Not my will but Thine be done

This is a true story written by my late grandmother, Margaret Chamberlin, and preserved for posterity by my mother, Karen Deane. I am sharing today – Good Friday – as it reflects a message of hope amid tragedy.

I don’t recall the preacher’s name, the title of his sermon, nor anything else about that Sunday morning service. I remember only one question asked by a visiting speaker at our Good News Center in Secunderabad: “Would you be willing to give back one of your children to God if He should ask it of you?” My instantaneous reaction was an explosive “No!”  I argued with God, as though He himself had posed the question. “But Lord, I know You wouldn’t ask that of me. You’re a God of love. You know a mother’s heart. You know I could never say ‘yes’ to a question like that.”

“But I gave you that child in the first place…”

“Ask anything else of me, but not that, Lord. Please not that.”

“Would you be willing?”

The argument ended as I yielded my children into the hands of the One who had made them and who, even before they were born, had planned each day of their lives.

“Lord, I can’t bear to think of such a possibility. I can’t even say the words, ‘I am willing.’ But I can take this will of mine and give it to You. As You prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, I can pray, ‘Not my will but Thine be done.’”

After three terms (20 years) of sharing our faith with the people of India, we returned to Romeo, Michigan on furlough in 1968. In the fall, Kathy entered her second year at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina and Karen her freshman year at Wheaton College in Illinois. Joanne was a junior at Romeo High School, Judy a sixth grader and Sharon began kindergarten. When our college girls returned home the next June, our little house on Pleasant Street bulged at the seams. But it was a happy bulging. Our circle of seven was complete, and God with us made eight.

Then one day, like a tornado suddenly boiling up in a sky of blue, tragedy struck! Without warning, we had no time to prepare ourselves, to fortify our minds against the blow. And yet, in a way, God had been preparing us all our lives for that day. Through many and varied experiences, He had been teaching us to trust in Him. Now it was time for that faith to be tested, for an untested faith is no faith at all. Testing proves its reality.

Saturday, the 14^th of June 1969 began like any other summer day. We had family prayers together after breakfast and made plans for the day. Kathy headed in one direction with Chuck to get a new prescription for her glasses. Joanne set out for a shopping mall near Detroit with two of her peers from our church to choose gifts for the youth director and his wife. She was especially excited because her friend John had asked her to go with him, and at the moment, John was the most important person in her life. Saturday chores had organized the hours of the morning for Karen and me. There were always plenty of them in a household of seven. The two little girls, Judy and Sharon, were already engrossed in their favourite Saturday sport. Like two connoisseurs of wine opening a seasoned beverage, on Saturdays they brought out and savoured the conflicts that had been brewing all week!

But before noon, the humdrum routine of our lives was shattered. One ring of the telephone and our world exploded. The call came from a hospital on 13 Mile Road and Van Dyke.  John’s little Volkswagen Beetle and a big Oldsmobile had collided at a red light. Joanne’s friends had only minor injuries. Joanne, in the front passenger seat (without seat belts in those days) was hurled forward into the windshield, her jugular vein was severed by the sharp glass and she was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.

We were stunned by the crushing news. Joanne, our beautiful, our beloved! Only two hours before she had danced out of our home, excited with life and full of energy.  Now she was gone forever – in a moment of time!

All the pain of a lifetime rolled into one pain was like a grain of sand in comparison with the mountain of agony that fell on us that day.

We had never realized before how fragile life is, how irrevocable is death. No wishing or longing could bring Joanne back to us. We would never see her again or hear her voice. We could teach her nothing more about God than we had taught her. We could do nothing more to prepare her for heaven. Was it enough – what we had given her in the 15 years we had been responsible for her? I dug out the letter she had written us from Kodai School two years before and read again her words: “I want to commit my life to God from this day on and live to please Him.” Yes, thank God, Joanne knew and loved Him. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, had cleansed her from all sin. (I John 1:7). She was with Him. We held tightly to that one comfort, the promise of His Word.

A trial of faith results either in bitterness and a turning away from God or in a faith tempered like steel in the fires of testing. Our faith was made stronger through this experience as we proved the truth of His promise, “The eternal God is thy Refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27). Through all those sad and pain-filled days He held us with those mighty arms. If there was any battle, it had already been fought when I prayed that prayer of submission for my children, “Not my will but Thine be done.” On this side of eternity, we will never understand why it had to happen, but there is a quietness and confidence in trusting a God who makes no mistakes. Our friends and relatives were sure we were taking tranquilizers throughout this ordeal, but our ‘tranquilizer’ was “the peace of God which passes all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7)

Before Kathy and Karen went back to college in the fall, we drove out to the cemetery to plant tulip bulbs on Joanne’s grave in the shape of a cross. It was an act of faith. As the bulbs would die and burst into life in the springtime with lovely new colours and forms, so we believed God’s promise that Joanne would rise again one day with a perfect, new body God would give her. Then we would be together forever with the Lord.

All of us knelt together around the grave, digging and planting, talking and remembering our Joanne. There were tears, but there were smiles too. Suddenly Kathy looked up, inspiration lighting her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be neat if this was Resurrection Day?” she said.  “While we were all working here, the ground would suddenly break open and Joanne would come out of the grave. Can’t you just hear her say, ‘Hi you guys!’ as she sailed past us? Then we’d go up too!”

We all laughed with the sheer joy of the Christian’s secret. There is a pain that will stay with us all our lives. But hope is wrapped around the pain, like the wrappings around a gift. We know we’ll see Joanne again.

We put our hands into the hand of our Friend with the comforting assurance that He who had led us through the dark valley of the shadow of death would never leave us nor forsake us. And if I had walked that road and come again into the light, was there anything left to fear?