We Shall All Be Changed | Whitney Pipkin

Doctor Chapman. React to that statement. Death teaches us how to live. Do you agree with that?

family member are definitely going to find this helpful. And let's face it, all of us, at some juncture in life will face the death of family members.

for the Ministry. Women and work. You can find out more about Whitney and her book, We Shall All Be Changed at Building Relationships with Us.

her take up a new hobby later in life. She had been very accomplished in a career as a banker, but she was the daughter of a professional artist and a hobby carpenter, and she just never considered herself as creative as them. And it wasn't until kind of that last decade of her life that in her empty nest years, she started taking up woodworking and connecting with the memory of her dad. And she found out she actually was

really creative. So that was really fun. About a month before she died, she came out to Kansas to or from Kansas to Virginia to visit my family, even though she was really sick. Not well enough to do that. And she came just so she could bring them this very house she had built. That was from my grandma's old redwood fence. And it has this pine cone mantel, this pine cone fountain. And it was such a display of her creativity, her delight and her grandkids and this

new way she was expressing herself. And it's I keep reflecting on that after she's gone, you know, what are the new things I've been afraid to try? And that's given me courage even to write this book or to do other things I thought I couldn't do.

And I wrote in the book and I'll just quote, you know, I remember feeling like she might evaporate from us at any moment, like the mere idea of her not being here forever was enough to make her disappear right away. And little girls, we can't help but take our mothers for granted until suddenly we can't. And so at age 11 or 12, however old I was, I was discovering my mom's mortality and the fact that she could be here one day and then not the next. And that was really life altering.

so I was pretty self consumed. I was really into hair. And, you know, all the things that seventh grade girls are into. And I was into being in the center of attention. So there was an aspect of, gee, I'm going through something. And that felt kind of cool to be at the church retreat with this massive prayer request of, my mom has cancer, you know, but it wasn't really until she began to lose her hair that that that newness faded

very quickly and the reality sunk in. And that was the morning after Y2K, if you remember, when we thought maybe the world would end before it went to the year 2000, and I had a bunch of friends over for a sleepover. And that was the next morning, is when she began to lose her hair. So it was coming out in clumps in the shower. And when she began to look sick, that's when it really began to impact me. And in ways that I don't know that I could fully process then, but have been processing through

this book and through looking back at those years. Yeah.

will go through it ourselves. And so I think of, you know, what Paul says in the scriptures, I do not want you to be surprised by this or that. And I do think that people, especially Christians, should not be surprised by death this side of the fall. Rather, it's something that we should take the time to be more prepared for theologically, just like it helps us to have like a theology of suffering before we are suffering.

It really helps us to revisit our theology of death as a subcategory of that, and to think about how could God be good in light of this? What could God be doing? And that's what I that's the conversation

I want to invite, especially Christians, but also non-Christians. I've seen in conversations around this topic that the idea of being transformed through the loss of loved ones is something that resonates broadly with people, that that rings true with people who've been through it, and that people who've really dealt with it. You know, there are people who don't deal with it as many years. I did not deal with it and really face it and think through it.

But there are there is a unique opportunity when we're broken open by loss, for God to sow some new things in us, and for there to be a new perspective on the life that we're left to live after our loved one is no longer here.

God turned something hard for good. There is a design and a kind of silver lining of the presence of Christ in this hardship and going through death and knowing of who Christ is, a sharing in his suffering that I really want people to show up for. I don't know what that will look like in their lives, but I know what it looked like in mine. And I want to testify to the value, the spiritual value of entering into this process in the fullest way possible.

them turn inward because they're in pain. They're enduring hard things, and that story largely becomes about them and you coming alongside them. And so it really changes the relationship dynamics. Um, you know, I was it was mother daughter, but it was also sick person person caring for a sick person. And that's a really different dynamic. Um, so when she would call and say, can I visit on this date? She actually didn't ask Gary. She would just say, these

are the dates I'm coming to see my grandkids. And because she was sick and she could die, you know, I had to say yes. It felt like for a lot of those years. Yeah. And and that was a difficult that was a difficult thing. And that was something that I was able to share with my community, my church, my friends here. And they knew when I said, mom's visiting,

please pray for me. They knew what I meant. They knew that it would be this intense time where she would want to squeeze every drop of life out of me and my kids and have this full experience, and that it felt like being hugged by a boa constrictor. In some ways, it was just exhausting, and none of us knew how long the race was. None of us knew where the finish line was for her. If she was going to die this year, or if we had

another five years, we didn't know. So to be able to pace myself to, you know, she would leave and I would have to go talk to my pastor. I feel like garbage because I am so annoyed by her. I am so I'm struggling in this relationship. I feel like a teenage daughter again because I feel like there's not room for me to be my own person because her experience is so consuming. It's so the center of what's going on with our family and, you know, but because I was able to acknowledge that, I think in

