Simple Faith

I had a funeral today: an old woman who was considered to be, I suppose, "developmentally disabled". She was single and lived with her sister and many dogs her whole life. She loved dogs and hoped to see her dogs Binkie, Melody, Billy Blue, and others, in heaven. Her sister died in 2000. She lived alone until she fell this winter, and her extended family discovered that she had cancer.

They took her to their small town to care for her; she lived in the nursing home where she loved to watch the birds (that's where her statement "not enough people watch birds" came from); she went to church with them almost every week. It was a little country church; she told her nephew and his wife that "she loved that nino church."

As she grew sicker and began to be in pain, her nephew's wife would often go to visit her and to care for her. She told this woman on one occasion, "I wish you didn't have to suffer." And she replied, "Jesus suffered on the cross for me. I can do this."

They told me I could share this story.