Losing the Love of Your Life: How God Walks with Us

By Betty Yoes Richardson

"Daddy taught us how to die." -Darren Happiness and laughter surrounded him throughout his life, even as his path darkened with unrelenting cancer that slowly took his life; however, his story would not be of defeat for even sickness could not change who he was. Kind and loved beyond measure, he brought a steadiness to a world that wavers in doubt, stress, and whys. These pages will witness God's presence in good times and times of deep need and longing. They will speak to those that love, are loved, hope for love, and especially to those living loveless about the gambit of everyday joy, sorrow, and hope through his and his family's ordinary lives. After a shared lifelong love affair with this caring husband, their final journey together ended with this author in despair. Questions flowed, not from lack of faith; they flowed from the fragility of a broken heart. She soon discovered that the old saying is true: "You better watch what you ask for." Bombarding heaven's gate with, "God, why do you give us such deep love when one day we have to say goodbye?" and "Where does that love go?" and "God, where are you in our despair?" and "God, what are we to do?" and many other questions, the answers sometimes arrived gently and quietly, as well as in incredible, even overwhelming ways. The blessings of decades of love, the parting and crushing grief with endless seeking of healing, and especially revelations from our Lord have been told in these pages through the life of a husband, father, and grandfather named Terry, who lives forever with God and in many hearts. Terry found "the Way" to real life. Yes, he showed us how to die, but most importantly, he showed us how to live!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642142426

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Word No One Wants to Hear

Li’l Ole Mossybeaux lives in the deepest swamp Louisiana has to offer, at least that’s what we’re told. Some who are very brave have ventured into its darkness and say if he is spotted he’s known to stare motionless in a pose of disarray, appearing seriously strange until you run away! The legend of how he came to be goes like this: That wicked hurricane with the beautiful name of Katrina tore up the Louisiana swamp swirling gooey mud—that’s the kind of mud that stays between your toes and dries ’til it cracks—and murky water into thick-looking gumbo and when the winds left a silence, Ole Mossy was still rolling along the banks gathering stringy bits of moss and whatever came his way until he sat up, his bedraggled coat sticking out in all directions, slowly turning an odd shade of grayish green. What looks like lopsided boiled eggs serve as eyes that can follow your every move if he so chooses. A mottled mushroom for a nose and a sagging lip is bad enough, but there are those peculiar lichen ears and the lumpy toes that appear as an afterthought. While his body was still strewn along the bayou, Beaux Beaux’s (a nickname whispered among the very young) wispy bearded hair once hung in the oldest, wisest cypress tree in those parts. I wasn’t sure if I thought he would be funny or scary! The folklore continues: Centuries-old balding cypress trees, with their knotty knees pulled up and encircled tightly around them, hide him during the day amongst their drippy, mossy arms; however, the odd fellow could be peering at you and listening to see if your words are kind and your actions good toward your fellowman. So if you’re mean, watch out for Mossybeaux for his unkempt coat will curl and reek with indignation until you stop, and if you don’t, those lumpy toes turn into frogs that brashly croak until you do. Li’l Ole Mossybeaux is a strange fellow and his name is certainly a funny little word. Unfortunately, there is nothing funny about another word, the word no one wants to hear. That word is cancer.

About nine months before Terry passed away of cancer, our good friends had moved to Tennessee. I said our friends. You see, I still consider myself an our. This morning as I think of a funny swamp creature, I let myself remember a day I faced another dreaded word, one that unfortunately can follow in the wake of cancer; that word is widow. It has burned into my mind the first time I checked the widow box on an information form. For over forty-nine years, that was not the case—and not just forty-nine years but a very happy forty-nine years. Widow. In my mind, it cannot be. In my heart, it will never be. Everybody tells me it takes time. You will find in this book I have many questions. My questions presently are What does time have to do with it? Does time result in forgetting a spouse that you never want to forget? I have more questions than answers these days, but there is one thing I’m certain: God already has the answers and they can be found in His Word. I knew this long before I became a widow; however, never had I been as desperate to find answers as I did after checking that widow box.

