of Tishri is inaugurated with the new moon celebration of the Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah also known as Rosh Hashanah) on the first of Tishri, there are the Ten Days of Awe leading up to the Day of Atonements (Yom Kippur) on the tenth of Tishri (see Leviticus 23). It was during this time that Marsha was finally filling her body with the raw food that she knew she needed to restore in order to revive and maintain her life.
So for three weeks, she participated fully in the raw food healing regimen at the CHI (Creative Health Institute) in Union City, Michigan. Lamentably, it was too late to turn the physical challenges around, but not the spiritual ones, because in this God honoring environment, she was surrounded by others fighting various diseases with a raw food diet. One person in particular named Faye, just happened to providentially be housed across the hall in the dorm like facility. Faye was plagued with a cancer that manifested itself on the crown of her head and both sides of her neck. It was not a pretty sight, but ugliness never bothered Marsha because she was a “spiritual” person innately looking beyond the visible. She always focused on the soul of those she encountered regardless of their backgrounds, ethnicity, and appearance or life circumstances. Faye had faith and in her trial to maintain life, she surrounded herself with Scriptures from the Bible that gave her comfort and hope beyond her difficult situation. Providentially, she shared many of these words of life to her new found friend and they eventually had their perfect work in the heart of Marsha.
In time, Marsha desperately clung to Matthew 7:7-8 and discovered that it spoke to her longing soul. After all, for all of Marsha’s adult life, and especially since the cancer battle commenced, she had been asking, seeking, and knocking on doors desperately attempting to discover just why she was plagued with this killer disease. As Marsha’s final written testimony attests, she did understand that good health was all about what you put in your mouth. While the cliché that “you are what you eat” might seem trite, it is absolutely true. So if you dominate your intake with food (or whatever) that is dead, how would you ever expect to gain life without giving the Creator some resources to restore the body (with its functions) to full health?
Contemporaneously to this discovery, the knocking on her heart was also being listened to with intensified attention that was heightened in those lonely still nights without any distractions as she labored in the CHI (Creative Health Institute). Witnessing others suffering had to be difficult for Marsha because she was ALWAYS a champion for the underdog. To see human suffering on the molecular level had to just tenderize her heart. People like Faye and James and Monica Eden (a black couple from Detroit, MI who survived breast cancer (Monica) and was battling diabetes (James)), touched Marsha’s heart. Their prayers for her and the words of life they whispered in her ears eventually made their way to the heart and transformed the heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Of course, the newborn babe in the Messiah was inarticulate when it came to telling others about what happened. After all, sixty years of misguided programming is difficult to overcome, but Marsha’s statements in the final days convinced me and others that a new peace was evident in her heart and demeanor.
Comments like, “it is all in God’s hands,” and “it’s a wonderful day, it’s a wonderful day!” (the day before she died) and “you are my four angels” as she looked on her mother, brother and two dear friends attending her needs, confirmed that she was different. In fact, the indescribable peace seemed to clear the air in her head so that she understood the fact that she was forgiven of her personal transgressions, and cleansed as white as snow, as are all new babies coming into the world from their mother’s womb.
But the disease raged on because her appointment with Yeshua was on schedule and she was NOT going to miss her date with the heavenly host. So on the evening when the Feast of Tabernacles began, she was surrounded by all of her loved ones and under the hospice care at home in her bed. All her familiar surroundings comforted her and gave her one last time to say good bye to those she cherished and raised to maturity.
The final evening as the sun set in the west, as only it can do over the Colorado Rockies, the loves of Marsha’s life encompassed her with love, tears, laughing and weeping. EVERYONE who needed some private time with Marsha had it. One on one as they each climbed into her bed, stroking her hair or anointing her hands or feet with lotion or oil. For my brother and I, we had the incredible experience of giving Marsha her last shower just like we had done decades ago when our mother put the three of us (four years age difference) in the tub to soak and wash and splash and play. I even had the awesome privilege of using her treasured goat’s milk soap to wash between her toes!!! But this was her last full cleansing, so I prepared anointing oil consisting of almond, coconut, and clove oils. The aromatic blend was used for the next 20 hours to prepare her body for a reunion with the Messiah. After all, it was soon going to be just a shell, a husk cast off as the new body, perfect and without cancer or defect was awaiting her soul and spirits arrival in the heavenly realm.
