I Needed Her

No, she didn't have dementia. Far from it. But she had brain cancer. And that, is ultimately what ended my friend's life yesterday.Evie was a friend, but also a spiritual mother. When I moved to Boston thirty-seven years ago, she and her husband Mike let me stay with them for three months while I looked for a job and an apartment. I had connected with them through an advertisement one of their friends had placed in the Globe. Such a tenuous connection, but Mike and Evie were one of those couples whose home was always open. In their apartment I met Susanne and her brother George, Bonnie, a Hmong refugee, and some punk rockers whose names escape me.Evie taught me how to be real. How to be honest, how to live with others, how to take my faith seriously. If the gospel was true, we should put ourselves under Jesus and the teachings of the Bible. And that's just what she tried to do. Every single day.Evie was about twenty years my senior, but she had married late and hadn't been able to have children. She had many spiritual children, though, people she taught and mentored and cared for and held accountable. She walked with me for about three years, then I left for New Jersey and we didn't see each other for many years.By the time I caught up with Evie, years later, she had two grown up children, and she and Mike had moved to Oregon. I visited her a few times. And when she announced to her friends that she had advanced breast cancer, I braced myself for the inevitable months of chemo and radiation and sometimes hoped and prayed for a cure. I believe in miracles.Evie took a different path. First, she didn't refuse conventional treatments out of hand. She researched them, and sometimes accepted those offered by doctors, sometimes refused or delayed them, or asked for a lower dose. She used, but did not solely rely on, nonconventional treatments. She researched them. She prayed over every step. She asked for the prayers of others. She knew she needed support. There were so many people into whose lives she had invested, that now they all stood with her in prayer and assistance of many kinds.Evie refused to make her life all about survival. Her life was always about loving and glorifying Jesus and spreading the gospel. Her brain and body were always active. She hated to be idle. She didn't want to just talk about her physical condition. She wanted to do stuff. She saw things that needed to be done. And as long as she could, she got up and did them. When she needed a steel rod in her femur, the doctors told her not to go up and down stairs. She reveled in going up and down stairs after that. She kept teaching, kept up with projects, and felt frustrated when she had to slow down.Evie knew eventually she would die. Even if God cured the cancer, she knew her body would one day give up. She was always ready to die. But, she wanted God to pick the day and the manner of her death. And until that time, she was determined to live.One of her more frequent prayers was, “Pray for my brain.” All of her Facebook friends knew what that meant. The cancer had metastasized to her brain, and she wanted to retain all her mental capabilities to the very end. So whenever my mind turned to Evie, I would ask God to take away the tumors, or shrink them, or keep them from spreading, or keep her brain working properly until she died. I had seen my mother's brain go wonky from Alzheimer's, and knew that was exactly the opposite of what Evie wanted. Well, I was joining in with her on that. We all were. And Evie shared frequently on Facebook, posting updates which were strangely encouraging and asking for prayer about specific matters, telling us frequently, “I need you.”This is one huge thing I learned from Evie: I need you. I need people to help me and pray for me and care for me and forgive me. I need you to listen to me and love me. I need you to tell me the truth, to motivate me to better behavior, to teach me and model a good attitude. I need your gentle redirecting and your sense of humor and your clever ideas your creativity and discipline. I need my brothers and sisters in Christ, even those of you I don't like very much or know very well. Because the Spirit of Christ dwells in you and works through you to bless me.We all needed Evie, and she needed us. We were there for her, and she was there for us. Now she's with Jesus, and we miss her. But we'll see her again, cancer-free and more beautiful than ever, made complete in Christ.So thank You Jesus for answering all our prayers for Evie's brain. We knew You'd take her eventually, but that part about keeping her brain working till the end was a nice touch.Thank You for sending this clueless 19-year-old across the US all the way to Mike and Evie's apartment. Of all the places I might have ended up, this was what You chose for me. You knew I needed her. You gave me better gifts than I could have chosen for myself. You gave me a spiritual mentor when I didn't know I needed one. She was great because You're great, and I know she would say “amen” to that.