A Mossybeaux may not speak, hear, see, feel or care about our needs, our requests, or our longings, but we have a God that does, and if we put our hurts in prayer to Him, then we’d better be ready for answers. The old adage You better watch what you ask for has tested me. It’s been five and a half years since God first started hearing my endless requests concerning my husband’s diagnosis of cancer. As I try to go back there, I do not want you to think I received all the answers I longed for. I do not want you to think that I knew what was best for my Terry, but I now know his Lord did. I do want you to know there have been answers to some of my questions that surprised me, and I have been challenged to accept that God speaks to us in His own way and in His own time. Some of His answers, although hard to understand at the emotion of the moment, are always the right answers for us. We discovered this as we leaned on Him and came to realize how much He loves us.

Cancer is one of the most terrifying words today. Anybody that has heard it come from their doctor’s mouth can surely understand the stunned way we continued on trying to breathe as we tried to figure a way to tell our children who had immediately come to mind. These are the children (no matter their age) that we had protected all our lives from whatever hurt we possibly could spare them. Terry and I have a daughter and two sons and five grandsons and a granddaughter, so we enjoyed lots and lots of love. We never had a lot of material possessions but owned an average-size house and, after working most of our lives, were living comfortably in retirement. It was always we. During these years usually where you saw one of us, very likely, you’d see the other. I think you get the picture. It was Terry and I, mostly content and happy.

There have been times in the last year I have asked this question: Is it better not to have a good and happy marriage than to have suffered so much through the parting? I have asked many stupid questions along the journey of losing my soul mate. Death was not a stranger to me. I was by the side of both my mother, who died of heart failure and a stroke, and my daddy, who died of lung cancer, as they left this life. It was painful, but I was thankful God let me be with them. I was with my husband as we watched his mother, who had a heart condition, pass into heaven. My beloved brother, that was only sixteen months younger than me, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer and God allowed me to be with him. I thought we were prepared to face whatever we had to face after being told Terry had cancer. Now I’ve come to think this may not be possible, and then, grasping what happens when it’s no longer we, could prove to be almost inconceivable.

The dreaded word, cancer, crept into and consumed our lives and then tore two hearts apart, taking our marriage with it. It has been several months since I told the love of my life goodbye, and that separation is burning in my broken heart, asking for understanding and hope for the future. The next twenty-nine chapters and an epilogue follow Terry and my walk through this journey.

?

When facing grief, despair and separation, is devotion worth it?

Yes!

After several months alone, I already know God’s plan for Terry, and my life together stands on its own testimony. The created life that goes forth today from our love is the witness of our devotion to each other and to the Lord, the Forerunner.

The Forerunner

As our lives encompassed the battle with cancer, Terry and I began in earnest to petition God to reassure us of His Presence. We began our daily devotions by addressing Our Lord by one of His special names and attributes that have been revealed in the Scriptures. As we did this, we were amazed how God really does understand our fears. Christ lived here in our world, so He went through human life with its hurts and even faced death. He went before us. He understands when we cry out.

The Bible tells us Christ is the Forerunner.

We who have fled for refuge . . . have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast . . . where Jesus has entered as a FORERUNNER for us . . . (Hebrews 6:18–20)

We were blessed with so much life, but we knew life doesn’t end on this earth. God showed us the way, and I know Terry lives today. In Psalm 16:11, the psalmist King David proclaimed, You will make known to me the path of life. As I go on with my life, I’m reassured He goes before me.

When cancer is progressing and hope is being threatened, these verses showed us that Christ is already out there in front of us. Our hope is in the Forerunner.

Chapter 2

The Shadow

It started pretty simply. Terry was sixty-six and went for his annual prostate exam, and of course this was something he didn’t want to do, but he knew being a married man, his wife would not let him skip it. After all, it is a very treatable cancer if detected early. His PSA (a test that lets you know if there is suspicious activity going on in the prostate) came back a little elevated. No big deal, but it warranted a recheck visit. This visit seemed a little strange because we weren’t sent into the exam room; instead, we were called back to the doctor’s office. We had never been in there before. He showed us the scan he had previously taken and indicated that there was a shadow on Terry’s right kidney that warranted further investigation.

