The Faithfulness of God

One year, six months and a few days before Tai Vilisi died, I requested annual leave from work for a random week in December.

I usually did not pick the dates because they were too soon after the school holidays and too early for Christmas shopping. Yet I chose them, and they were scheduled into our work roster.

Two weeks before my leave was to start, my Tai Vilisi began to cough up blood and was soon hospitalised at Nadi Hospital. Doctors ran tests, but the results always came back inconclusive.

My mother and sister took turns watching over my Tai Vilisi at the hospital. My mother would stay overnight with her, and my sister would go over in the morning, giving my mother time to come home, sleep and shower before returning to the hospital at night. I would go straight to the hospital after work and stay over until the end of visiting hours. The routine exhausted us. We were all in a daze of shock, amplified by inadequate rest and stress.

Tai Vilisi’s cough worsened. Blood and bloody lumps seemed to pour out of her mouth. Doctors, at their wit’s end, diagnosed her with lung cancer and had her moved to Lautoka Hospital, a 30-minute ambulance ride away.

She was admitted to Lautoka Hospital the weekend before my leave week. That is when those random dates started to make sense to me.

God chose that week in December for me because He knew that my family would need me to help look after our Grandmother. It was one of the most trying times of our lives.

I stayed with Tai Vilisi at Lautoka Hospital that entire week. I bathed her and made sure she ate. Things she did for me when I was a baby, I now did for her.

That one week in December was one week God showed me His faithfulness. His love, yes, that was always there, and, yes, His grace too. But His faithfulness to His word, His promises, was the anchor that steadied me. His faithfulness seemed to me as immovable as a mountain, and yet I could shelter under it in a cyclone. His faithfulness was like a new day and yet so familiar. It was wondrous and comfortable. I’d go and lean against it like I’d do against one of the old mango trees in our backyard.

God answered our prayers in ways that, at first, seemed odd and not a little confusing, but soon, His intentions and plans became clear.

My Grandmother was finally, and correctly, diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) and was moved, on the last weekend of my leave, to the national TB rehabilitation centre in Suva. My mother accompanied her. She recovered and returned home and lived for more than a year before she passed into eternal rest.

During that time, particularly during that week that I spent with my Grandmother in Lautoka Hospital, and countless times afterwards, until right now, and I know forevermore, God showed me that to be a woman of faith, of true and singular faith, is to be loyal and faithful and to trust Him. Trust Him, the eternal, ever-faithful God.

Tai Vilisi lived on for more than a year until our Heavenly Father called her home.

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I pray and hope that my testimony of how God’s faithfulness brought me through one of the most trying times in my life helps you to turn to Him in your own time of trouble and sorrow.

God bless you in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.