“A woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.  Give her of the fruit of her own hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates” (Proverbs 31:30-31).

(My wife Margaret collapsed around 11 am on Friday, January 23, 2015.  After six days and nights of intensive hospital care during which she was completely unresonsive, she took her last breath of earthly air on Thursday, January 29.  Her memorial service was held at our church on Monday, February 2.)

A longtime friend who saw on Facebook a photo of my wife of over half a century, said, “I don’t think Margaret ever knew how beautiful she was.”

I agree.  Margaret Henderson McKeever was a victim of perfectionism, her own–which rarely let her feel satisfied with anything she was or had done–and that of a few significant others in her upbringing.  I will not be dumping on them here; for the most part, they themselves were the victims of someone else’s poor child-rearing.  Margaret overcame signifcant obstacles to become a wonderful Christian woman, a terrific pastor’s wife, a loving mother, a college graduate “with honors,” and in short, “somebody.”

Nothing in these writings should give the impression she was perfect.  Margaret was an imperfect woman married to a flawed husband, but the redeemed child of a Savior who does all things well. “Christ receiveth sinful men, even me with all my sin…..”

“Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Okay, now.  Through my tears, which show no sign of abating, I give thanks….

1) I’m thankful her death was quick.

According to the ladies in the nail salon where she had driven herself that Friday morning for a pedicure, she took her seat, coughed a couple of times, and collapsed.  The EMTs arrived shortly afterwards and she spent the next six days and nights receiving all the crisis care Ochsner Foundation Hospital could muster, but at no point did she respond.  A medical doctor and longtime family friend said, “Joe, Margaret died in the nail salon.”  It would seem so.

2) I’m thankful she did not suffer.

We have friends who are battling crippling cancer and diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s.  We love them and grieve for them, and pray for them regularly. Margaret and I sometimes talked about the deteriorating effect of the arthritis and fibromyalgia she battled on a daily basis and wondered if and when the time would come for her to have to live where professionals could minister to her around the clock.

Now, there is none of that. And for that, I give thanks.

3) I’m grateful her seizure did not happy while she was driving.

She was seated in the chair at the nail salon.  People were there to help her, to call for assistance.  Five minutes earlier, she would have been driving on Jefferson Highway.  I shudder to think what might have happened both to her and to others had she passed out while driving.  So much to be thankful for, even in the timing.

4) Less than a month earlier, almost all the family had been here for Christmas.

Two of our four Springfield girls had arrived a few days prior to Christmas, and our North Carolina family spent the week with us following Christmas.  Margaret and I took two granddaughters to “high tea” in Covington (north of New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain), a fun thing for a grandma to do with her beloved girls. Grandpa went along, chauffeuring, helping, assisting.  Every one had long talks with grandma, a huge part of every trip home for the children and the grands.

In many cases, the grandchild would sprawl on her large bed and the two of them would chat for long periods of time. I have no idea what they were saying.  These children adored their grandmother.

5) For many months, Margaret and I had been spending an hour at the breakfast table every morning.

I would make a pot of her tea when I rose, and have a steaming cup ready when she dragged into the breakfast room.  (I found out in our newlywed days, she was a sleepyhead early while I awakened full of energy. That required some adjustment in schedules.)

She and I would talk about a thousand things, she would read the paper and we would discuss whatever she found of interest.  I would bring the laptop in and work on this blog.  Invariably she wanted to hear the article from yesterday or the one I was working on for today.  Her comments and suggestions–which I always sought and valued–were on target and priceless.  I became a much better writer when Margaret listened to the piece and gave her thoughts.

Did we pray together, someone wanted to know.  Yes, but in spontaneous, unplanned ways.  In the middle of a conversation, one of us would utter a prayer.

A constant reader, Margaret would have made some publishing house a great editor.

6) I’m thankful for nearly 53 years.  April 13, 2015 would be our 53rd anniversary.

This week, in the middle of another weepy time, I began going back over all our years together and listing the major events we had come through.  Only then did it occur to me that “53 years is a long time.”  At our wedding, had someone said we would have that long, we would have taken it and been pleased.

7) I’m thankful she had her sister with her.

Susan was born when my wife was 11 years old. Margaret would say she always felt like a second mother to her.  Susan was 8 when we married and flower girl in our wedding.  However, it was only some 15 years ago when these sisters had to intervene in their parents’ lives to help them sell their house and move across Birmingham to a safer neighborhood that they bonded forever.  That we lived in New Orleans, over 300 miles away, and Susan lived in Seattle, a full day’s airplane flight away, made this difficult, but they pulled it off with class, with extreme effort, and more than a few tears.  They were thereafter forever “joined at the hip,” as they say.

The sisters were on the phone often. Three years ago, Susan “instructed” me to go to Best Buy and sent details on which small computer to purchase so they could Skype.  Margaret, who had been resistant to smart phones and all things computerish, worked hard to learn and managed to accomplish this. When she was here before Christmas, oldest granddaughter Leah hand-printed 3 pages of instructions on how Grandma could check her email, Skype, etc., and taped them to the wall above Margaret’s laptop. (Margaret was forever forgetting her password and the steps to navigate for the various procedures.)

Susan and George arrived the day after Margaret’s collapse and were with us two weeks.  As the grieving husband–and a bowl of quivering jelly much of the time–I was helpless in decision-making, but my sister-and-brother-in-law were pure gold. I am eternally grateful.

Both Susan and George have been widowed, knew what I was experiencing and knew also the survival skills I would be needing.  Thursday night of this week, when I arrived from a late evening at our seminary, I took from the freezer and heated up a bowl of George’s homemade chicken noodle soup.  It was better than anything the best New Orleans restaurants have to offer.

