Love Your Guts Out: I Lost My Wife but Not My Inspiration

By Rick Shrout

Can you imagine what it feels like to watch your spouse die? Have you ever wondered how you would handle the loss of your husband, wife, or child? Love Your Guts Out chronicles the experiences of the author as he watched his wife (Toni) die from breast cancer. Inspired by her example in life and death, the author describes how his journey of grief led him into the depths of his soul. It was a journey that brought him to a place of desperation to find meaning in life after his wife lost hers.

The soul-searching questions he presents in this book brought him face to face with a reality that can only be encountered on the inside of the human soul. Before tragedy strikes, the author encourages the reader to travel this inner road where we find an unlimited resource. He writes that human beings are intrinsically designed for love and explains that the path to experiencing an abundant life requires losing your life—to “love your guts out.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973671244

Rick Shrout

Rick Shrout was born in Marion, Indiana (1958) and grew up in Portland, Oregon from the age of seven. His work experience includes ministry in Native American communities, as well as serving as an interim pastor, cell group ministry, church planter, house church networker, public educator, and fly fishing guide. Rick’s first book, Street Crossers: Conversations with Simple Church Planters and Stories of Those Who Send Them, was published in 2011. He holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from George Fox University. He presently “lives on the road” and serves as an itinerant minister and writer. For leisure, Rick enjoys fly fishing, camping, and hiking. Learn more at rickshrout.com.

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Part 1

Beginnings

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A Road over Thirty Years Ago

I ’m an Oregonian. Though I was born a Hoosier with basketball DNA laced through every cell of my body, I regard myself as a native of the Beaver State. My family moved to Portland, Oregon in the winter of 1965 because my father accepted a position at Warner Pacific College. We celebrated Christmas and New Year on the road in the homes of California relatives. The Rose City was our final destination, and we landed there the first week of January, 1966. Oregon is my home state.

After moving to Oregon, my parents lived in four different houses. Their third home was on Eastwood Avenue in Gresham, an east county burb in the Portland metropolitan area. It was from the driveway of this house where I watched in awe and disbelief as the top of Mount St. Helens, 50 miles to the north from where I stood, disintegrated into ash and rose 80,000 feet into the atmosphere. Yet an even greater spectacle waited for me at the bottom of the hill—it was a road.

The road is Powell Boulevard. Okay, what’s so awesome about a road named Powell Boulevard, you ask? Head east on this road and it turns into Highway 26. So what? Continue eastward, and Highway 26 meanders through the entire width of the states of Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming. And then? This highway passes through Scottsbluff, Nebraska—nearly 1,200 miles from our house in Gresham. Four months after Toni died, I drove her red VW Beetle on this same path.

In August 2012, I stood atop Scotts Bluff. It’s the geological formation that bears the last name of Hiram Scott, a fur trapper who died alone at the base of this bluff in 1828. I could see the cities of Scottsbluff and Gering stretched out below me. One and a half centuries before, wagon trains traveled through a gap in the bluff on their way to a new and promising land called Oregon. The infamous Oregon Trail passed through this exact location.

As I gazed out over Scottsbluff and its inhabitants, I realized I had traveled my personal Oregon Trail in reverse. A more applicable name for me is the Nebraska Trail. I looked toward the western horizon from the summit of Scotts Bluff. Twenty-nine years earlier, I’d followed the Nebraska Trail—Highway 26. It had led me from Oregon to a place I wasn’t sure I preferred to be. But in doing so, my trail intersected with another trail. My life crossed paths with another life—Toni’s life. I found my new home—it wasn’t in another state, but in another.

Had moving to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and crossing paths with Toni been a random event? Was it mere chance, luck, or happenstance? While standing on the top of the bluff, the thought that our relationship had been random or accidental was absurd. It felt meaningless to think what Toni and I had shared was mere happenstance. Mere happenstance? Oh, it happened all right! I’m taking a stance on the belief it wasn’t mere, and it wasn’t chance.

My reason for being in Scottsbluff was to travel on a sentimental journey of sorts, visiting the places and burgs where we had lived and served together. I couldn’t get the idea of making such a trip out of my mind, a journey where I could reflect on and appreciate the life she and I had shared. I wondered if such a trip was a symptom of poor mental health. Was it my wish to return and relive past experiences? Was I hoping to find Toni—to see her again somewhere? Despite those concerns, I wanted to discover if any life markers we left behind were still standing and had any lasting effect. The trip pierced me deeply. It was both bittersweet and transformational.