C:\Users\Owner\Downloads\IMG_1275 (2).JPG

It really caught my attention that the doctor didn’t even mention Terry’s prostate. Of course I asked about that. What about the PSA reading? The answer was that we would worry about that later. To know my husband’s reaction, you would have to know his demeanor. He was always laid-back and not a worrier, especially about himself. Terry had never been sick with more than a normal virus or cold or maybe once every ten years or so, a case of bronchitis. In other words, he was heathy as a horse, strong as a mule, and the one that always did the waiting while I was in operating rooms or giving birth. I called him my rock and my tree trunk. A smidge under six feet tall, he weighed in at 260 pounds with chest, arms, and legs that matched his girth, just solid. I do believe in his younger days he could have lifted just about whatever he wanted. His firm handshakes hid his tenderness. I always knew I had a protector by my side ever since I had met him when I was barely seventeen years old. His sturdiness in appearance belied the fact he had a heart as big as he was. Gentle, kind to a fault, and unselfish are just a few adjectives that describe the man that put me first before any person in this world. Now we sit listening to words that weren’t making any sense other than there was something on his kidney. I immediately began thinking about informing our children that their Daddy had a shadow. This was a new role for me. Nothing felt normal, like all of a sudden everything was out of focus. I noticed the scary word had not been mentioned.

I called each of our children as Terry drove us home. There was a silence as each one tried to comprehend that there would be further tests on their daddy. Test on Daddy? was pretty much the reaction from all three. This in itself was just strange, unreal. I think we all were uncomfortable but didn’t know what to ask or say. That’s when Jesus began getting bombarded with simple but heartfelt prayers. After all, my husband had never been sick and was always there whenever we needed him.

Terry was the backbone of our family. He was the one that showed love and respect toward me, and by his example, our children learned respect not only toward their parents but also toward others. Never one to acknowledge or even realize any of this, he was definitely the one that helped instill values that carried on even into our grandchildren’s generation. He set the standard, and it was not even imaginable that could ever change. I needed God to look over us and continue blessing us as He always had. Thoughts kept swirling as we drove toward home. We were the couple everyone referred to as the salt of the earth. We certainly expected another decade or two to enjoy our children and grandchildren. After I completed the three phone calls, I told myself to quit letting my imagination run away; however, as I stared out my window, an uneasiness settled in around us. I didn’t want our life to change.

Then, it all began—the tests and then the waiting for results. The waiting. The waiting. The waiting. Terry did much better with the waiting than I did, except when it came to a needle and blood tests, then he would sigh and stick out that strong arm. I never heard a complaint, just saw the side glance that communicated how he felt. After all, at this time of our lives, we could almost read each other’s minds. He hated needles! The prospect of cancer was not daunting to him; the needles were another matter. As a woman that has given birth to three children and has endured a few surgeries, I had trouble comprehending that my rock couldn’t tolerate shots and soon discovered this would never change for him.

The next scan showed a mass in the right kidney that would need to be removed. The scary word was now spoken. It most likely was cancer. It was out there where nobody wanted it to be, where it could not be ignored or could not be unheard. Please, God, no! was my flare prayer. Terry had a tumor in the kidney that could be renal cell carcinoma. Neither of us had ever heard of that kind of cancer but then quickly learned this tumor required urgent attention. The cancer that was in his prostate gland was deemed by his doctor as a slow-growing type and would be dealt with later. Thank God for that blessing. Suddenly, not one but two cancers were in our lives. That quickly, we no longer had our normal life. A six-letter word had changed it forever.

The doctor that discovered the tumor and monitored his prostate health referred us to a surgeon in New Orleans who could remove the kidney, adrenal gland, and tumor by scope. He could bypass opening the entire abdomen by using probes with cameras inserted into a smaller incision, making for a shorter recovery. Again, my thoughts went to calling our three children again. We left after being told our world just turned upside down. I knew Terry was still himself when he put his arms around me and whispered to me, Don’t worry about it, baby. It’ll be OK. We hardly ever called each other by our first names. It was always baby. He was still the one comforting and reassuring me.

