Sunday Worship

Dear Friends,

I know this is old news by this point for most of you on Facebook.  As much as I would have loved to make an official announcement before it went viral, I recognize that particular wish is a tall order in the era of social media.  I especially apologize to those of you who I would have liked to call in person before you heard through the grapevine.

This morning at 8 AM was a bright, sunny, Sunday morning in Dallas Texas.  It promises to be one of the hottest days of the year so far, but behind the windows of UT Southwestern is was a cool 70 degrees.  The view of the Dallas skyline was especially beautiful in the morning light, with just a few fluffy white clouds in the sky.  All over the city and country people were getting up to attend services where they would worship God - by singing hymns and praise songs, by listening and learning more about God, and by giving their time, talent, and money in service to God.

For all those reasons, this morning at 8 AM was a fitting time (if there ever is such a thing) for my wife to breathe her final breath on this Earth.  She traded singing hymns with a praise band for a choir of angels.  She traded hearing about God from a preacher for looking upon the face of her savior.  Instead of giving her time, talent, and money, she gave her life for the glory of God.  And she was there in time for the for the early worship service in heaven (in stark contrast to our usual punctuality).

We Christians use a lot of platitudes to describe death; phrases that, despite their underlying truth, become saccharine and trite in how they seek to make death's reality and apparent finality more palatable.  "She went home"; "she went to be with Jesus"; "She passed away"; I've even heard "graduation day" used to describe this.  I was there in the room, so let me be perfectly clear: she died.

Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?     -1 Corinthians 15:55

The use of this passage at funerals has always struck me as slightly misguided.  Where is death's sting?  It's right. here.  I'm feeling it's sting as I try to make arrangements, answer a hundred "how are you doings?", and most of all when I sit down with my two-year-old and try to explain how it is that mommy can love him very very much but that she won't be here with us any more. How hard she fought to stay with us.  How even though she was very sick, now she is all better.  How she is in heaven with Jesus.

But the promise of the passage is not diminished just because it points to a future state.  And the truth that Ashleigh is in heaven with Jesus is more deeply true and comforting than just being something you tell a two-year-old.  And the present sting of death is actually a temporary inconvenience.  You may know the end of 2 Corinthians 4 from the T-shirt fundraiser:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

But what you may not know is what immediately follows it in chapter 5:

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling... So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

And that is Ashleigh.  Whether here or in death, her aim was to please God and point people to Him.  Her "earthly tent" - her body - was destroyed by cancer.  But she is celebrating now in an eternal building built by God.  She is enjoying her eternal weight of glory.

There are many logistics in the coming days.  Let me share some with you.  We will have a visitation at Turrentine Jackson Morrow funeral home in Allen TX on Thursday night.  We will have a funeral Friday morning at First Baptist Church Allen.  We will have a graveside service immediately following...somewhere.  I will post more details as they are available, but I wanted to get the timeline nailed down so you could "save the date" so to speak.

In lieu of flowers, you can donate to Ashleigh's FirstGiving page to help meet her goal to raise money for IBC research.  Or if you'd rather, you can donate to Noah and David's scholarship fund by donating to the brashleighboys@gmail.com PayPal account as a friend (if you also have a PayPal account), or you can donate directly here if you don't have a PayPal account.

The gala will go forward on August 13 as a tribute to Ashleigh in her memory, so we can meet her goal of raising $100,000 to research her disease.  More details to come.

Finally, the blog will continue for the foreseeable future as a way to communicate what's going on with me, the boys, the gala, funeral services, obituaries, etc.  There are a few posts from Ashleigh still in the 'draft' folder that I'll get around to editing and posting at some point.  There are a few more posts that I'd like to write.  At some point we will wrap up the blog (since it's Ashleigh's blog), but in the meantime you should continue to check here for updates.