God's kindness, he did heal some of that. Near the end. There was I talk about in the book that there was a time near the end, about a month before she died, where she wanted to visit, and I said, that doesn't work for me, mom, dad's visiting that weekend. I can't do that weekend. And she said, okay, what does work for you? And I, like, held the phone away from my ear. I was like, is this my mom? Am I talking to my mom right now? Is this

the same person? I mean, it was the one time she could have said no. I literally am dying and I get to come when I want to come. And she didn't. And she said, you know what works for you? And that was kind of the beginning of her spiritual healing, her letting go of this world, reaching for the next. And it healed deeply some of those wounds of the

relationship being about her all those years. And there at the end, she mothered me and she let it be about me, um, for a minute, even in the midst of her suffering, and that I just see so much of God's kindness in that. And that was only because I was able to say, this is hard. And God said, I know. I see you, too. There's room for both of you to suffer, and one doesn't have to trump the other when we're talking to the Lord about it or in our Christian community, it can be both.

so it was a sweet kind of. This world really is passing away. Do I really believe what Scripture says about jars of Clay and my, you know, appearance not being everything? And then as I and as her cancer came back, and the second time she lost her hair was. Right after my first daughter was born. So my kids never knew her with hair. Um, and it's funny because when I was growing up, she had brown hair. She

was brunette. My whole family is brunettes. And then after she lost it the first time, she died at blonde. And so for the first time, people said you and your mom look alike. And I was like, oh, we do, you know. So in my brain, she's those two people. She's the brunette, she's the blonde. And my brain could not really comprehend the hairless version. It just wasn't my mom. That was my kid's grandma. That was who they knew.

And it was a different season of her and I just something in me subconsciously didn't want to know her that way or remember her that way. I wanted to protect the way I saw her in my mind. And so I didn't, you know, I would take a pictures and, you know, it's just her arms or the bottom of half of her smile, or like I was subconsciously cropping her hair or lack of hair out of these photos and these memories. Um, it didn't bother my kids because

that's how they knew her. But for me, it was just this really subconscious struggle of, oh, she looks sick, you know, and I. Yeah. So it was. It was hard, um, I think. It? Yeah. There's nothing else to say. But it was. It was hard. I don't know if there was a healthier way to go about it, but that was one of the ways I processed it was, oh, this is hard to look at. This is hard to deal with. Yeah.

you know, people without hair. So she had wigs and I think she had 20, 20 or 30 different hats that she wore during that time. But she calls that her lost year because it was a whole year, you know, that she went through that. But we're just so grateful that it was effective for her, you know. And then she has no sign of cancer now. So but that's not normally the outcome, as all of us know. So you say that she seemed more radiant as she got closer to death. Say a word about that.

the next day. And you didn't you couldn't really imagine it beforehand. And Scripture uses all this poetic and language about, you know, an acorn. My language is the acorn becoming the oak tree because we have one in our yard.

That's why I talked to the kids about when they ask what grandma looks like now, I say, well, I can't say what her future body will look like, but I know that it will be as different as the acorn is from the oak tree, and as different as a kernel of wheat from a field of of wheat. And so I got, I guess I got to glimpse that as her body was shutting down and, you know, she'd been on all these treatments and all this that had these effects. But there was kind of this glow

that began to dawn on her. And maybe I imagined it, I don't know, but I was able to look at her again. I was able to fully look at her and take in this frame of the person who had loved me, brought me into this world, and just the gift of getting to see her hope, dawn and her future hope become reality. There was a radiance to it, you know, like Moses's face became radiant after he saw God. And there was just a layer of that. There was. It was a thin place where heaven and earth seemed

to hold hands for a minute. And I got to see by being there her hope become true, and it has given me, you know, I walked away saying everything we believe is true. That's the thing I told people that day I can't even describe. I'm struggling to describe. And I struggled to describe in the book why I knew that. But I think other people who've been there would also say the same that. There was just a

sense that. That the thing that was happening was truer even than the reality of death, that the the hope that she was coming alive to it was something in me resonated with it, like, this is what we're waiting for. And so while I'm devastated that I don't won't get my mom Earth side anymore, I felt like, um, you know, more like a bridesmaid walking her to her groom than a grieving daughter in that day. Mhm.

