My sister-in-law flew in today to stay with my mother-in-law for about a week. The hospice program provides a nurse or an aide to stop by the house 4-5 times a week. It’s nice because they deal with my medicine changes or communication with doctors. Up until it’s been my mother-in-law on the phone, leaving messages, and waiting sometimes days before anyone calls her back.

She has been a faithful wife to her husband. There is a special kind of beauty that is so plain, so inspiring, it makes you hurt and tear up when you see it. I have watched their marriage over the years as I’ve known them and there have definitely been things that I don’t understand and wouldn’t choose for myself.

But they came from that generation where you stick things out. I stand over my father-in-law’s bed when I’m there and wonder why this is happening to him. Caregiving is difficult and is in it’s way it’s own burden, but he is the one dying. He has visibly and verbally moved from the stage of wanting to fight the illness to looking forward to where this illness is taking him. Into Christ’s arms.

At first I thought everyone was just in denial about this. He never was though. The day he was diagnosed a little over a year ago he looked the doctor in the eye and asked if he needed to sell his business. “Let’s not get too carried away”, he said, but he was also honest in saying up front that his prognosis was grim.

But I think instead of denial it’s been a simple living of what is real. Bad things happen, but not only bad things. If Christ is not real for us in times like this then what was the point? But he is there. He is real. And so is the peace that passes all understanding. In the peace of God there is hope and strength to continue on to the next day. This plain and inspiring beauty has a name. It’s called love.