A story of Grief

I watched the sun rise from my sister’s hospital room that Easter morning. I was weary. I was exhausted. I was limping. Not a literal limp, but a spiritual and emotional limp. Each and every step forward was filled with excruciating pain. 

But I received my blessing.

Marla wrote the word on a neon green poster board with black sharpie. “Hope.”

My sister had been named after three of our great aunts, and the name Hope seemed to fit everything about her. My mom was never supposed to have children, and she knew, even as a teenager,  she wanted to adopt. So as a teen, she began praying for the future children she would have through adoption. It was a miracle when she got pregnant with me, and another miracle when she had my brother, KJ. But the miracle that completed our little family came four years after KJ was born when we adopted my sister. She came from a mama who loved her so deeply she knew she needed to let another family raise her as their very own. And on April 22, 2002, Kristel was born into two families.

Hope. 

I had prayed for a brother. Then I prayed for my sister, and the Lord heard the prayers of a little girl and gave me both. I’ve known for my entire life He is a hearing God because of this.

It was for this reason, that on the night I found out she had attempted suicide, I circled the island in my kitchen and repeated again and again, “I prayed for her! God! I prayed for her!” I wanted to run out the door and punch the trees in my yard just to let out the pain welling up within me. I was so angry. Not at her. Not at God. I think I was angry at the brokenness in the world. Angry at the enemy; angry he temporarily gets to think  he wins. But I didn’t run. I didn’t punch anything. I just circled that island and whispered to God, “I prayed for her!” 

I circled in prayer again a few days later, this time with my parents as Krissie laid in her hospital bed on life support. This night was crucial, and as I had prayed earlier in the day, I knew I had heard from the Lord. Discontent with what He told me, I decided I was going to do what Jacob did with the Lord in Genesis 32. 

Remember that story? Jacob is about to meet his estranged brother, Esau for the first time in many years.  The last time they were around each other, Esau wanted to kill Jacob because he stole his father’s blessing. Jacob spent an entire night wrestling with God, and while he prevailed through the night, his hip was ripped out of place. When the sun finally rose, God told Jacob to let him go and Jacob refused until God gave him a blessing. While God gave him a blessing, Jacob had a limp for the rest of his life from the injury to his hip.

I was going to wrestle with God and I was not going to stop until He blessed me, no matter how badly I was hurt. I took off my shoes, because I knew I would be wrestling the Lord, and the ground I stood on was set apart. It was holy. The floor I stood on was different from the floor in the rest of the hospital. Then I decided I would not sit for the entire night. This wrestling would be done on my knees and on my feet because I would not rest until I was blessed. Unbeknownst to me, the next morning was significant because it held the first of two tests to determine if Krissie had any brain activity or even the ability to sustain life on her own.

All along I heard the Lord whisper, “Wrestle until daybreak.” And when the night fell, I began wrestling.

My parents and I circled her bed, passing the dozens of pictures we had put up on the walls around her bed and the bright green sign that read “Hope.”

We weren’t placing our hope in doctors or in medicine. Doctors had once told my mom she would never conceive children. We weren’t placing our hope in the things we could see. My parents once couldn’t see how they’d be able to afford the adoption fees for my sister. We were placing our hope in the only One who could give us hope. Jesus. Our living and breathing Hope. 

Sometimes, God answers our prayers the way we want and expect Him to. Sometimes, He doesn’t. When I was seven and praying for a baby sister, God didn’t give me that miracle by opening my mom’s womb– which didn’t even exist anymore thanks to a full hysterectomy– He gave it through a beautiful redemption story. 

God didn’t heal my sister on this side of heaven. We didn’t get to see the exact miracle we were praying for, but He gave us our miracle through a beautiful redemption story that happened nearly 2,000 years before. 

Hope. Living Hope. 

I watched the sun rise from my sister’s hospital room that Easter morning. I was weary. I was exhausted. I was limping. Not a literal limp, but a spiritual and emotional limp. Each and every step forward was filled with excruciating pain. 

But I received my blessing. My blessing was that intimate night with the Lord. My blessing was knowing that I had done every single thing I could possibly do to plead for her life, and my blessing was being able to put full trust in the Lord and His decision. My blessing is being able to look back at that night and remember the way I reverently and passionately wrestled with the Creator of the Universe and the Sustainer of life and came out of it knowing that He was going to walk alongside me through the following days, months, and years.