Is life random, a mere accident? This question raced through my mind 800 feet above the North Platte River flowing below, where it divides Scottsbluff from Gering into two separate yet related towns. I suppose those who view life from a materialist’s perspective accept randomness as a given. It’s just the way. There’s no underlying meaning, no reason for our existence, no grand narrative of which we are a part. There’s no room to entertain the course and details of our lives as being preordained or holding any greater meaning and purpose beyond happenstance and randomness. This might be the view you hold. That’s just fine. You’re not alone in holding to such a view. Regardless, there’s room for you at my dinner table, and I’d look forward to learning more of your story. But until we can sit at a table and share a meal, consider the following question: Doesn’t randomness threaten to take the joy, beauty, and mystery out of life? What is life without these three powerful human experiences?

I’m not trying to convince you to change your mind. It’s a question to ponder, no matter who you are or what your worldview might be. More to the point, such questioning is part of my story. Philosophers have suggested that to be human is to embrace randomness with reckless abandonment. Take the existential plunge into your personal ambiguity, and be as courageous as you can. Embrace your meaninglessness, and take control over your estrangement from the universe. In other words, you’re on your own to make sense of it. Good luck.

When I dig deep and excavate the recesses of my innermost being, I find something more than randomness. When I still myself and plummet the depths of my soul, I hear a distant echo. I sense an ancient river flowing through the middle of my heart. It’s a refreshing breeze wafting over and swaying the timbers of my mind, sweeping away the threat of meaninglessness. I experience an inner calm that transcends my intellectual wherewithal. As Paul wrote in Phillippians 4:7, it’s a peace that surpasses understanding.

In finding peace in life, there’s no peace anywhere if there’s no peace in your home. So I ask you, where is your home, and is there peace within it? In the Gospel of John, two disciples of John the Baptist saw Jesus approaching and asked, ‘Rabbi, where do you live?’ … Jesus replied, ‘Come and see!’ John 1:38–39 (Contemporary English Version).

No doubt you’re familiar with the saying Home is where the heart is. I’m discovering this to be so true. Over the years of our marriage, Toni and I lived in eight different houses. I felt at home every time because we truly find home within the heart, and my heart was with Toni. When I wandered the panhandle of Nebraska in 1985, I discovered my new home in another person. As a result, every dwelling we shared was an abode of the heart, a true home where peace covered its frame with secure, solid walls and a sturdy roof.

Our eighth and final house was the only one we purchased. The others were rentals, and one was a parsonage. But our last house was special for Toni. It was in the small town of Lyons, Oregon, thirty miles east of the state capital up the Santiam River canyon. Her respite is what she called this house. Toni wasn’t keen on weekend trips and sleeping in motel beds where thousands of people had slept. She’d preferred to stay home. It was her retreat—her house—her place of peace. She needed and deserved such a place.

First, during the six years we lived in that house, she committed to her work and reached her peak as an excellent elementary school teacher. You readers who are teachers at the elementary level, you are so underpaid and underappreciated for what you do for our children and society. You know what I’m talking about, the need for a safe and peaceful place where you can retreat. Second, it was less than one year after moving to our house in Lyons that Toni got diagnosed with recurring breast cancer. The biggest challenge of her life followed us to Lyons and barged through the front door, attempting to rob Toni of her peace, and mine, too. I’ll never forget the way she fought with this thief in the night. Never.

It was a five-year battle. Toni never gave up, and she never lost her peace. This thief never had a chance. It had no clue of the fight that this gal from Nebraska could muster! But you might think the obvious, that cancer won the battle, that the thief of breast cancer destroyed and stole her body. I agree, but it took only her physical body. The thief couldn’t lay a hand on the peace that was in her soul.

Let me recount the last day of Toni’s life, from my perspective. April 8 fell on Easter Sunday that year—the day of Toni’s homecoming. The next time April 8 lands on Easter will be the year 2091. Based on my view of the Universe, Toni and I will be together again long before that day arrives on the calendar. Each year around Easter, two special days during which I remember the hope and promise of resurrection life are April 8 and Easter Sunday. Easter has always been at the top of my list of Christian holidays. It’s even more special now.

The evening before Easter, my sister-in-law, Jeanni, and I discussed the latest happenings in our families late into the night. She had arrived in town that week to be with Toni and was staying at our house. I remember her saying she wasn’t leaving until it was over, either when Toni passes on or rises out of her bed! As the evening progressed, I realized it was a few minutes before midnight. Easter was close. Several friends and family members had made similar comments in the days prior. Since it appeared Toni was in her last days of life, it might be special for her to go home on Easter Sunday. As the hour approached midnight, that idea raced through my mind. I thought, When I walk into the bedroom, will Toni be dead? Expecting to find her lifeless when I entered the room, I leaned over her emaciated body and placed my cheek near her lips. Breath—but barely. She was still alive.

I rested next to Toni in case she needed something, and to see if she was still breathing—just as I had done during the four weeks leading up to this moment. But that night was different. Over the preceding weeks, I had become tired and sleep-deprived from caring for Toni. (I’m not complaining, just stating how things were.) But that night differed from the preceding evenings during Toni’s hospice phase. I finally found rest and peace—it had been weeks since I’d felt this