David Kinnaman reflects on the death of his wife Jill and the power of scripture as part of our Lenten blog series. 08/03/2023
My team and I converged in Denver, Colorado, to visit a client. We spent the better part of the morning talking through our team’s findings and recommendations.
My phone vibrates. I take a quick look at the screen, mostly to make sure one of my children isn’t trying to contact me. It’s a text from my wife, Jill.
“My headache is killing me. Can you call?”
Inwardly, I groan, not because her text represents an interruption, but because this reminder that her pain isn’t going away breaks my heart. I hate seeing her like this. Migraines have hounded her for several years, but she’s always managed—until, that is, the last month or so, when they’ve become unbearable.
“Excuse me,” I murmur to no one in particular as the presentation continues, and slide into the hallway.
“Jill? Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Dave, these headaches are so bad.” She falls silent, struggling to get through the agony, to find her way to the other side of it. Something about her silence tells me it’s not just the pain she’s trying to navigate; she’s not sure how much she wants to worry me.
“Honey, you should just go straight to the ER, okay? They’ll give you some pain medication. You need relief from this.”
Jill is tough. Always has been. She never draws attention to herself until she’s at the end of her rope—which is why, stepping back into the meeting, I find it nearly impossible to concentrate.
Jerry, a friend, asks at the next break what’s going on. He can see I’m distracted. I explain what’s happening with Jill. He listens and, when I finish, looks me straight in the eye and says, “Dave, you should get on a plane and go home. Your wife needs you.”
His words feel like a bucket of cold water, waking me up to reality. I know he’s right.
It will be good to be home. To be with her.
Because I bought my ticket at the last minute, I’m in a middle seat with large men on either side. I sigh, pull my elbows in, put my headphones on and decide that I’ll distract myself with work as soon as we reach altitude.
The ascent out of Denver is bumpy, and I pinball back and forth between my seatmates. When the ride finally smooths out and the seatbelt light turns off, I take out my laptop, feeling preemptive relief at the welcome distraction. I purchase Wi–Fi for the flight; the little icon on my computer lights up. Technology is like magic, my son Zack often says. What a miracle of communication to be traveling at 500 hundred miles per hour, 30,000 thousand feet off the ground, with a device in front of me that sends signals into space and back again, keeping me in touch with the people I love. With Jill.
A text comes through. It’s from Jill. One short sentence. It changes my life forever.
“The scan shows a tumour.”
June 5, 2017.
That calamitous day is etched in our story. It was the beginning of a season of trauma for Jill and for our family. For the next three years until her passing, Jill bravely endured all sorts of medical traumas: brain surgeries, radiation, rounds of chemo, lumbar punctures, infusions, seizures, cancer recurrences and more. There were other traumas, too: financial, vocational, spiritual, emotional. Our lives were defined by managing our way through the big and small traumas of caring for her, by the constant effort to find our footing on endlessly changing terrain.
There were good moments, days and weeks during this time as well. An awareness of the brevity of life can–if we are able to see it–cause the good stuff to be even more precious.
Still, dealing with trauma, living in its long shadow and forging a new normal, defined our experience. I learned the hard way to better understand the universality of trauma: that to be human is to endure and, by God’s grace, to flourish through the macro and micro traumas of life.
Having grown up in a Christian home—in a pastor’s household, no less—I’ve been a believer in Jesus and a person devoted to the Word for as long as I can remember. At ages six or seven, my sister and I used to record ourselves preaching! I love the Bible at an almost cellular level.
Yet through the ups and downs of Jill’s brain cancer, I had to carve out a new relationship to the scriptures. I was so shocked and angry and simply overwhelmed, I couldn’t even open the Bible. Then, after a period of softening, I opened the Psalms; my hollowness, fears and anger began to find a voice.
Some time later, after Jill’s third brain surgery that summer, I came across a section in 2 Corinthians that spoke deeply; it was a lifeline. At that point, Jill was in ICU and her cognitive function was frighteningly low. All the things I thought I knew were stripped away.
I wrote in my journal that day:
‘2 Corinthians 1:3–11:
We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it … but as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And you are helping us by praying for us.’
I learned that summer something at a cellular level: God doesn’t waste our suffering.
Just as he has done with so many believers before me, God’s Spirit used the scriptures to minister comfort to my traumatized spirit.
Mine is not a unique experience. Each of us takes journeys of loss and of grief. In some cases, we are granted new mercies of life among the land of the living. But, in the end, we must reckon with the ancient mantra: we are but dust, and to dust we will return. Sometimes, that reckoning comes in the form of a high–altitude text. For many of us, the sacred season of Lent and the acknowledgment that our lives are both extraordinary and rather ordinary can also help us to face our own inevitable endings.
We are often caught unaware of when something is beginning and when something is ending. It arrives suddenly or with no notice at all. To be human is to experience many first firsts and many last lasts. Jill breathed her last on earth at the end of 2020.
Yet, despite the pain and sadness of her loss, God has met me in profound ways as I’ve moved forward in the last few years. God has guided, protected. God has shown me, more often than not, peace and mercy in the midst of it all. Even as we contemplate our own ephemeral existences, Christians can draw comfort in a God who was the First of all firsts and will remain at the Last of all lasts.
David Kinnaman is the author of the bestselling books Faith For Exiles, Good Faith, You Lost Me, and unChristian. He is CEO of Barna Group, a leading research and communications company.
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