Days before my sister Anne died of brain cancer, my wife and I visited with her in the hospice. For several months Anne had had trouble finding the right words, and by now the cancer had taken over enough of her brain that she rarely strung together more than a few words we could understand. Then there was the intense and regular pain that she endured. On this night she sat up with vigor and put her feet on the floor and said with clarity and strength, “Jesus has been good to me. He loves me.”

I thought I knew all the spiritual truths I needed to know, but following my younger sister through her 18-month ordeal showed me I had a lot more to learn—not about the theory of the spiritual truths, but about their reality.

Community is irreplaceable. We love to think we are strong and independent. Anne certainly was. But she also was in a strong and nurturing neighborhood, school, family, and especially church. In that breath of a moment when she went from being in control to being at the mercy of the service of hundreds of others, her networks were ready.

We need people with different gifts. I can do a lot of things on my own. But caring for a single mom with cancer requires efforts that I can scarcely conceive of, much less accomplish. Often things were done quietly, before I even understood how much they were needed. Someone else discerned what I couldn’t and did what I can’t. That’s fitting, in that Anne’s vocation as a nurse took her, most recently, into the homes of needy single expectant mothers to give them much-needed support. She continued to minister to these mothers even a year after her diagnosis, because they were “my girls.”

There’s more to a person than we normally get to see. I thought I knew my sister, but mostly I knew her as she used to be growing up, and I knew her in a family context. Visiting her often through the course of this disease, I got to see Anne’s deep faith in action, and some of the fruit of that faith. I realized my little sister had outgrown me in some key areas of life. God’s providence is not the same as our conception of it. I so often fall victim to the temptation that I know what is best for God to do in a given situation. I’m still learning to let go of that, to trust and obey and let God be the king. I can already see how He has worked through Anne’s life and death in ways I hadn’t expected. But ultimately I need to trust and to serve my King.

Suffering is part of our vocation. When we pray for healing (which is biblical), we should not neglect prayers that we would draw near to God and glorify Him in our suffering. Paul’s passion was that “I want to know…the fellowship of His sufferings,” and Peter said, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings.”

We walk by faith. I spent many hundreds of hours with Anne through her ordeal. I don’t know how she went through it without questioning her lot and with almost no complaining, even in intense pain. She has become to me, along with my mother, an example of true faith. I seek to practice such faith now as I pray and labor to see Anne’s 11-year-old sons fulfill the promises of the covenant in their lives.