This time, we changed our tactics on breaking the news to our children. As he drove, I typed a detailed group text and sent it off to our anxiously waiting offspring. This would become our mode of communication, assuring that everyone received the same information and preventing some stress by not repeating it again and again. If one asked a question, then we could answer and they would all know. Face-to-face would probably have been best; however, texting also allowed us each to deal with our new reality in our own way at the moment, and when we were together, we wouldn’t have to dwell so much on the details.

We went to one of the grandson’s baseball games that afternoon. Of course, Terry carried my folding chair. As usual, he made sure I was in the shade and set it up for me. He had done this for me since I’d had some pretty major surgery on my cervical disks. He was in his element as the grandfather, watching and cheering for one of his pride and joys. This was truly who he was, a family man who loved sports. I don’t know at this point how many of us were praying although I suspect a lot. I asked for protection and prayed for wisdom for the doctors and for God to guide their hands. I tried not to second-guess God’s plans while asking for His mercy and hoped that was enough. By now, there were thoughts that I couldn’t even put into words, even to God.

The surgery was scheduled. All the children took off work, rearranged schedules, and drove us the hundred-plus miles. Several of their friends came along to support them. My and Terry’s friends, our pastor and his wife, who we had traveled extensively with in the past, were there with us. I was so thankful for the support because emotionally I felt so weak and I wanted to be strong for my husband.

The nurses allowed me to be with him as they prepared him for surgery. He winced as they sought a vein for his anesthesia, and I winced with him. Much too soon, they gently let me know it was time for me to return to the waiting room, reassuring me they would keep me updated. I turned and stood very still as they wheeled him off into the surgical room, and he turned and looked back at me. I did not take my eyes off him until the doors closed behind them. I had never felt such a feeling of emptiness in my sixty-one years. I had lost many people that I loved dearly, but I had never felt this emptiness. I knew in my head he would be okay and that I would see him soon. I still stood there feeling as if my heart had been taken from me. God, please take care of him. Give the doctors wisdom and skill. This time, I added the hardest request I had ever prayed: Jesus, your will be done.

I knew as a Christian that we all belonged to God and He had a plan for each of us. Standing there, everything seemed different. How did all this play into His plan? I just wanted my husband to be healthy. Surely many, many married, loving couples faced this at some time in their lives? More questions washed over me. How could I sit in that waiting room by myself? As the nurses showed me the exit door, I found the waiting room and saw how blessed we were to have so many people that loved Terry and me. Somehow, it didn’t change how I felt. Feeling alone, I listened to the conversations all around me. Thank God our friends and family were watching over me. I needed them so much.

Hours passed. We were told we would have an update by now. No update, then two more hours with no update. After another hour, we were informed the doctor had some trouble getting such a large kidney out of a thick man through a small incision. He looked completely exhausted as he came to talk with us telling us that the surgery was successful and he was able to remove the tumor that was on the verge of entering the vena cava. This is the main vein through the body that returns blood to the heart and lungs. Being able to remove the cancerous growth before it could enter this area was crucial. As was always done in these cases, he removed the adrenal gland along with the entire kidney and its tumor. A crisis had been adverted. He went on to explain how he had to enlarge the incision in order to remove so much tissue intact and was able to finish the procedure without having to completely open the abdomen. The sighs of relief were audible, and I believe all of us sent flare prayers upward, Thank you, God, thank you.

After several more hours, I was allowed into the recovery room to see him, another first for me. I didn’t like seeing him lying there with his eyes closed and didn’t want to think about what he had been through. The nurse said he had not opened his eyes yet, but when I called his name and he heard my voice, those deep green eyes flew open! I had my husband back. Praise God!

?

Are we important enough to God that He cares about us?

Yes!

The God of Care

The God of Care

tells us how important we are to Him.

He not only loves and cares for us,

He instructs us not to be anxious for our lives.

