Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

• Hebrews 12:1-2

“I need to put my faith and trust into God’s hands because I’m not alone. I’ve got an army behind me when I falter.  Because I’m seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness first, and through prayer I can cast my cares to Him.”

• My wife’s ideas on the Scriptures above (2009)

We forget that a lot.  It has been three months since my wife passed.  In some ways, I still feel her presence.  And the ghosts that we both joked about are having a lot of fun.  It’s one thing for something to fall from the table without explanation, but to be the only person in the house and hear someone walk up each step to the second floor, one step at a time…  Yikes!

But we are not talking about ghosts, or the “house settling” one step at a time, we are talking about God and the Angel Armies.  We are talking about other Christian friends also.

My wife was weakened by a colonoscopy which started a bizarre series of events leading to her death.  Wouldn’t you know it, but the gastroenterologists sent me a letter and I am due to have a colonoscopy in a couple of weeks.  But, hey, I need someone to drive me home after the procedure.  I have been in the recovery area when the driver was not available.  It was a “big deal.”  I have no family in the area, but I have a Sunday school class that is like family.  I had a volunteer with the first e-mail, and do not worry about them picking me up at the outpatient surgery center; they will come to the house, drive me there, and then wait in the waiting room.  Colonoscopies do not take “that long.”

Never fall into the trap of “I am all alone.”  You are not.

Now it might be prudent to get one of those call buttons.  You know the commercials, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”  Of course, you can always have your cellphone in your pocket, but I have issues with the signal in my basement, a basement with no guardrail on the basement steps.

“With Mark going off far away – I’m on my own.  My health is not so good, and I worry about ‘the what ifs’.”

• My wife’s inner thoughts

Ouch!  I am living full-time what my wife lived over the previous 20 years.  I only had about 26 weeks in foreign countries over those 20 years, but there were quite a few trips within the USA that she did not accompany me.

I think about the time she was in this Bible Study is when I was told on Monday of a week in May that I was not going to Italy due to contract disputes.  Then on Thursday, “Pack your bags.  Never mind!  You always have a bag packed.”  Then the boss said that he was going with me.  Then after working for a week in Italy, I asked the boss on the way back to the USA if I should simply go to South Korea instead of home.  “Oh, no, that project has been delayed.  You won’t be needed there for at least another three months, maybe next year.”  That following Thursday, only four days later …  “I hope you have the clothes in your travel kit washed…”  I learned to never rely on the boss for factual information, but I was really gone for three straight weeks.  The four days in between were filled with laundry and a jet lag fog.

Yes, my wife had real fears, not irrational fears regarding having medical issues with me not there to help her.  But regarding trying to go it alone …

“You’ll be like a tumbleweed, just drifting along having no direction.”

• My wife, responding to the idea of being alone

And my wife knew about tumbleweed.  They are not just round balls of something like a weed or bush.  They have thorns that look like a goat’s head.  It is possible for the “snout” and the “horns” to both dig into your skin, making it as hard as a fishhook to remove.  Tumbleweed can rip through radiators of automobiles and leave you stranded, or rip through all four tires at once.  My wife and I, when living in Washington state, in the high desert, never had an automobile issue of that type, but we have waited for hours in a tumbleweed traffic jam, traffic frozen until the road crew cleared the pile of tumbleweed that accumulated.  Think a pile of several tumbleweed the size of a delivery truck blocking the road.  Okay, that was the biggest.  All it takes is a pile about three-feet high to clog an entire highway.

“We mustn’t give up.  Continue on no matter how hard or difficult.  Steadfast, to continue doing something in spite of the difficulty.  Continuous in a state of Grace until it is succeeded is a state of glory.  To continue on regardless of difficulty.  It’s an on-going process for me.”

• My wife, as she digs deeper

While she knew of the aortic stenosis, this was before the open-heart surgery, but she was in stage 3 kidney failure about this time, trying and failing to eat the right foods for renal failure.  It would be less than ten years until she would start the steep decline in her health.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.