As I walked with Paul and Maggie into the reception area of her doctor’s office, a nurse opened her arms to Maggie and hugged her close. She then escorted us into the exam room where we waited for the doctor. In a manner of minutes he opened the door and came in. After Paul introduced me as Maggie’s sister, her doctor leaned in and gave Maggie a long and tender embrace. The gesture surprised me.
Maggie sat on the exam table with distended belly and sunken, yet hopeful crystal clear, blue eyes. We all tried to read the doctor’s expression as he opened her 2” thick medical file. For the next half hour he read and interpreted the results of each test taken the previous week. Maggie’s countenance did not reveal any fear when she heard those awful words, “aggressive liver cancer.”
Her body had been her enemy for years. Lung cancer required cutting away a lung lobe 10 years ago; Crohn’s disease and the removal of her colon followed. Subsequently, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and later shingles which attacked her eye, face and head for months (and which she shared with me was the most painful of all her ailments). Then 8 months ago, a fall down several steps broke her shoulder and hip, causing an emergency hip replacement followed by months of painful physical therapy. And only recently she was required to have extensive oral surgery. If you didn’t know Maggie, you would have no idea of the pain she lived with everyday. Her enduring fight for life overshadowed any self-pity that might have sidelined someone with less courage and zest for life. I often marveled at her tenacity and strength. Daily she tenderly gardened portions of their 12 acre mountain property in northern California. She had an amazing capacity for appreciating nature and life.
While in our mid-20’s she prayed with me to invite Christ to be her Lord and Savior. Over the years, her quiet, private love affair with God expressed itself through loving others, even strangers. Our niece wrote recently, “Whenever you were around her you felt good about yourself.”
A few days after the doctor visit I went back to Colorado with confidence that I had not said my last goodbye to her. I knew she would fight the disease, not so much for herself, but for the love of her life, Paul, and sons, Tony, Michael and John.
I was home just two days when I learned she was back in the hospital and would be starting chemo there. I called her everyday, working at not showing my fear but engaging in short, encouraging conversations. In our last coherent talk, she made the point of telling me, “Don’t worry, honey. I’m ready either way. I have loved Him all my life, and I’m ready.” She then went on to name the qualities that she loved about me. I interrupted, choking back the tears because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. After a long pause, she said something that struck me as very odd, “Sam,’ (her nickname for me), ‘Don’t not be who you are.’” I thought about that double-negative for a moment, and then asked, “What do you mean?”
“Don’t not be who you are,” she repeated.
Another long pause as I tried to make sense of her words and asked a second time, “What do you mean?” Silence. She was dozing. I decided to tuck away her comment in my memory, hoping it would be made clear to me in the future.
“I love you,” I said
“I love you, too.” (kiss, kiss, kiss)
I didn’t want to hang up. “I’ll call you tomorrow, ok?”
Just three weeks from her first doctor visit for this ailment, and after just one chemo treatment, Maggie’s lungs couldn’t sustain her. She went to be with her Lord on May 27th.
In the midst of deep grief, I reminisced about my only sister’s beautiful spirit; her quality of love and her unrelenting generosity. She gave of herself and what she had so unashamedly. I cherished what a weeping hospital nurse shared with me as we stood outside the room where she died. “Maggie had a beautiful soul. We all loved her.”
A few days later, I was struggling with how different I am from Maggie and praying that God would show me how I can be more like my sister. I had been thinking of her love affair with people and with life; pondering it for days, wishing I could be more like her. What was it about her that made strangers want to embrace her? What was it that caused a former employer to openly sob when he heard she had cancer again? What did she have that I need? We both have your Spirit, Lord, so why don’t I express your love like she did?
In the midst of my prayer her words resounded in my heart as loud as if she were there in person, ”Don’t not be who you are!”
Don’t not be who you are!!!! I am confident that God chose to speak that warning through my sister during our last meaningful conversation, so I would hear it in context after she was gone. I get it! I must not try to be who I am not. I need to be who God made me to be.
1 John 4:7, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” Maggie’s love for others came from God. She allowed God to express His love for others through her. I should not try to be like my sister, but to allow my Lord to express His love through me as she did ─ to draw so near my God that I can do nothing less than love.
Psalm 139 says, “He knit me together in my mothers’ womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God knit me together in the same womb where He gave life to my sister two years earlier. He made her one way and me another. Both wonderful. Each with a unique purpose but a joint objective: to bring glory to God with our lives by loving Him and others.
Thank you, my sister Maureen Ann (Maggie) Dowling Beers, for that final gift of truth from your heart and God’s, “Don’t not be who you are!” Be who you are. Be who God created you to be – for His glory. What a gift.
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