We know my sister chose to follow Jesus as a little girl. He called her. He chose her. He redeemed her. As our student pastor, Brad Daniel, said, she had a “renewed heart but a tormented mind.” She placed her trust in the living source of hope. 

For several years I wrote for a women’s Bible study and every three weeks we would change the theme or passage we were studying. The Lord always seemed to set up what I was writing about with what I was walking through even though we were given our writing assignments months in advance. When I began studying about and writing about Jesus being our living hope, I’d had that assignment for a very long time, but God knew exactly when I would need that truth fresh on my mind. As my world  began swirling from the chaos leading up to my separation and then divorce, I would ground myself by focusing on something in front of me and saying over and over, “Jesus is my Living Hope . He is right here, right now. He’s living. He is hope. All of my trust is in Him.” 

Even still, my world was blurry. 

Everything felt as if it compounded into one big clump of fear, anxiety, sorrow, and anger. 
Imagine all kinds of chewed bubblegum smooshed into one big ball and rolled around, leaving sticky on everything it touches. That was what my life felt like. Swirling colors of emotions, leaving my sticky everywhere. Or imagine the windshield of a car during a torrential downpour. Everything out of the windshield looks blurry and swirly until our wipers clear the glass when everything is clear again, but just for a moment. My world didn’t seem to be clear for even that moment. It just stayed blurry and even a bit foggy. 

I met with my pastor and his wife in the middle of this swirl and let everything I’d kept inside spill from my lips, laying my embarrassment, shame, and broken heart at their feet. I looked down at my toes waiting to hear it was too much for them, it was too blurry and they weren’t really sure what to do with me. I showed them my sticky, chewed-up gumball and put it in their hands waiting to see if the sugary-slobbery-gooey  mess was just too much for their hands to handle. 

But it wasn’t. 

Karen and Merle have a beautiful relationship I’ve been privileged to witness over the years, but only twice have they sat before me with genuine sorrow in their faces speaking words of life and encouragement. The first time was this time, when I handed them my nasty gumball wad of a life. Karen, a licensed therapist, and Merle, a pastor for many, many years, gave me practical next steps. Merle spoke and Karen nodded in agreement with him; then Karen spoke while Merle did the same. Together they told me that trying to undo this entire mess all at once wasn’t going to happen right now and I’d probably get incredibly overwhelmed trying to do so. They suggested we  focus on just one thing. To begin, we could pull off  one of those sticky pieces of gum with an action plan for the next few days. And guess what? When we pulled off one piece of gum, a few other pieces came with it, and I was able to separate those a little easier! At the recommendation of Karen, I called a therapist who specialized in trauma. I knew for the next few days, everything was going to be ok, and eventually, it would all be ok. 

Hope.

The second time they sat before me was in a tiny room in the hall of the PICU at Children’s Mercy in Kansas City the day after I had wrestled with God. The test that morning revealed my sister had most likely ran into the arms of Jesus already, but thanks to modern medicine, her heart was still beating and her lungs were still breathing, and we had a very hard decision to make. My family gathered together in this tiny room as Karen and Merle reminded us there were no wrong decisions here. KJ spoke up reminding us all that Krissie’s plan had been to be a paramedic. She cared about life. Krissie cried when the smallest creature suffered, and she found joy in the weeds and flowers that most people didn’t even notice. No life was unnoticed or unloved by Krissie and we had the opportunity to help many people by gifting them the organs that had given Krissie life.  This option meant her heart would continue to beat and her lungs would continue to breathe while the transplant team looked for the perfect recipients, even though her soul no longer  inhabited her body. More time in the hospital and a few more days of life support  just seemed daunting and hard, but we chose to do it. 

We didn’t get our miracle on this side of heaven, but we knew in just a few days, even hours as some people received a phone call, they would be getting theirs. And as it turned out, Krissie’s body was made for this. 

God, in His sovereignty, knowing before she was born that we would be sitting in this room, making this decision (even though this was never His will), gave Krissie an O- blood type, making it an option for her blood and organs to be received by anyone. 

Krissie, who was passionate about life and wanted to save lives as a career, and had even traveled the world on a medical mission trip, was able to save many in this final act of generosity. 

