janna's story

what god taught me through the grief of losing my sister

By Janna Page (with a little zhooshing from Lexi King)

My sister Heidi was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 44 and was given less than 6 months to live.  She went on to live 3.5 years after that “death sentence” of a diagnosis.  Presently, I am 42.  Now, reflecting on our ages, that humbles me more than I dare imagine - that stark realization that we can be called to leave this earthly life at any moment.

I’m the sixth child of seven.  My sister, Heidi was the second.  She was nine years older than me.  I have wonderful memories of my sister as a child.  

One of my sweetest memories I have of her was when we were kids. We would often stand in front of a mirror together.  She would hold my face next to hers as we were looking in the mirror and then ask,“Do you think we look like sisters?”  I, of course, knew when I was looking at Heidi, I was looking at a beauty queen (she actually was one), and me? I was most certainly in the awkward stage of adolescence which made me quick to point out all of the obvious differences that stood out to me.  But Heidi..she had this incredible ability to make people see things in yourself that you hadn’t seen before.  She would thoughtfully point out one feature..and then another..and before long, she got me to see what she saw and you know what? We DID look like sisters.  And that was her true essence.  That was Heidi. 

An incredible ability to make you look at something again. Something you thought you knew, something that was so completely familiar, and yet she would open up a whole new perspective to see as you had never before.  That was one of her memorable gifts.

So many things flood my mind when I think of my big sister, Heidi.  She was a red-head.  She loved to sing. She was an avid reader.  She was responsible, hard-working, hard-nosed, frugal, supremely talented, goal-oriented and a confident woman as well.  She was beautiful outside. She was beautiful inside too.

I think the thing I miss most about Heidi is her wisdom.  She was very wise and very grounded.  She had the ability to cut right through the fluff.  She wasn’t into frilly chit-chat.  If she had something to say, she would say it.  She didn’t just fill the room with idol talk and I always dug that about her. 

She and I didn’t live in the same state for 15 years.  When I had the opportunity to come home to Utah, we would make a point to get up early to meet.  We loved taking long walks, the special kind before the rest of the world got up.  I so miss those talks.  I miss the wisdom she poured into me.  I was genuinely blessed by it.

As I began to grieve losing my sister, I thought a lot about the sovereignty of God.

The biggest shock to overcome, outside of her age at diagnosis, was that my sister Heidi was extremely healthy.  She did not smoke, did not drink alcohol or even coffee.  She exercised religiously.  She ate “clean”.   She was an “early to bed, early to rise” type of person.  She loved to take long naps on the weekends.

She approached the diagnosis as very “matter of fact.”  That’s not to say she was void of emotion, but she never wallowed in self-pity.  Never had the “why-me’s?”   In fact, often she would say, “Why not me?”  She went down the list and gave her explanation as to why it was better for her to have this diagnosis than anyone else in our family.  She never looked back.  She just moved forward with the information the doctors gave her and was determined to make the most of whatever time God gave her.  I don’t know how she did it, but she pretty much continued her 40+ hour work-week throughout all of her treatments.

I think another reason Heidi never had the “why-me’s” over her diagnosis was because she was an ardent student of the Bible. She had become a Christian about 13 years prior to her death and she was always reading, studying and meditating on the words in the Bible.  I watched her lean hard into the promises of God.  She didn’t view her life on Earth with such fear or fragility that she was unable to accept whatever God put in her path.  I think at her core she knew that God had a reason for this cancer.

To be honest..death was new territory for me.

I know this may sound strange; but up to this point, even at age 38, I had never had anyone really close to me die before.  I had lost grandparents, but they were very elderly and overall, I wasn’t that close to them.  Heidi was the first one.  

It sent me into a tailspin once we got closer to her end.  I thought my world was collapsing.  I was having night terrors.  I was tired all the time; but at the same time, I couldn’t sleep.  Only by God’s grace, I had the energy and strength to continue raising my two small, very energetic children who were 2 and 4 at the time.  I was reminded daily of the words of the Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians, “For the Lord said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

As she entered her third year of treatments, Heidi’s cancer pushed back with a vengeance.  She rapidly started to lose weight.  Her pain became almost unbearable some days.  Although we all continued to pray for her health to be restored, it was clear this evil cancer in her body would take no prisoners.  It was coming for her life and it inspired a new phase of closeness in my relationship with God in mine. 