And there was a feast to attend and the seven day celebration commonly referred to as the “season of our joy” or Sukkot. Because the Day of Atonement was over (tenth of Tishri), and now from the 15th of Tishri to the 22nd a seven day harvest feast as going to take place. Providentially, after her death, the Memorial Celebration of her life at St. John’s Episcopal Church was going to be on Wednesday, September 29th, the last day of Tabernacles, ending at sundown with Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day or New Beginnings)and Simcha Torah another Sabbath rest that launches the beginning of a new cycle of Torah studies with Bereshit on the 2nd of October. Don’t you know she will be taking notes at the feet of the Messiah as He shares the nuances of the Torah and all that He wants to impart?
Providentially for me personally, my wife Margaret shows up in Boulder, Colorado for the memorial service with a brand new printed copy of TorahScope and our new TorahScope desk calendar. Oh, how I wish Marsha could have received a copy so she would finally be able to understand some of the things I do, but realistically, her Teacher certainly does not need my notes, because He is the Torah made flesh!!!
God is awesome!!! What more can I say! He is such a loving Father and He loves Marsha so much that when she finally arrived as a guest of honor at the Sukkot celebration, so much of what she struggled with was finally understood. She was and is in the presence of the Messiah surrounded by the Saints and not thinking too much about those she left behind.
She would only want those remaining to know what she now vividly knows. The love of the Messiah is so awesome and at times He likes to fool the enemy of our souls and use very unique individuals like Marsha to testify of His goodness!
She did and she will eternally. Do you car to join her? Well, if you do, she would highly recommend using the same verses that ultimately got her access to Him and across the finish line to heaven:
“Ask and you shall receive, Seek and you shall find, Knock and the door will open, For those that ask will receive, and those that seek will find, and those that Knock the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8
Because if you want to see Marsha again and bask in her radiant smile, then you too will need to come to terms with the reality that our Creator not only loves you, but He forgives you for ALL your sin. But you have to ask, seek, knock, confess, and repent so that you will begin to cling to Him, because He alone is life eternal.
Addendum:
I suppose I would be remiss if I did not tell you about the beautiful way that a saint goes to be with the Lord Almighty.
As stated earlier, it was the high holiday (Sabbath) of the Feast of Tabernacles. As the Lord would haveit, I had the blessed privilege of sleeping the last night with my sister attending to her needs. For the previous week, the others who had “Marsha duty” had little sleep as the fits and starts of attending to someone who is dying a slow death can definitely interrupt one’s sleep.
But the final night, Marsha slept like a baby and I slept like a rock. After going to bed around midnight, I awoke at 3:30am and went downstairs to make a cup of tea and finish reading a book that was nearing completion. I kept my ear to her bedroom and heard her stir around 4 am.
I went up to her room and she communicated that she was very uncomfortable so for the next 15 minutes or so I tried arranging the ten or so pillows in a few dozen ways to make her comfortable. Being unsuccessful after even putting her feet on my shoulders to take some weight off of her hips, she finally grunted some form of the word UP! After a few inaudible grunts, I her if she wanted to get up? Yes, of course she did, so I leaned over and grabbed her under the armpits in order to lift her 100 pounds or so limp body out of the bed. In my mind, I thought she had hit the nadir (bottomed out) and was ready to bounce back. All we had to do was to get her GI (gastrointestinal tract) tract jumpstarted.
But it was not meant to be. I pulled her naked body to my chest, and then I thought, now what do I do? I realized there was a chair next to me, so I turned her around, sat her down on the chair, stabilized her by grabbing her two shoulders and realized I needed some help to get her in a wheelchair.