We continued to pray over her body the next few days, this time praying for her specific organs. We prayed for the people who would be receiving her heart, her kidneys, and her liver. We prayed for the people who would get to see for the first time thanks to her donated corneas. (Krissie literally had perfect eyesight. I can’t imagine waking up every morning and just being able to see clearly, but Krissie did.) We prayed for the people who needed her bone marrow and skin grafts. We thanked the Lord for Krissie, that we got to hold this earthly body of hers. 

I can’t just keep writing without telling you, that I am accessing a part of my heart I don’t access daily, or even weekly. I keep the little details of these hospital days and the days after in a room in my heart. Sometimes I pull out the key as if I’m going to open the door to that room, but then I tuck it back in my pocket because I know when I open that door, the grief will blow me away and sink me to my knees. When I write, I have to pull out the key and actually open the door, and this is gut-wrenching to write about. It takes me days. I have tears pouring down my cheeks constantly, and, remember, I’m just barely getting back into this crying thing, so it’s a lot for me. 

But this book is on grief, so I have to allow myself to feel that grief. Even if it knocks me over and leaves me breathless. And as the grief blows past me, I keep myself from blowing away from the grief by staying planted with hope. I may be crumpled on the floor, but there’s hope. Constant, steady, Hope . 

Hope that the grief won’t always hurt quite so much. 
Hope that I will get to see Krissie again because this earth is not our home. 
Hope that while her physical life is over, her story isn’t, and I get to talk about her always. 
Hope that is living and breathing because Jesus is living and breathing. 

Kristel Renee Hope Stahl. 

That’s her. 

When I say her name, I don’t imagine a hospital bed and a funeral. I don’t imagine our final days with her, although I can get there pretty easily. No, I imagine her great, big smile that lit up an entire room. I imagine her laugh and picture her little eye roll at me and my “mom fashion.” I imagine her soft hands and perfect pixie nose. I imagine her holding a tiny bird with a flower crown on her head, the wind softly blowing her hair. I imagine her spunky walk and the curls in her sandy-colored hair. 

I prayed as a little girl. The Lord heard and transformed those prayers, as if creating them out of the dust of the earth itself into the body of a baby. He breathed into that body and my prayers came to life. 

Hope. 

For the last two Christmases, the song “O Holy Night” has been a balm to my soul that cracked and ached during the holiday seasons. My first Christmas as a single mama I took my girls to the Christmas tree farm we always went to, and we cut down a tree together. I did it. As a single mama with three toddlers in tow, in the biting cold, I sawed the tree down and dragged it back to the area where they trim the lower branches and net the tree for you. Mind you, I chose a tree so tiny it could fit in the back of my Honda Pilot maybe 20 yards away, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, what matters is - I did it. Later I sat in my living room with this tiny Charlie Brown Christmas tree all lit up and leaning to the right repeating over and over, “The weary world rejoices.”

I was weary. I felt like the entire world was weary that Christmas. (I’d like to note that 2018 Christmas looks pretty mild compared to 2020 Christmas and the weariness in the world. Oh 2018 Kendra, you were so naive.)

The weary world rejoices. 

I captioned a Christmas Instagram post with this: 

Christmas hymns have been so powerful to me this season… each phrase I will meditate on for a while before moving onto the next. The one that has resonated within me so deeply this season: “A thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices.” Does that not speak to us right now? I mean, yes, it was totally fitting for when Jesus was actually born as weary Jewish families waited for the prophecies that spanned hundreds of years of a Savior to rescue them from the government. But Jesus didn’t come for a seat in government. No. He came and IS King. 
And friends, man our world is weary. From natural disasters to political parties that can’t seem to cooperate. From millions of people without access to clean water, to terrorist attacks happening globally. From mental illness to physical illness, broken homes to broken hearts… we are weary! 
But Jesus. “A THRILL”. 
That goosebump, shiver up my spine kind of thrill. That deep in the chest, high in the belly kind of excitement. That HOPE. 
Jesus is our HOPE! And because of that, this weary world… we get to rejoice. 
Rejoice! 
As my sweet pastor said this weekend… we don’t have to sit around and question, “What is this world coming to!” 
Oh no. 
We get to say: “Look Who is coming to the world!” 
A thrill of hope. 
The weary world rejoices.

I think that God, in His goodness, was preparing me for what was to come in four short months when I said “see you later” to my little sister. He was reminding me that though the world is weary, though it seems to be crumbling and everything is falling apart, hope is here and it isn’t going anywhere. Or, rather, He isn’t going anywhere. 

Hope.