Our church has started a 6 week series of member stories and testimonials. Bart asked if I would be willing to share our story on Easter morning. It was a privilege to be able to share how God has grown and sustained us over these past 4 years.
My name is Dawn Rynders and I’ve been a City Life member for a little over 7 years. I’m the mom to Henry off in college, Beatrice who is a junior in hs and Simon who is a freshman. Some of you know our story because you walked through it with us but others of you are new enough to City Life that you maybe know very little about our family. This is our story of hope and today is a pretty perfect day to share that with all of you.
In Oct of 2013, during Breast cancer awareness month, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My children found it a little amusing that I managed to get breast cancer during breast cancer awareness month. I did not find it terrible amusing. My breast cancer was your pretty normal, run of the mill, trying to kill you variety. I quickly was surrounded by a team of rock star oncologists and surgeons and a plan was put in place to get me back to healthy after a year of different forms of not so nice treatments and surgeries.
It was strange to be the sick one in our household. Eric, my husband of nearly 22 years had a genetic heart condition that lived mostly quietly within our family and the attention we had to pay to it was very routine. He lived life hopefully every day--he hoped that his medication would work, he hoped that this or that procedure might help, and he hoped that he would have many more days with us. Eric passed away six weeks after my diagnosis. All his hopes on this earth were replaced with the hope of heaven that he had always held firmly to.
It was a dark and cold winter and to say that I needed something to hope in would be a dramatic understatement. I had a cancer battle that couldn’t be postponed and three kids who still wanted to be fed, still made dirty clothes and still needed someone to help them understand their grief and help guide them into their new life.
I was surrounded by all the support, meals and prayers that a person could ever hope for. But it’s hard to remember those things every morning when you have to lift your head from the pillow once again. The life ahead of me felt like a very long and dark tunnel. Because I had been raised in a beautiful and solid Christian home, my faith went into autopilot and I continued to put one foot in front of the other, both physically and spiritually. The hope I clung to in those days was the hope of Heaven--hope with and capital H where I could once again see my earthly husband and heavenly savior. This was the light at the end of my tunnel.
As I made my way daily through this dark tunnel, focusing on the heavenly light on the other end, I was surrounded by lovely people and the very evident power of prayer. But with each day I became more and more aware of how much life on earth was between me and that Heavenly hope.
You never feel more keenly aware of being alive than when you experience death. Eric was gone, but for some reason, I was not. I was alive. My kids were alive. And something needed to matter between where I stood and where I was ultimately heading. So I stopped and asked myself why are you here, in this tunnel and what might you be missing on your journey?
It was tempting to look back and long for what was our family, it’s was also tempting to look too far forward and miss the lessons and love and work that were right at my fingertips. I’m a visual person and I had to, in a sense, light a candle in that dark tunnel and appreciate the lessons and blessings that were to be found in every day, in every moment and in every step on this path I had been given. God opened my eyes to the hope and beauty that was in the sunrise each day, to the blessing of my children’s laughter, to a smile from a long lost friend across the sanctuary. He wasn’t just at the end of the tunnel cheering me on, he was right beside me, holding me up all along. He helped me to not only see hope as an exit plan but to also see it as a framework to look through and appreciate each day that I will be given. This kind of hope is a gift and it isn’t just reserved for cancer and death--it there for each of us as we face each day in each tunnel we have been given.
I’m going to leave with you some words of an old favorite hymn that have come to mind often in these last 4 years:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
So today on this holiday of hope, we gratefully say Christ has risen!, He has risen indeed!