One of the books I read that helped me the most was Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller.   The author walked me through the biblical narrative of how God is with us even in our times of suffering.  God never leaves us.  When life strips everything away, the only thing left standing is God.  “God is all you need when God is all you’ve got.”   This was the first time in my life I truly experienced what it was to enter into a space of complete dependence on God.

I remember through so many, many tears knowing that God was there.  He hadn’t abandoned me.  He knew my heart was breaking seeing my beautiful sister be ravaged by this horrible disease.  But I had this unexplainable assurance, this hope that this earthly life was not the end.  I guess it was the feeling of “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).  In the Bible, Jesus talked a lot about life on Earth, but even more about life after death, about “eternal life”.  What was in front of me that my eyes could see was not all there was.  This was my moment to consider if I really believed this..did I trust God’s words about the hope of Heaven and eternal life with Him?  Even as I had the moments laid out on the floor in a puddle of tears, I clung to that hope and assurance of eternal life.  Her life was headed to an end and a beginning all at once.

Another way of coping with my grief was music.  I would go on long walks playing my “Praise & Worship” playlist.  Those songs helped me through some pretty dark days.  I don’t think of myself as particularly gifted at prayer.  I seem to struggle articulating my thoughts into words.  But singing hymns and songs of praise was my way of getting those thoughts out.  God used the melodies and the lyrics to sustain me.  I had nothing but prayer and praises to sing to the Creator of life. For the life I was given, for the love I have for my sister who I knew was rapidly approaching her heavenly meeting with Jesus, our King. Bittersweet to say the least.

I’ve heard it said that grief is a force that I could either let push me away from God in anger or toward Him into a closeness I never knew possible.

Although I had considered myself a Christian for about 17 years by this time, my experience with God was very casual.  I was not very intentional with my commitment to God.  Yes, I went to church and I loved attending the women’s bible studies; but looking back on it now, I think I was learning a lot of information about God and the Bible but I wasn’t experiencing God.  My prayer life was dry and stagnant, almost non-existent.  I guess I was like a lot of people in this world-when life was going well, church and God were relegated to the backseat.  I was still firmly in the driver’s seat of my life.  I don’t think I truly appreciated God for His beauty, His power and His love.  

In fact, not long after Heidi’s diagnosis, I signed up for a women’s bible study at my church on the book of Revelation. I specifically remember when I read a verse in Revelation and KNEW God was speaking directly to me.  Revelation 3:1-3 when the angel of the church in Sardis spoke, “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.  Wake up!  Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God.  Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent.”  

HELLO!!  That verse smacked me right between the eyes!  In fact, I remember talking to Heidi about this verse over the phone.  I had a difficult time articulating to her why this verse rocked my world, but now I understand.  God was warning me.  He wanted to prepare me for things that were about to unfold. 

Watching my sister battle cancer woke me up.  When I walked through this fiery furnace, a lot of the non-essential things that I loved and clung to in life burned up.  Through Heidi’s death, God deepened my walk with Him and brought me to a whole new level of reading, understanding and hearing Him speak to me through His Word.  I love what it says at the end of Job, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”  I had “seen” God through all of my suffering.  God became more than just words in a book to me.  God has now been imprinted on my heart.

I think, had I not experienced this pain and suffering, I would not have grown in the ways that I needed to.  Maybe God had to take something from me so precious that I would finally get out of my spiritual “cruise control”.  The book of Hebrews talks about the Lord’s discipline.  It reads, “The Lord disciplines those he loves….Endure hardship as discipline….God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” 

Those words make me want to cry.  Not because of the unpleasant aspects of hardships but because we can share in his holiness!   Hardships are a conduit to His Holiness???  That’s so strange!  From a worldly perspective, it seems so counter-intuitive.  But I believe it can be true!  I’m reading a book called Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris.  Her words spoke to me in a very profound way on this subject: “When a place or time seems touched by God, it is an overshadowing, a sudden eclipsing of my priorities and plans.  But even in terrible circumstances and calamities, in matters of life and death, if I sense that I am in the shadow of God, I find light, so much light that my vision improves dramatically.  I know that holiness is near.”

