If I were God...

About a month before my husband's death, I told my children that he was going to die. He didn't want me to. He was convinced that he was not going to die. He felt certain that God was going to heal him, but I knew that he was going to die. The children needed to be prepared.

It was late one evening, the kids were in their PJ's and had just brushed their teeth. I had them sit down in the hallway right by the bathroom. I told them that their daddy was very sick, and he wasn't going to get better. He was going to die.

Their response was typical in that each child responded differently.

My eldest was quiet.
My daughter was upset, angry, and verbal.
My youngest didn't understand.

Through her tears Lizzy said, "What have we been praying for! All this praying has been a waste!" I explained that God doesn't always answer the way we want him to. She responded, "If I were God, I would heal daddy!" I held her as she cried and stuggled to know how to explain to my child that God's ways aren't our ways? "Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time." O. Chambers


My three year old son was completely confussed. He began to be silly and laugh. This angered Lizzy and she yelled at him.
"Ben, you shouldn't laugh! Daddy is dying!"
I explained to Liz that Ben was too little to understand. To this Ben put his hands on his hips and said,
"Yeah, Lizzy, I too little." :-) This made us all laugh.

I was surprised that the severity of my husband's illness was a surprise to my children. I assumed that they recognized that he was close to death. They had not. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor five years prior to his death. He had been sick almost all of their lives. For them it was normal for a dad to not be able to drive a car. It was normal that he coudn't read them a book or speak in complete sentences. Seizures, doctor's appointments, and medication were all a normal part of their lives. When I told them that he was going to die, Lizzy cried and said, "I wish you hadn't told me. I didn't know!"

David didn't want the children to know that he was dying. We kept it from them for almost five years. As he came closer to death, I knew that they needed to be told that he was dying. Children need to be told. A year prior to my husband's death, my friend's husband died from stomach cancer. Their three young children were not told that their dad was very ill. He, like my husband, did not want his children to know. He too believed that he would be healed. When my friend told her children that their dad died, one of her boys said, "Why didn't you tell us that he was that sick?" They were angry. I didn't want that for my children.

It is difficult, but children need to know. Not knowing doesn't make it better.