So I called out to my brother Doug who was sleeping down the hall. After a few muted yells and louder whistles (not wanting to awaken the entire household), I finally yelled “DOUGLAS!!!” He comes running in the room like a linebacker ready to tackle a running back and says, “Mark, Mark, what do you need?” I said, “get me the wheel chair, Marsha wants to get up!”
Adjusting Marsha in the wheelchair, we gently put a white button down shirt on her and began anointing with the oil mixture. After anointing her feet, we collaboratively put two white socks on her feet. I happened to have my iphone, so I turned on the ipod feature and began to play some beautiful praise and worship background music by Chuck Girard (Voice of the Wind).
So with Marsha limping in the wheel chair and the music gently wooing us with some loving lyrics about worship in the morning light and worshipping the Savior and God in the morning, we three just sat there for about three songs just weeping with and rubbing oil on Marsha. I had Marsha’s right side holding her hand and trying desperately to feel her pulse. Doug was on the left side doing the same. There was a slight chill in the air, so I went downstairs to the divan and retrieved a beautiful deep red cashmere shawl big enough to drape around her shoulders for warmth. We covered her lap with some white towels and set about trying to comfort her and keep her from getting cold. But her hands started to get cold and I was soon unable to discern between her pulse and my pulse. By 5-5:15am, her faithful friend Alice awakens and comes in the room and suggests we get her fully dressed and propped back up in her bed. We agreed and laid her back on the bed, put on some white panties and some white gauzy lose fitting pants with a drawstring.
About this time as we were wrapping the red shawl on her shoulders and making her comfortable back on her bed, her husband John rushes in to find out what was happening. Surveying and recognizing the situation, he immediately goes to her side and on his knees he gently strokes her head while whispering in her left ear. On the right ear, Alice is sprawled out on the bed talking and stroking her shoulder and right hand. By now it is 5:30-5:45am, so while standing at the foot of the bed, the scene of my brother at my right hand, I all of a sudden felt this rush of ice cold air blasting against the back of my legs. Since I only had on some jogging shorts and a tee shirt, I was perplexed because the rush of wind only hit me in the legs around the thighs to the calves. But it was so cold on a previously still night, that I immediately turned to my brother and questioned him with, “Doug, who turned on the air conditioning? Doug, did you turn on the A/C????”
He looked at me with a puzzled blank stare and said, “huh, what are you talking about?”
I said, “can’t you feel that rush of cold air?”
I noticed the window was open and thought it may just be a cool breeze that came through the window, but there was no wind before and none after the blast came through. So I wondered….
Naturally, that led me to conclude that the angels present simply grabbed Marsha’s soul on command and ushered her into the heavens. The blast of cold air did not last more than 5-10 seconds and then it was silent. It really does not matter whether it was angels or just a unique blast of cold air. To me it was very spiritual because before the angels took over, my brother and I had the privilege of literally ushering Marsha into her wheelchair as she prepared for the liftoff!!!
She never uttered word after up, up, and yes!!! She was ready for her journey and she wanted to enter on her feet!!!
The harvest moon was setting on the western horizon as the light of the sunrise was appearing in the eastern sky. The clouds were filled with purple and orange and red as the purple mountains received the full moon and the amber sun began to cast light on the distant mountain tops. It was beautiful, unique, spectacular and what a way to enter the kingdom of God. Only the Creator could have orchestrated such a magnificent event. As the rigamortus set in, Alice could not get one of Marsha’s eyelids to cooperate. So with the left eye lid shut and the right eye lid wide open, she lay there with a big radiant smile and a knowing wink to let us all realize that she had snookered the Devil!!!
She cast off the husk and entered the heavenly realm and without a doubt, would never, ever want to return to that old shell that was spent and returned to dust. A new body in the heavenly realm is something she might not have looked forward to for many years, but it is something she received because after all the knocking, the door was finally opened and her entrance lit up the sky!!!
To God be ALL the Glory!!!
Amen and Amen
