Serving God

One April I found myself hospitalized with pneumonia, secondary to leukemia. The week had been difficult yet I clutched my Bible and continued to play my praise and worship music in my hospital room. The hospital cleaning lady entered my room and began her simple task of mopping my room. Nonchalantly she asked me why I was there and how I was doing. I told her that the doctors had diagnosed me with leukemia a few years earlier and I now had pneumonia. She stopped by my bed, her head dropping and her eyes filling with tears. She began to tell me that she had recently lost her own daughter to leukemia. My insides convulsed and for a moment I wondered why God had sent her to MY room. It was all too personal, too close to my own battle. I paused for a moment and whispered a prayer from the recesses of my mind and heart. I wondered why she couldn’t be telling me of a loss to a car accident, amputation, anything but leukemia.

She told me about her daughter’s death and battle with leukemia. I listened. She explained that she had been “saved and baptized” before her death. I rejoiced. Suddenly my spirit knew what I was to share on this sunny April day. I responded slowly. I asked her if she knew what it meant to be saved and I told her if she, too, would ask Jesus for forgiveness of her own sins and repent that one day she would be reunited with her daughter. This separation was for only a brief time on the calendar of eternity. I continued to tell her of Heaven’s promises and rewards for the believer, my eyes misting with tears. I described streets of gold and a place of no suffering or pain for her daughter. Her eyes brightened. I detailed my own hopes and expectations of the moment my eyes land upon the face of my Savior. Her face lightened. I told her about Jesus.

Her heart was touched and changed in a moment by a servant who herself was laying in a hospital bed replete with IV’s, monitors, and oxygen tubes, fighting the same disease that had ended her daughter’s life. The moment was sweet. In an instant I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had ordained that moment. That God had equipped me and given me the exact words and demeanor to share with this grieving mother. As she finished her ordinary, daily tasks that had brought her to my room, she commented on my music. We smiled in unity in the amazing, sweet presence of the Father in that room. She left.

As I lay in that bed, the tears came, chocking in the back of my throat. I had accomplished my God-breathed assignment that day. Yet, the release of emotions and heartache for that mother evoked heartfelt sobs for me. The faces of my own daughters flooded my mind as I thought of another mother’s loss. I reflected. In a moment, I knew there was one more assignment that the Lord had for me that day. I unhooked tubes and trekked to the hallway, CD in hand. I knew the joyful presence that came from music that praised Him would lift her spirits. The joy of the Lord would be her strength until she would one day meet on the other side with her daughter.

I looked up and down fluorescent-lit hallways and couldn’t find her. So I left the CD with a nurse and described the lady to whom it should be given. For several days after that, she would peek into my room and smile. She thanked me for her CD. I thanked God for that opportunity to be His hands and voice while lying in a hospital room.