As many times as my mom faced terminal illness, one would think I would have thought about what I’d say at her funeral one day. But I promise you, no matter how much you go through over the years: when you’re 28 and learning how to be a mother yourself, nothing prepares you to give your mom’s eulogy just when it feels like you need her most.

For those of you who don’t know us, I’ll update you briefly on what’s happened over the course of the last month.

My mom had been undergoing immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma. She had it in a mole on her shoulder in 2015 they removed and thought they got all of it, but it returned 5 years later in November with a vengeance. They thought they got it all out again in January, but by April it was everywhere. Her doctors at Mayo Clinic started her on whole brain radiation and immunotherapy (which is pretty much groundbreaking for patients who have had transplants, like her). The problem is, the cancer had gone from nowhere in January to everywhere in April…and the treatments didn’t start until June. So we were playing catch-up, but she didn’t really have any symptoms until the last couple of weeks.

A little over a month ago, the family came down to Nashville to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday, which had been the weekend before but we were having the party on Sunday to fit it around her treatment schedule. Mom was SO excited for this party, bought Jocelyn little lemon-themed dresses and decorations, and bought gifts weeks in advance. She had her iron transfusion just before leaving and they noticed her oxygen was dropping when she was moving around, but she recovered when she rested so they said she could still come on the trip.

First thing Saturday morning she was a lot worse, so we called 911. We were thinking she just needed a little oxygen and maybe some antibiotics, and then could come home and we could have Jocelyn’s party when she was feeling better and could enjoy it more.

She never made it back home.

The following Wednesday she was transferred to the ICU and put on life support. Two days after that we found out the melanoma had spread to her airway. Saturday she stopped responding…and Sunday we made the decision to remove life support and let her rest in Jesus.

The following is an excerpt from that eulogy— and the explanation for the hope, and dare I say JOY, that we have now.

A few months ago, shortly after my mom’s devastating PET scan that showed cancer everywhere, I had two nearly identical dreams that came weeks apart. In the dreams, I was walking out of my house towards my garden where my mom was standing. That garden was overflowing with every kind of fruit and vegetable…and I had this innate sense that she had planted the seeds and God had made them grow in abundance. The second dream was almost identical, but my mom was walking away from the garden. In real life, my mom helped me plant my actual garden shortly after the first dream. And somehow those plants survived a few nights of heavy frost immediately after being planted, and began to produce in abundance.

As I was thinking about these things one day, it hit me out of nowhere that those dreams weren’t just about vegetables.

Just as that thought hit, I opened the Bible to a random page and it was Joel 2. In Joel 2, God is giving Joel a vision of an army that is overwhelming and appears unbeatable. Yet He says “Fear not, O land; Be glad and rejoice, For the Lord has done marvelous things! Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field; For the open pastures are springing up, And the tree bears its fruit; The fig tree and the vine yield their strength. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame.” Joel 2:21-22, 26-27

What hit me from this chapter was that despite all appearances, God had promised to defend and work for His people. It also says He would give no one a reason to say “where is their God?”

So I shared this with mom, and these dreams became a promise to us that God would work for us, that He would cause good things to come from whatever was about to happen, that He would be glorified—and nothing could stop it.

But of course I imagined the best way for God to be glorified would be by working another miracle to heal her.

It wasn’t until my mom was intubated that I realized that might not be the case.

When she was about to be intubated, we all said our goodbyes knowing in the backs of our minds that it may be the last time we talked to her. And I think she knew too. Because her last words, from behind a breathing mask with gasping breaths, were “I love you. Jesus loves us. Whatever happens is for God’s glory. See you in the morning.”

Those words alone were a testament to what God was doing in her life…the process that had been taking place in her heart and mind for a long time. And I want to share this picture with you to explain more in detail.

My mom would SHOOT me if she knew I was showing you this.

She wouldn’t want anyone to remember this chapter of her life. But I think it’s necessary. Because this picture tells more about her strength than it does her looks. People won’t remember her looking like this, they’ll remember her as she always looked before. But if this picture can give any insight into her character so they’ll remember the strength of her heart and mind as well, then it’s worth it.