And I feel like a bratty teenager because I have all these emotions that I don't know what to do with. I don't want to chide that person. I mean, I've had people tried me like, well, you have to be nice to your mom. She's dying. And I'm like, yeah, but she's been dying for 20 years. I mean, how do I, you know, it's a marathon. How do you how do you lean on the Lord to love difficult people? Well, you can't do it if you don't acknowledge that they're

difficult or that the relationship has been difficult for you. Mhm. Um, and it was difficult for her to I'm sure there was, you know, just it introduced this whole layer of difficulty and that is part and parcel of life in a fallen world. And you have these relationships that are affected by the shadow of death. That's hanging over them. You don't know how much longer you have with each other,

and it's having all these impacts. And to not be honest about that, I don't think helps any of us because I the goal is not to say my mom was a saint in an angel and she did no wrong. It's to say, look at how God was at work in her weakness and my weakness, how how God was at work to redeem her, to bring her to full life on the other side of death. And I think I was able to see that because I was honest about how hard it was at times. And I want

people to have hope in the midst of man. My loved one is dying and this part is really hard. We're fighting about end of life wishes or we're fighting about that vase that my you know, sister and I want to fight over whatever it is. Um, there's so many conflicts that arise in the face of death, and that is normal. That happens. And I just want to offer people, like, I just want to sit with them in that and say, you are not alone. This is this is part of the dying process. To sin affects

every single aspect. And yet Christ is with you and he wants to work in those like really confusing situations where you're not sure. Am I the bad guy? What's going on here? Um, that he is at work in the midst of conflict to transform you even then through conflict?

So yeah, I think your honesty and your openness in this book is going to is going to resonate with a lot of people.

strong and keep fighting. But can I feel differently? And can I tell you how I feel? And I said, you know, I feel like you're dying. And so when I come at Thanksgiving, I'm going to have a hard time being happy, because that's really hard for me. And I just need you to know and expect that I'm going to be sad. And I hope that's okay, because I just can't fake it at this point. And she said, yes, um, that is so I'm sure that's so hard for you.

And that was like, oh, to have her be there for me when it was about, I mean, it was her suffering. It was her trial, her death. But she entered into what I was feeling and that that healed a big wound for me. It began to heal it, um, but only because I exposed it and said entrusted God with it. There was a holy restlessness that I felt as death was drawing near, and I would say, respond to that, whatever that is for you, man, I really I don't want to have this conversation, but I'm afraid

of not having it. Um, just go there because people change dramatically as death draws near. And the person you thought would never change and for 20 years has not changed, could change at the end. I mean, they could. There's an openness there that I found that was shocking to me. And it was like the Holy Spirit was helping us communicate in a way that hadn't, hadn't been there because we were just operating. What was happening was spiritual, not

just physical. And so we were able to communicate and see each other in a new way. That was really beautiful. And I want I want that for people.

a link to that at the website. You might send somebody else there who's walking through these deep waters like Whitney is talking about today, building relationships with us. Thanks a lot for listening and for sending this to somebody who might need to hear it as well.

he says, I am the resurrection and the life. So he tells them, what you need in your grief is me. Not the answer to your questions. Not even necessarily earthly healing. But I am the hope in your grief. And then he doesn't rush to the resurrection either. He stops and Jesus weeps with them. And so our Savior made time in in what seems like an urgent situation to grieve and to tarry in grief with these sisters, even though

he knew he would resurrect right then. And so I think that's where Christians can really grow in modeling and being like Christ. We want to rush to that resurrection. I mean, we want to we want Easter Sunday joy all the time. And I don't think we get the fullness of it if we don't tarry at the cross, if we don't tarry in that Holy Saturday, that's like they didn't know he was going to raise from rise from the dead. Their hope was dead. And we feel

that way in our own debt. You know, I really there are people who thought we really thought God was going to heal. Really prayed that he would and have a crisis of faith. And these sisters had a crisis of faith. They knew Christ could save their brother whom

they whom he loved, and he didn't. And so the way that Christ met with them, I think it's such a picture of how Christ met with me and my grief of just his presence, and that that was enough, that it was accomplishing something in me to understand that even in the face of death, he is the resurrection and the life. He is the one we cling to when we don't know how long until our loved ones will be seen again, when we don't even know what happened to them. We don't know if they trusted in Christ.