8) My wife was solidly Christian.

As an 18-year-old, she “went forward” in church and told the pastor, “I did not know what I was doing when I made a profession of faith as a child.  I want to do it right this time.”

Her perfectionism never let her be satisfied with the Bible classes she taught over the years, the classes on “Experiencing God” she led, or the ways in which she ministered to people. I’ve told elsewhere how she helped found a shelter for battered women, and then when she received her college degree in Social Work, was hired to run it. She made such a difference in so many lives, but would have argued the point.

Wherever I go, friends from the past give testimonies of Margaret’s wonderful lessons. They quote her words to me. They pull out writings from their Bibles which they had copied from her.  In our last pastorate, she and I team-taught a mixed Sunday School class in our church sanctuary. We learned quickly not to prepare together so that the exchanges between us would be spontaneous and genuine.  People seemed to love our little disagreements, and we came to enjoy them ourselves.

When my wife prayed, pull up a chair. You might be here a while. She was talking to God and being brutally honest about it, and too bad if you were in a hurry or would have preferred she not mention “that particular thing.”  She believed in Jesus Christ.

When I preached out of town, she assured me she was praying for me and always liked a report when I got back in the car.  (Okay, the tears are flowing now. I will miss her prayers!)

9) While Margaret was in no way perfect, she left no “unpaid debts,” no grievances with anyone.

She was ready to go.  May I be so well-prepared with the Lord is ready to stamp my ticket.

10) She is forever out of pain.

Every day for the last ten years or more, Margaret dealt with fibromyalgia (pain all over the body), arthritis (pain in joints), and Crohn’s, a digestive disorder that will not let you leave the bathroom.  More and more she battled knee pain and stomach pains, even though tests–she was forever being tested–did not indicate anything severe enough for intervention.  She dealt with depression off and on throughout her adult life. (I was to learn that her family had a history of this. One uncle took his own life while depressed.)

Margaret walked with the help of a cane or a walker.  At the hospital therapy building, I would pull the car up to the door, walk inside and bring a wheelchair out to her.

She was embarrassed by her infirmities. “Don’t tell people what I’m going through,” she would say. “If they ask, just tell them ‘my wife has health issues.'”  So, when pastors invited me to travel to their city to preach and they said, “Will your wife be with you?” I would joke, “No. She’s heard me.”

No more pain. None.  “The former things are done away.”  A day or two after her death, Susan helped me gather all her medications into large ziploc bags. There must have been two gallons. We inserted wet paper towels and let the liquid neutralize all the medications before taking it all to the dumpster.  All of that is over forever. Praise God.

I’m grateful for every doctor, every nurse, every therapist, every technician, and every office worker at the clinics and hospitals. They were wonderful in ten thousand ways. But if I never see  you again this side of Heaven, you’ll hear no complaints from here.

11) I am grateful she went first, before me.  She could not have lived alone had the Lord taken me first.

God has granted me health in these sunset years.  Even though I went through a bout with cancer in 2004–and Margaret took good care of me–I’ve lived painfree ever since.  As difficult as the adjustment without her is going to be, had I been taken in death first, she could not have managed.  So, thank you, Lord.

12) The Lord gave me six years of retirement to learn about running the household.

Through all those years of marriage, I had never changed the air filters, never washed one load of clothes (“what do you mean, we have to clean out the lint from the dryer?”), never changed the vacuum cleaner bag, and probably had never run the vacuum at all.  While she never taught me to cook–some lessons did not “take” with me–I did learn the basics around the kitchen.

For the past ten years, all the cleaning in the house, I did it. I did all the shopping.  (She had never enjoyed shopping, not even for her own things.  More than once she said I should give thanks that she did not enjoy spending my money!)

13) I’m thankful that God is real, Jesus Christ is alive, His promises are good, and the best is yet to be.

Those who know the Lord never see each other for the last time.

My friend Jack is slowly dying of a vicious cancer.  I made a long drive last week to spend 30 minutes with him and his wife, precious loved ones of more than four decades.  I grieve for what they are enduring and are facing for the next few months.  But there is good news.

When Jack’s mother died, sometime in the late 1960s, it finally got through to him.  He would never see her again. She was a devout Christian lady and he lived to hunt. He had no time for God. Whatever wild animal was in season, Jack was out there trying to locate it and kill it.

Jack’s wife Marian invited a Godly deacon, Dr. Norris Vest, to call on Jack and tell him about Jesus.  That day, in his living room Jack gave his heart to Christ. Soon, they showed up in my little church, joined it, I baptized them both, and we have been the best of friends ever since.

Soon, Jack will be seeing his mother.  And how good is that! Not by works of righteousness Jack has done, but according to the mercies of God (Titus 3:5), he was saved. The same way as for the rest of us.

No one will be in Heaven by his own merit.  No one is good enough, has compiled enough good works, or deserves anything above hell.  As harsh as that sounds, it’s the unvarnished truth.

I will close this with something from Margaret’s journal, in her handwriting….

(January 6, 1998. After telling a few good things the Lord was doing in the life of our church, she wrote:)

You are confirming that You are at work in this in the life of FBC-Kenner and You are going to accomplish Your will here! Hallelujah!! Praise You! Love You! Adore You! Worship You! Follow You!

Yes, so much to be thankful for regarding her death. But a thousand times as much to give thanks for regarding her life, and the eternal life she is now experiencing in the presence of our Lord and His saints.

God is good.