C:\Users\Owner\Pictures\family white car.jpg

The God of Care

King David sung a song to our God praising Him for caring for us. In Psalm 8:3–6, David’s song leaves no doubt that we are important to God. How could we doubt that God is there for us through whatever we are facing in life on this small planet? These are David’s words:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have ordained;

What is man, that you do take thought of him?

And the son of man, that

You do care for him?

Yet, You have made him a little lower than God,

and do crown him with glory and majesty!

You do make him to rule over the work of Your hands;

You have put all things under his feet.

Wow! This is what I call caring. Thank you, Lord, for caring for us in our weak times and for reminding us You are the God of Care.

Beside this, Jesus gives us specific instructions regarding worrying about our lives in the Book of Matthew:

In 6:34, Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

In 6:27, And which of you by being anxious and can add a single cubit to his life’s span?

In 6:25, Do not be anxious for your life.

Chapter 3

Love at First Sight

Since Terry and I have attended a million various types of ballgames with children and grandchildren throughout our lives, it is ironic as I look back that it was a ballgame that brought us together, ultimately leading to our marriage. On Sunday afternoons, my large extended family would have volleyball games in a field behind my grandmother’s house, which included aunts, uncles, big and little cousins, and whoever wanted to drop by. One day, one of my older male cousins brought his friend, Terry Richardson, to our Sunday gathering. I was not playing that particular afternoon, but I walked out to the volleyball field to give someone a message. Coincidence? I’m not much on that. Terry told me and many others that when he saw me that day, he said he was going to marry me! Pretty good line and he stuck to it; he finally convinced me it was true. I was not at the volleyball field long enough to notice a new person playing on the Yoes volleyball team nor did I realize my life had just changed forever. I do believe God brought him to that game that afternoon in answer to a prayer I had regularly prayed. As a young teenager, I asked for Him to send a Christian guy for me to love and one who would one day become my husband.

Terry, his stepdad, Charlie Hale, dog, Bullet, and his beloved ’59.

I was barely seventeen and had begun my senior year in high school. Terry was four years older than me. The age difference didn’t sit well with my daddy, so he made it difficult for Terry and me to date; in fact, he did not let us single-date (we double-dated with another couple) until much later. Old-fashioned? Yes. Smart? Yes! In the coming year, Terry was serving in the Air Force while the Vietnam War was raging so we didn’t have the opportunity to see each other very often. We knew pretty quickly that we loved each other and would be married as soon as we could. That happened January 15, 1965, a year and a half after we met. Daddy came to love and trust Terry as much as I did while Momma had from the very beginning. As Daddy drove me to our candlelight wedding, with me taking up the entire backseat with my wedding dress heaped around me, he advised me, You better be good to that boy. That was his way of saying, I love him too. I felt blessed to have parents that loved and cared for me and now I was walking the aisle to join my love at the altar and before God as we promised each other our love forever.

After we wed, I went from my parents’ home to our rented, very small garage apartment (an apartment built over someone else’s garage for there were no apartment buildings at that time!) with my husband; therefore, I had never experienced living alone. In the 1960s, this was not an unusual scenario. The fact of me never living alone factored into the difficulty of adjusting after God called Terry home. Regardless, I wouldn’t have had it any other way and was glad I grew up in an era that looked to marriage as a holy endeavor and one that was taken seriously by honoring God, both before the ceremony as well as after. In the twenty-first century, it is getting more difficult to experience this with many even considering it undesirable. For us, taking our marriage vows before we began our marriage was the only way to begin our commitment.

In the next decade, we were in our twenties with three children, financially managing okay and happy. Two years after marriage, our daughter was born, followed in a few years by our two sons. God in his wisdom had blessed us early in our marriage with children for by twenty-six years of age, I underwent a hysterectomy due to cysts and precancerous cells. Looking back this is one of many ways that God was watching over us. He knew how much it meant to Terry and me to have a family. During this time, our life was big on activity, so it took a lot of pulling together. Terry worked in the engineering field as a civil/structural designer while I was able to be a stay-at-home mom until our children began elementary school. Being with three little ones all week was exhausting at times. Terry would spend many of his Saturdays