Myers Raechel - She Reads Truth: Holding Tight to Permanent in a World Thats Passing Away

Copyright 2016 by Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible Williams

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-8898-0

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Authors are represented by Alive Literary Agency, 7680 Goddard Street, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920, www.aliveliterary.com.

Cover Text Illustration: Cymone Wilder

Cover Design: Amanda Barnhart

Interior Design: Amanda Barnhart

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.843

Subject Heading: WOMEN / FAITH / CHRISTIAN LIFE

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee. All rights reserved.

Also used: The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version). Copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Also used: The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Also used: King James Vesrion (KJV) which is public domain.

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To the Shes who read Truth:

Read on.

What Is She Reads Truth?

She Reads Truth was a community long before it was a book.

In 2012, a handful of strangers began reading Gods Word together every day, staying connected with the hashtag #SheReadsTruth. This hashtag gave way to a website, which gave way to an app, and the movement continues to grow. Today, hundreds of thousands of women gather online to open our Bibles together and find Jesus there.

This community of Women in the Word of God every day represents a long list of cities and countries, a variety of backgrounds and traditions. We are women of all ages and life phases, with our own joys and sorrows and hopes, our own real-life stories. But there is a commonality that binds us: we believe Gods Word is Truth. So we read.

Every day we read a new passage togetherworking our way through books of the Bible, topics that matter, and seasons of the Church calendar. We engage with Gods Word and with each other. And we keep coming back, on the hard days and the good days, because God and His Word never change, regardless of our circumstances.

We invite you to read along with us at shereadstruth.com or on the She Reads Truth app.

A Note to the Reader

This book was written by two people. In fact, a good portion of the chapters alternate between two separate memoirs. Because both of our stories are stretched across the pages of this book, weve indicated the author at the beginning of each chapter. Our stories are different, but thats the point. The Truth is the same in both of them. Its the Truth in your story too.

Introduction AMANDA

Passing Away

S ix months to a year, Day Three.

I spoke into my phone as I rounded the corner at 17th and Holly and drove past the large ivory house with the matching scalloped fence.

That house had been a favorite of mine since we moved up the street to a different corner, eight years prior. I loved it for the wraparound porch and the full-sized bedframe theyd fashioned into a porch swing. I loved it for its tall windows and that lovely fence. And I loved it for the big tree in the corner of the yard, the tree whose leaves were fading to yellow on that October afternoon.

It was there, driving past the big ivory house, that the thought first occurred to me: my father is fading like the leaves on that tree.

Id started leaving voice memos on my phone the day my dad was given his most devastating diagnosis to datestage four esophageal cancer. Theyd do chemotherapy in an effort to put off the inevitable, but the disease would prevail and a year was our best-case scenario.

I recorded these messages to myself to mark the days, speaking into my phone while driving to the hospital or doing dishes or watching my twin baby boys eat breakfast in their matching high chairs. When I play the messages back I can hear their small voices in the background, another reminder of how quickly things change.

Life is a given until it isnt.

Death is so much easier to ignore when its an abstract concept, one newscast removed. Death on a timer, however, demands constant attention. For my family in those long months, dying, not living, was our new sure thing.

My father was seventy-four when he passed away just four years agorecently enough that when I think of him, the memories of him slipping away are brighter than the decades that came before. Those years will come back too, I think, but right now they are faded and black and white. The passing away is all I can see in vivid color.

Its strange the things our minds and hearts choose to keep near the surface, memories at the ready. Here are the things I remember from the thirty-three years before the dying started, in no particular order:

I remember Fourth of July fireworks in our driveway when I was small, with friends-turned-family from the neighborhood where I grew up. Our house sat at the top of the hill and everyone would trek up with their lawn chairs and a contribution to the show of sparks and smoke. The helicopters were my favorite.

I remember the sound of his voice, the voice the cancer eventually took.

I remember him workingalways working. He was a golf professional since before I was born, and I have image after image of him in my mind, standing behind the counters of the various golf courses he ran over the years, greeting the golfers as they signed in and keeping a close eye on the cart return. I can see him on the tractor, mowing the greens at dusk.

I remember the baggy overalls I wore in high school that he hated, a fact he only said out loud once but somehow I would never forget. I remember how he combed his hair just so, no matter the day or the occasion.

I remember the way he smiled at me and my husband as we danced on our wedding day, and how the approval I saw in that smile made my heart so proud and relieved.

Everything else, almost every big and little thing, is a blur. Its unsettling, isnt it? How can thirty years be reduced to a glass not even half full?

But those last three yearsthey make me smile through my tears. They are the brightest though they were the darkest, the happiest though heavy with sorrow. And I see it all as clear as if it were happening in live action on a screen in front of me.

At the time, I would have likened our real-life drama to a tragedy, equal parts suspense and sorrow. But looking back, I believe it was more of an adventure, though not the kind a person seeks. We were precariously perched on a mountain with no way down and nothing to do but keep climbing.

When youre in that placeclinging to the side of a wall made of rock, a storm of uncontrollable circumstances swirling around youwhat youre holding on to becomes clear. Place your foot on shale, and it will crumble beneath you. Grab hold of a loose ledge, and your hand will slip. But hold tight to the mountain itself, and it will hold you up.

The firm handholds along the journey of my dads illness included these:

I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world. (John 16:33)

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never grows faint or weary; there is no limit to His understanding. (Isa. 40:28)