I do not know what warnings led to the diagnosis. For brain cancer, I’d expect maybe it was increasingly severe headaches. Whatever it was, it was a shock, a crushing blow of news coming soon after the celebration of their thirty-second wedding anniversary. And now, barely a month past the seemingly unbearable discovery, Stephanie Legleiter has passed on.

Although I’d never met her. I’d did know her husband, Kurt, and their son, Zach, through their video broadcasting work with/for Cowley College. Our interactions were quite brief but always pleasant. Stephanie worked as church secretary for Bible Christian Church in Ark City, where our friends Mark and Dianne Flickinger are fellow members.

Wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, neighbor, sojourner, colleague… how do you try to capture a lifetime of relationships in short description? Even the most common terms vary greatly in nuance of experience, nature of interaction, depth of feeling, shared feelings, translations of perceptions. Every loss and every person’s experience of it is different for each one of us.

And yet, we all feel some sense of pain and loss. Imagining that this was Randa, I choke on the imagination, my mind refusing to truly engage the challenge. Such change, such wrenching away of a hundred daily sharings, the complete shearing of primary anchors. It must feel quite like having a leg removed without benefit of anesthesia. Lurching forward with each step and the agonizing reminder of loss with every touch or glance about you.

Such loss, such pain, such testing of faith and foundation.

No matter how hard I try—and I admit I don’t want to try very hard—to visualize the gut-wrenching experience, I know that my greatest attempts to understand fall abysmally short of truly knowing what this is like for Kurt and his family. Even though I know that it must ache like acid in the veins, I have not lived through what they are living through. 

I pray that their faith is strong, that they firmly believe that “God is at work in all things for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” 

I pray that they will draw close to one another, share richly, love deeply, and gladly welcome the expressions of love, empathy, and sympathy that will be extended. 

I hope that their grieving will be healthy and healing, that their knowledge and expectation of resurrection and eternal reunion will be more visceral than cerebral. 

I pray that even in their deepest mournings of loss and separation, they will be able to truly celebrate every joy, pleasure, and blessing that was ever measured by Stephanie’s passing presence into their lives.

In the hugs of friends and family, and in every faltering expression of caring, I hope that they feel the arms of Jesus and hear his voice, and know that even in this he is near to them. 

And to all of us.