I have found an unexpected hope and joy in the healing process.

It took a long time to get over the part of grief that is all encompassing and very physical, the acute grief.  I still grieve.  I still cry when I think about Heidi and how much I miss her, but my grief is different now.  God healed my wounded heart.  The deep scar is still there, but there is HOPE. 

I love Psalm 126 where it says, “Those who sow in tears, will reap with songs of joy.”  If I truly believe the Lord to be my Truth, Way and Life, then I have to accept His sovereign plan and purpose.  His wisdom is certainly greater than mine. I know this life is not the end and I will see Heidi again.  And I know that Heidi is with our Lord.  That gives me great joy.

I kept returning to now familiar questions: Is God trustworthy and is He in control?

When my final acceptance of her death came, it was really my acceptance of God’s sovereignty.  Who am I to tell God how long someone should live?  God, in his infinite wisdom is far better equipped than I to know the purpose behind this.  He knows the intricate details of life’s tapestry being woven in our lifespan….not me!  I finally accepted this fact and knew I had to trust Him without knowing the answers.  It’s a ruthless trust!

Heidi had a legacy for me to carry forward.

About a year before my sister passed, she started an interview program where she talked to people she knew about the HOPE they found that got them through life’s darkest days.  It is called “Conversations on HOPE”.  She asked me to carry it on when she passed.  I’ve interviewed friends that have beat cancer and other terminal illnesses, lost children to suicide, have started African orphanages and some that teach yoga to prison inmates.  Amazing stuff!  They come from different backgrounds, but all have found HOPE and strength in their own unique way.  It never ceases to amaze me to see how people are comforting and helping others in profound ways after experiencing tragedy.

Carrying on the Conversations on HOPE ministry for Heidi makes me think of a Jewish poem often read before Kaddish, which is an Aramaic prayer service in the Jewish tradition.  I think it sums up well the best legacy we can leave once we depart this life for the next:

When I die give what’s left of me away

to children and old men that wait to die. 

And if you need to cry,

cry for your brother walking the street beside you.

And when you need me, put your arms around anyone

and give them what you need to give me.

I want to leave you something,

something better than words or sounds.

Look for me in the people I’ve known or loved,

and if you cannot give me away,

at least let me live in your eyes and not in your mind.

You can love me best by letting hands touch hands,

and by letting go of children that need to be free.

Love doesn’t die, people do.

So, when all that’s left of me is love,

give me away.

Those words are the perfect segue into the few thoughts I want to leave you with.

This earthly-life is not our home.  We have a heavenly home.  I don’t know what it is about this earthly life experience that makes it so easy to act like it is all there is. I do know that having eternal life in our heavenly home will be oh so much better than the best days we’ve experienced in this temporary, earthly-life.  Our greatest earthly joy is only a foreshadow of what is to come.  We will be in the presence of the Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth!   A thought I can hardly fathom.  When we set our eyes on our own momentary circumstances and get drawn into the busy, self-reliant and self-focused flow of our culture, no wonder we lose sight of the life to come.  Heaven becomes more and more real and comforting in the “here and now” when we let God open our eyes to how awesome He is. 

I’ve had a very vivid dream since Heidi’s death, as I wonder what eternal life will be like.  In this dream I am sitting around a large, longer table and there in front of me is an extraordinary feast of a meal.  There are people sitting at the table that I knew and those I thought I knew, but honestly had a hard time recognizing how I knew them.  The feast was glorious, but we weren’t eating.  We were just enjoying the love of those around the table.  Laughing, talking, completely at ease and happy.  Months after the dream, I read a scripture passage in the book of Isaiah that stopped me in my tracks: “On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine - the best of meats and the finest of wines.  On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.”  Isaiah 25: 6-8

I know there is room at this table for me.  I know there is room at this table for you.  I don’t know when my name will be called to go to this table - I still have my kids to raise, a husband to love, some sharp edges to smooth out and a tongue to tame - but I have peace knowing that there is a table when it is my time and there the Lord and my big sister wait for me.  

Heidi Whitman Wangsgaard (November 25, 1969 - May 4, 2017)