In all our unknowns, he meets us, he sits with us, and he weeps with us. And so that makes that that process, that grief valuable, because it is a time where we share in the sufferings, we fellowship and the sufferings of Christ. And he fellowships with us. Yeah.

road alone in that journey of not walking alone. Uh, you talk about the value of friendships, friends who will walk with you through the journey, and you write in the book. And I'm quoting here, it was my closest friends who gave me something I didn't know I needed. As time marched on and mom's cancer remained. Permission to have my own process. They let this trial be not only about my mom, but also about me sometimes. So talk about the value of friends. During this experience.

She would take it as good news, I would take it as bad news, and I couldn't and didn't want to make her get on the same page as me. But I needed somehow to breathe and have, you know, be able to express what I was feeling to people that were just there for me. I mean, they knew my mom, but they could give me room to have a different set of emotions around what was going on. And that was my church family and friends and, you know, and, and my husband and my kids. You know, as time

has gone on, all of those people have. I've just learned that we don't we think we have to, like, be strong for our loved one. And that doesn't actually work. Like, you know, when we are able to be weak with others and say, I am really struggling with this, I'm having a totally different experience than my loved one based on what just happened. Then we we invite others in and we get to experience God. I just think that's God's design to to be. It is not good for

man to be alone, right. And so it is good for us to allow others in. And I don't know, I keep being I've always been afraid of being like too much for people. My sister and I both do this because our mom had cancer for so long, so she could, you know, come to Bible study and her prayer request would, like, trump everybody else's. And so I am like, so afraid of doing that to people, of one upping them with my suffering or my prayer request or whatever. And yet I found as I trusted people

and said, this is what's going on. And it's hard for me that, um, and I was there for them, too. It wasn't a one way street. It blessed them to encourage me to be there for me. I wasn't too much for them. And it was, you know, whereas I may have been it may have been too much for my mom to handle, to go to her with what I was feeling. But in God's kindness, he made other people who could see me. And it was a reflection that God saw me and that I was not too

much for God. That what I felt, as we see in the Psalms, there is room for all of it, and that it is good to bring it to the Lord and to our community.

where they are and and being there with them. Uh, so I just I just think, you know, that whole thing of weeping with those who weep, uh, is an important part of friendship and not always trying to preach to the person, but just being there with them, you know, and processing things and allowing them, allowing them to be where they are.

my mom died. So I saw and I think anyone who's been pregnant for nine months understands that there comes a point where as much as you don't want to give birth, you are ready to get this over with and you get that way with death, where you've seen your loved ones suffer and you get to a point where you're like, I do not want them to live this day any longer, and I want this day to give way to to her eternal rest, to her ending of the end of her suffering. And that can seem

weird to people who haven't been there. Maybe it wasn't selfish. It was. I wanted her to no longer suffer. And so as much as I wanted her to be there for me, I mean, my sister and I said, you know, we told mom, uh, you're wondering what they're waiting for. You don't know. The hospice comes in and says, okay, they're in the final stages. And you're like, what does she need to hear from us to feel like she

can go? And you feel this urgency to give her permission to go even though you don't want her to. And my sister and I said, you know, we kind of lied to her and said, we'll be fine. We'll be okay. We didn't know that we would. But you say these things to free them to the process. That's that's happening. That's inevitable. And you and you begin to long for the end of their suffering more than you dread the beginning of yours. That's how I would explain it.

I guess it's both. And. Yeah. Still. Yeah.

