Elaine Marie Cooper Author

Historical Fiction That Grabs Your Heart and Feeds Your Soul

grief

Life is a Treasure

by 4 Comments

 

This week my family is treasuring the life of a new baby girl, born to our younger son and his wife. What a joy! We have eagerly awaited her birth for these many months now and breathed a huge sigh of relief when all went smoothly with the delivery. As a nurse, I’m all too aware of the complications that can lead to heartache, so seeing my son and daughter-in-law on Facetime hold their precious gift was a joy beyond measure. I have my airplane reservation already made to visit them very soon and hold the little one in person!!

Another family is treasuring the life of their daughter this week, as well. Sadly, cancer snuffed out the life of 11-year-old Ava, daughter of my older son’s friends from high school. We grieve deeply for this family, remembering the pain of losing our own daughter to cancer 14 years ago.

Life is so fragile and often taken for granted. We go about our day, planning for tomorrow, assuming all will be well. We think we are immune from disasters or diseases—unless they strike on our doorstep, threatening those we love. Then we are forced to face the uncomfortable truth that life is a treasure, never to be taken for granted. And that each breath of existence can be halted at any moment.

So where is our hope in the midst of such despair? It is with Jesus Christ, our treasure in heaven, Who will never leave us or forsake us. Despite the pain we experience here on earth and the fragile nature of life, we can cling to that truth that He loves us. Despite the heartache we see all around us, we can know there is an eternity awaiting us where there is no fear, no tears, and no pain. It is the ultimate joy that awaits us. It is our true home for those who believe in the Savior who died for our sins.

 

Will you be ready when eternity is just a breath away?

 

th-1

“Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Phillipians 3:20 NIV

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going…I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14: 1-4, 6-7 NIV

 

 

 

 

Webinar Interview – “Bethany’s Calendar”

by 2 Comments

I can think of nothing in my life that was as devastating as losing my daughter to brain cancer. And when I felt that inner “call” to write about that experience, I wished I could ignore it. But I knew it was pointless to argue with God.

The result was the book known as “Bethany’s Calendar.” It won the Selah award for best nonfiction memoir in 2015, but the award itself pales with the impact the book has made in encouraging others and giving hope in the midst of despair.

 

This past week I had the privilege of being interviewed about my daughter, the impact on my family, and the ways the Lord has used my daughter’s testimony to inspire many.

You can watch the webinar at this link anytime. Just click here and go to Episode 32. I pray you are blessed.

The story of my daughter's journey with cancer.
The story of my daughter’s journey with cancer.

 

Fallacy of Closure

by 4 Comments

I only half paid attention to the news the other day but one word I heard caught my attention: Closure. It was made in reference to the killing of the terrorists who were responsible for the embassy slaughter in Benghazi. Now the family members of the victims could have a sense of closure, the report stated.

I bristled at the suggestion. Closure? When you’ve lost a loved one?

What exactly does closure mean? The dictionary defines it as a sense of resolution or conclusion. The term was brought into popular use in the 1990’s when the “Need for Closure Scale” was adopted by behavioral scientists. It was developed for individuals with a high need for order and predictability in their lives.

What a fallacy. Our lives can never be predictable. Anyone who has lived even a few short years understands the unexpected can happen. Trains are delayed. Flights cancelled. Car accidents take lives. Cancer is discovered. Our lives could be described as an “adventure” perhaps—but predictable?

After writing the memoir of my daughter, Bethany, who died of a brain tumor, I was asked if writing the book somehow gave me a sense of closure.

 

The story of my daughter's journey with cancer.
The story of my daughter’s journey with cancer.

I told this person that I find closure an interesting word. It seems to imply that one can get over the death of a child or other loved one who is torn from our lives here on earth. In some ways, I think it helps onlookers be more comfortable. They don’t have to act like the grieving person still suffers.

 

In fact there is a part of those who are left behind that will always suffer.

 

If you lose a limb, you learn to adjust to its loss. You make accommodations for its absence. Yet the nerve cells in your brain are still connected to that limb. Often, amputees talk about “phantom pain” that makes them feel the actual presence of that missing body part. And yet, the limb is gone. Never forgotten. Always missed.

 

The fallacy of closure is that one never resolves the heartache. It becomes accepted as a part of your new life. But the pain never closes.

Des Moines Oct 0865

 

 

Is Jesus Really All I Need?

by 5 Comments

Today would have been my daughter Bethany’s 35th Birthday.

Today is also the day that I will bring a small gift bag with a toy and gift card for another baby girl born on this date. It has become my husband’s and my tradition. I bring the gift bag to a nurse at a local maternity unit and ask her to give the bag to the first baby girl born on December 12. I briefly tell the nurse why and then when they have a look of compassion melt into their face, I thank them and leave before my tears begin to start.

