Nothing but a shadow

Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...

I have a vague and frightful memory from early childhood, awakening in a strange bedroom with unfamiliar shapes and shadows surrounding me. At first sight, it appeared as though a strong, large person was standing at the foot of the bed, looming over me, intent on harm. My heart leapt into my throat and began a violent pounding as my eyes first closed tightly and then reopened, growing wider and wider as I tried to focus on the ominous presence. When my eyes had adjusted to the available light, I realized I was looking at a bathrobe, hanging from a door hook. It took my heart awhile to believe what my mind was telling it, but eventually it stopped its wild beating and returned to its proper place.

Although memories from that age have more than dimmed with time, I suppose I had awakened during one of our infrequent trips from Texas to Iowa and the bathrobe I saw belonged to my mother's brother, Uncle Raymond.

A more frightening and more easily remembered sight occurred on I-25 southbound through the middle of Denver, when I was 18 or 19. We had spent a busy weekend, running hither, thither and yon, and were finally on our way home in the wee hours of the morning. I was behind the wheel and became mesmerized by the white lines blurring into a continuous ribbon. As we approached a widely banked curve I saw a semi trailer sideways across the road. Again, my heart, which apparently doesn't know its place, leapt into my throat and started that mad pounding. Refocusing, I realized that I had seen a large concrete building on the horizon and in my mesmerized state, had imagined it to be a trailer, directly in our path. Danny and company, who had been casually conversing all along, had no idea why my foot came off the gas pedal, nor why I let out an expletive born of fear.

When Bea, my dear friend and neighbor, died unexpectedly, I was the one who found her and summoned emergency personnel to her modest trailer home catty-corner from our own.

She had been battling throat cancer and had just completed her radiation therapy the week before. It had taken quite a toll on her, but when I saw her the day before her passing, there was nothing to indicate that she would be gone 24 hours later. However, when she failed to answer the phone the afternoon she died, my heart reacted much the same as it had when the bathrobe xwas filled with evil intent and the building became a jack-knifed wreck in front of my eyes. When I went over to her house, key in hand, it was all I could do to force myself over the threshold. Praying that I would startle her at the kitchen table or coming down the hallway, I entered, tentatively calling her name and getting no response. I continued down the narrow hallway, toward her bedroom, the only room I had never before entered in her home, and there she lay, apparently sound asleep. I almost turned around and left, afraid to frighten her by waking her, but her beloved cat, who had greeted me at the door, gave a plaintive meow and I stepped one foot further in the valley of the shadow of death.

And discovered that it really is nothing but a shadow.

I knew she was gone. I didn't expect any response to my touch, and there was none. Nor did I expect any visible reaction to me calling her name, and there wasn't, not so much as a flicker of an eyelash. I immediately called 911 and waited with her until help arrived, stepping away only long enough to call her son. My heart resumed its normal place in my chest and its normal beat as I discovered that this terrible specter of death was naught but a fraud and a lie. Nothing but a shadow.

... I will fear no evil...

All my life I had feared this monster, the dreadful presence of death. Not my own of course, for I could never imagine myself dying. I'm not sure any of us can. But to be with someone who was dead, or dying -- what a frightful thing that would be.

... for thou art with me...

Although Bea was gone, all I felt was peace. A sad peace, because I missed her smile already and knew I would miss her every day, but still, peace. A sad peace, because I knew that her son and daughter-in-law and her many cousins would be even more lonesome for her smile than I already was, but still, peace reigned.

...thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me...

When this shadow passes over us, because it has and it will again, remember carefully the promises and our part in partaking of them. We can be like Rachel, weeping, refusing to be comforted (Matthew 2:18), or we can know the fullness and the peace of God's presence through his Son Jesus, who has in fact defeated death, once for all.

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" I Corinthians 15:55 (NIV)