My Jesus, I Love Thee

My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine;
for thee all the follies of sin I resign.
My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art thou;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

I love thee because thou hast first loved me,
and purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree;
I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

In mansions of glory and endless delight;
I'll ever adore thee in heaven so bright;
I'll sing with the glittering crown on my brow;
if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now.

My favorite hymn was written in 1864 by William Featherstone. I don't think he had any comprehension when he wrote this song the impact it would have on my life. I am not sure that I had ever paid it much attention until 2003. Sure, I had heard it but never really listened to it.

In August 2003, I was an intelligence officer serving in Abilene, Texas. My best friend Lydia was spending the weekend with me in my shoe-box sized apartment when my mom called early Sunday morning to tell me that my 102 year old grandmother had suffered a mild heart attack in Nashville. She told me to sit tight and she would let me know if I needed to come home but she thought Mom-Mom would pull through like she had at every other point in her long life. But the Holy Spirit was urging me towards Nashville and I am so thankful I chose to allow myself to be open to the Spirit's leading. I needed to be with my mom and my Mom-Mom; no matter if she was going to pull through.

This precious woman of faith I loved so completely was suffering; a woman who had loved her husband through his crazy life-long devotion to Jesus Christ and who had borne 6 perfect children - all who would grow to love and serve the Lord in their own capacities. Here suffered this incredible woman whose hands had picked cotton for years on end in the dead Texas summer heat yet this woman's hands had baked me and Kelly countless cookies and bandaged countless boo-boos. This woman had seen Charles Lindbergh land his broken plane in her cotton field, for crying out loud! My whole life I had needed my Mom-Mom and now it was her turn to need.

I left Abilene on Monday, 18 August 2003 for Nashville. When I got to the nursing home, my Mom-Mom's lungs had begun to fill with fluid and she was petrified because she couldn't breathe. My mom was sitting on the bed holding her sweet mother as she writhed to get air into her body. The fear that had completely overcome my grandmother was more than we could bear. I will never forget the desperation that my mom, Mom-Mom and I all felt in that moment alone in the room together. I think it was then that we realized that we had very little time left with our Mom-Mom. She would go into these spells, fighting against the fluid until finally she succumbed to the morphine that the doctors were giving her to comfort her a few days following that initial heart attack.

But before the morphine took over her body and she drifted into la-la land on Tuesday, she had many lucid and fun moments. Tuesday morning, the rest of the family had arrived into Nashville from New Jersey and California to be with our grandmother. My cousins Karen and Derek and I were starving so we decided to run 5 minutes down the road to Kroger in Bellevue to pick up lunch for everyone. I went over to kiss my grandmother and tell her I loved her. She said "Where are you going?" like she couldn't believe I was leaving her at that moment. I told her that we were going to get everyone something to eat. She said "Well... don't be long" and then she told me that she loved me. Those were her last words to me.

While we were at the grocery store, she had another surge of fluid and that was the final beginning of the end. She never was lucid again. Yet she was a fighter. She hung on til the stroke of midnight on Thursday, 21 August 2003. Her daughters, including my mom, along with many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were hovered around her and the haunting words of "My Jesus, I Love Thee" were playing softly on the small CD player in her room. She was surrounded by love and several times in the days before her death, she would wake to tell us that she had just seen her mom and dad, her husband - my Papa Eddie (who we named Noah after) who had passed in 1969, and her brothers and sisters. She told us in one of her lucid moments that they had each told her that they were waiting for her to join them. So when she drew her last breath on this earth, she went Home knowing how much she was loved and that each of us would continue to long for the day when we will each join her at the foot of the Throne of our King.

On this Good Friday, I woke up singing this song and have just been reflecting on the meaning of this day. Obviously, I am not comparing my grandmother's death with the death of my Savior - I tell that story to give you the background for why that is my favorite hymn and what it means to me. When I hear the words "I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow. If ever I loved thee, my Jesus tis now" I remember the hope that filled my spirit as I stood next to my dying grandmother who was standing on the threshold of eternity with her King and I envied her. Because of those thorns, my Mom-Mom, me, you, all of us who accept Him as our Lord have the promise that we will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Hallelujah!

For me, this day is the saddest day in all of history. Yet it is a day that is filled with so much hope, and if not for hope, humanity has nothing. None of us can fully comprehend the sacrifice that was made on this day thousands of years ago. But I am thankful that God loved ME so much that He gave His ONLY Son so that I can have eternal life. And to know that if it was just me or just you on this planet, He would have done it all for just ONE of us because we are His children.

I look forward to this weekend all year. I am married to a Godly, wonderful man who is the spiritual leader of this home. We have made it our tradition for the last 4 years to watch "The Passion of the Christ" only on the night before Easter Sunday. We will not watch it any other time during the year because we never want to be immune to the scenes we see on our screen. For us, it is the closest visual representation we might ever have of what happened all those years ago.

I pray that if you are reading this and are not a believer, that you will feel with absolute certainty that you are so loved and that there is never a greater sacrifice that could be made for you than the sacrifice Jesus made all those years ago. He chose to allow himself to be the sacrifice that would pave the way for each of us to enter eternity with total peace and hope and life everlasting.