This was taken by my sister on what my mom had considered her worst day. She’d thought she’d made it out of her 2 weeks of whole brain radiation without losing her hair, but the day after her last treatment she woke up with half the hair she went to bed with. She was completely devastated and heartbroken. It was an identity crisis on top of everything she’d been through, it was insult added to injury. She went with my sister to rip the bandaid off and get her head shaved, picked up some scarves and a wig, and took this picture SMILING. Even with tears in her eyes, she smiled. Even on what she would consider her worst day, while running into battle with cancer guns blazing, she smiled. She always held onto hope despite what she knew was inevitable without divine intervention, and she never wanted anyone to feel sorry for her. It was a part of her character many didn’t know about, but I’m here to showcase it now.

She may not have wanted anyone to remember her like this, but I do. Not the way she looked; that was temporary. But this picture shows her character as what it really was, PURE GOLD refined through fire. And to me, she never took a more beautiful picture in her whole life. She carried her cross all the way to the end, and did so with grace in her heart and a smile on her face— because she didn’t look to what was seen, but what was unseen. The hope of glory beyond this life. And if there’s anything I want people to remember about my mom, it’s that. If there’s one thing I want to inherit from her and pass down to my daughter, it’s her unflinching faith in the face of adversity— the strength and fortitude to square up and look death in the eye, and tell it to its face that it has lost and Jesus Christ is victorious.

My mom did NOT lose her battle with cancer.

She won by a landslide.

You see, God perfected her faith and her character through this— but I don’t think that was the only purpose.

We saw God heal her more times than we can count. We saw full blown miracles performed on her behalf, red seas opened, resources materialize where there had been none, impossible situations turned completely around to heal her. God gave her 9 years beyond her initial death sentence from liver disease. We know God was fully capable of healing her this time too…hundreds upon hundreds of people were praying for Him to do so from all over the world…and yet He didn’t. Why? As it says in John 9:3, “So the works of God may be made manifest.”

All along we were thinking the “works of God” would be another miraculous healing. But I don’t think we were thinking big enough. Oh He did perform miracles— miracles to get her and the family down to Tennessee in time so we could all be together, and then He had her land in my own hospital in my home ICU, taken care of by my own personal friends who took wonderful care of her right up until the end. Miracles of mercy took place. But maybe “the works of God” that were manifest in my mom’s life were closer to the GREATEST work of God that He ever did — as it says in John 15:13 “greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for their friends.”

As you read this, chances are you either knew my mom personally or you know one of us personally. To be a friend to any of us was to be a friend with my mom. But more than she was a friend to any of us, she was a friend to Jesus. That friendship gave birth to a living, breathing faith in God, His promises and His fierce, unyielding love. God gives everyone a measure of faith, and He gives good things to us so that we can bless those around us.

I think that was my mom’s final gift to every one of us: her faith. Her final words overflowed with it, even though she was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, her cup was running over. She shares that faith with us now in the hopes that we would also find in Jesus the friend that she did, and left us with the promise that if we stayed the course, if we endured to the end, that we would see her in the morning.

In the most comforting conversation I ever had with my mom, on the way home from work one day, she said to me, “of course I want to live and am praying He will heal me…but if God would be glorified more without healing me, and people are saved because of it, I’d be okay with that.”

The whole purpose of the Gospel is to show people that although this world is awful with death and suffering and pain and tears, this is not how it was ever supposed to be…and it doesn’t have to be all there is. Jesus Christ laid down His life that God might be glorified in those who would accept Him, and that as many could be saved as possible.

My mom was willing to give her life so we would get a glimpse of that.

As much as we cried out to God to heal her, to give us more time with her, to give her more time with her 1 year old granddaughter…the words Jesus prayed in the garden before He sacrificed Himself for all of us were our prayer and the song we sang before her death. “Yet not my will, but Your will be done.”

And although the loss for us still living this life is unspeakable, the thought that God has a purpose for even this, and she was okay with it, gives us peace and hope beyond what anything else in this world can give.

We have hope of seeing her “in the morning.” That we will see her again face-to-face in her glorified, cancer-free body…never to experience pain or suffering or disease or loss again.

Not only that, but we also have hope that she will see all the friends and family that will be there too, as a result of her being willing to let God use her for their salvation, even to her last breath.

As she desired to the end, Glory to God.