One year, six months and a few days before my Grandmother died, I requested for annual leave from work for a, seemingly, random week in December.
The dates were not one I usually picked because they were too soon after school holidays, and too early for Christmas shopping. And yet I chose them and they were scheduled into our work roster.
Two weeks before my leave was to start, my Grandmother 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 Grandmother 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 stayed 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.
My Grandmother’s cough worsened. Blood and bloody lumps seemed to pour out of her mouth. Doctors, at wit’s end, diagnosed her with lung cancer and had her moved to Lautoka Hospital, a 30-minutes ambulance ride away.
My Grandmother 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 during what was to be one of the most trying times of our lives.
I stayed with my Grandmother at Lautoka Hospital that entire week.
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.
I pray and hope that my testimony of how the faithfulness of God 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.