It is our way of honoring Bethany’s memory every year.

But this year, the sadness seems deeper. It has been a year of more loss: The deaths of my Mom and a friend. And I lost a daughter-in-law to divorce.

It’s not that the year did not have many blessings and I am grateful for those. But during the holidays, losses seem enhanced. They make the cloudy days a bit darker and the Christmas lights less bright.

DSCN3966

So in seasons of pain and sadness, is Jesus really all I need?  Can He really be my comforter and my all in all?

The answer is “yes,” if I have faith and trust in HIS ways and not my own.

We were never promised comfort in this world, nor freedom from pain and heartache. It does not take more than a few moments of watching news to reveal this sad fact. But I know one way to pull out of my own self-wallowing is to focus on others needs. To pray for others like Pastor Saeed who is imprisoned in Iran for his faith in Jesus. To pray for a friend who’s husband died suddenly this year. To pray for a homeless person on the street.

And to pray that God would show me how to make a difference in others lives in some tangible way—to be a blessing to them in their need.

When I bring the gift in Bethany’s honor to the maternity ward, I always pray that the gift card will go to someone who truly needs it. I pray it will bless them.

And I pray that, if you are experiencing loss in this Christmas season, you will keep focused on what is truly important: Sharing Jesus’ love with others.

 

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter: 1:6-9 NIV

 

 

 

 

Remembering Bethany

by 11 Comments

Today, October 20th, 2013, marks the tenth anniversary of our daughter Bethany’s Homecoming. Not a college homecoming event, mind you. It was her final homecoming to heaven.

The discovery of her brain tumor shortly after her 23rd Birthday was a shock, to say the least. Months of treatment followed. Our lives were flung into a pit of despair, exhaustion, and grief, while our desperate faith clung to the hem of God’s garment as He said to us, “Trust me.” And we did. And we still do.

God never promised that our lives would be without sorrow or challenges that would feel much worse than a blow with a two by four. But He did promise He would never leave us or forsake us.

While many of my friends and even distant relatives only know Bethany as “my daughter who died from a brain tumor,” she was so much more.

 

Bethany and I, a year before we knew about the cancer
Bethany and I, a year before we knew about the cancer

She was the short one in the family, nearly a foot shorter than her older brother, Ben. But Bethany had what I always described as a “tall personality,” with more spunk and determination than all the rest of us put together.

When she was only two-years-old, her Daddy taught her the Shel Silverstein poem about a Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. The words still play in my mind as I can envision her rise to her full, midget-like stature and say the entire poem to amazed listeners. She delighted in the performance!

When her little brother, Nate, was born, she wanted to mother him to the point where I had to intervene. “If you do everything for him, he’ll never learn to do it himself,” I would gently say to her. She backed off—just a bit! The two of them were close their entire lives.

She admired her older brother, Ben, so much. In her last months she told him that she’d be watching him from heaven as he flew his military jet. I overheard her say to him, “I’ll tell everyone up there, ‘Look, there’s my brother!’” She was so proud of his service to our country.

Rather than just remember her as a cancer patient, I love to remember Bethany’s delightful legacy. She was a defender of the weak, a friend to the friendless, a comforter to the elderly in nursing homes, a brilliant student, a hilarious jokester, a believer in Jesus Christ, and as genuine a person as they come.

Daisies: Bethany's Favorite Flower
Daisies: Bethany’s Favorite Flower

Her writing awed and amazed me. She dreamed of being a writer but those dreams were not in God’s plans.

I never dreamed that I would carry on her hoped-for legacy by becoming an author. I wish that she could have become the writer instead. But our ways are not God’s ways.

Bethany’s favorite Bible verse was Jeremiah 29:11: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

Reading that verse on her tombstone, her brother Ben said, “In a way, God did take care of her future by bringing her home to Him in heaven.”

Indeed. And someday we can all be united again in the heavenly realm. That is our ultimate hope—our ultimate joy as we remember my daughter, Bethany, on this day of her Homecoming Anniversary.

 

 

Life and Death

by 17 Comments

I’m sitting at my mother’s bedside and she is dying.

It is not an unexpected event since she is 99. But the sheer rapidity of the onset of pneumonia took us all by surprise. She was playing a game with my sister last Saturday. On Sunday she was reading the library books I had picked up for her and anticipating her grandson’s visit this week. By Tuesday, she was short of breath and feverish. By the next Saturday—today—she is unresponsive and near the end. [Read more…] about Life and Death