Is when she died. So Thursday we brought in oxygen and on Thursday she was able to kind of understand what was happening and have those moments that we've been praying for, those moments of clarity. And making that pivot toward. Finishing her race. Well, um, and then hospice told us that often mothers will not want to pass with their children in the room. And so that Friday night, we finally slept after many nights of my sister and I were both nursing babies, so we were like, just so

drained and exhausted. And so we finally slept Friday night thinking, maybe mom will go, you know, with her husband at night. And the next morning she was still there and we were grateful we wanted to be there. And so we were in the room with her. It was Saturday afternoon, and she had had the restlessness stages and then was kind of in this peaceful stage. And my sister was, um, changing clothes in the bathroom. I was like, Allie, get out here because I could I heard the kind of

the rattly breath and I sensed it was happening. And, uh, so my sister ran in and and we were both with her as well as our, um, friend who had been a hospice pastor and driven down to be with us. We were all in the room, and then the kids and her husband and everyone came in right around then. I don't know if they were in the room right then, but. Yeah. Um, yeah, we had a moment, you know, we had some time with with her, her body as well. Yeah. It was

I saw the color drain. And yet, um, I knew that she was no longer here, um, and that we had witnessed the full reality of of what we believed coming through. Yeah.

unless you've been there. But we were just so glad she finished well and that we finished well, that we helped her have a good ending, that God answered that weird prayer that I had begun to pray that she would have a good ending, and that this story I couldn't have written of her, her death, that it just was unfolding before me, and I felt like I had experienced something unique in it being condensed. In that five day period, I was able to see the spiritual layers,

the physical layers of what had happened. And, you know, that's why I went home and I wrote like 25 pages of of everything down. And then later that became the book in the moment. It was just, you know, when you witness something kind of spiritually and you're like, I'm going to doubt that that was real later. I need to write that down so that I don't disbelieve my memory of how God was real in that situation, because it is indescribable. And it is, you know, we

shall all be changed. It is unique. And I wanted to testify to that.

more imaginable. And that, yeah, and I am applying the way that we see our loved one die, the way that we witness the change that's going on, and wanting people to have hope that that change is also occurring in them and those who are left behind, that there is a transformation that will continue in them as they grieve and as they meet with Christ in their grief.

walking toward. It'll be a hymn or a song or one of those moments where you realize your loved one's not here, and I come alive to that future hope in a way that puts my present reality into perspective, that makes whatever suffering is going on feel light and momentary for a moment as I remember the weight of

glory that's coming. And so I. I am grateful that I have that thread, that it was always there to some degree, between me and and my future hope, but that having someone on the other side makes us think of it more often. It makes it kind of thrum in reality a little more often. And it is something that we are desperate for. And because we're desperate for it, we we look for it, we seek it, and we're able to sense that it's true as well.

length of her life, over her time with us. And she had said, even if with God, that she had said, even if you don't give me more time, I trust you. I trust that you'll be good. I trust that there's something good that you have me walking toward, and I'm willing to let you let you have the reins here. And that was so healing and helpful for me that she was, you know, letting go of this life and reaching for the next in a way she didn't always show her daughters. She didn't want us to see the

fullness of that grief and that lament. And yet I'm so grateful that she did that grappling with the Lord, because I think that's where the value is for each of us to be able to say, um, you know, like Jesus did take this cup from me, not my will, but yours be done. And we don't say the second without the first. We say our prayer. We say our fold wish and hope in the face of death. And then we say, even if you don't, even if you don't rescue me from this fiery trial, you are still good.

You will still be glorified. And I am still running toward a hope that is more true than the reality of death.

have a ministry in their life. Now, having said that, as we come to the end of our time on this program, what are some of the things that you tell people who are about to walk through this with a loved one? What in closing, what would you say to them?

I would want them to show up with great hope for what God can do in the life of that loved one, whether they trust in Christ or not, that that is a place we want to be. You know, when God says in Psalm 23, uh, that he will be with us in the valley of the shadow of death, then that's a really valuable place. That's a place that we want to spend time with others and with the Lord. And I would say, don't forget to like, eat and sleep are the main, uh, grief. And that process is

so embodied and it is so wearisome. And so while you're being carried along, um, let Christ care for you often through his, his body, the church, you know, let people bring you meals, let people do your laundry. Uh, let people take your kids. You know, let take that space that you need. Because when you when you feel that restlessness, like, I need to process, I need to sleep, I need whatever this is, you know, listen to that.

Because it's not self care. It's it's receiving Christ's care for you that you don't have to perform right now. He has done the work that needed to be done for your salvation. He's the one who died after living a perfect life, and who rose again, and who achieves our resurrection so we can rest even as we do the work of walking well with loved ones. We can rest fully in Christ's finished work, and that is our hope at the end of their life and the end of our own.