Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [70]
In case you guys haven’t heard, Maria is being buried today in her flower girl dress. So she is a flower girl.
In the midst of all the confusion and pain and grief that I don’t ever wish on any of you, God has brought comfort through little Ria’s words. Maria cared deeply about how I responded to the proposal. You see, Maria too had said yes to a glorious proposal in February this year, when she accepted Jesus.
I woke up this morning asking the Lord for a Scripture to bring to you guys, and he brought me to Revelation 22:17. It says, “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”
A proposal has been made through the death of Jesus Christ . . . and so in honor of Maria, I would like to ask each and every one of you: What did you say?
Caleb Chapman
“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and the Lord delivers them out of their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:17–18).
All of our spirits here are really crushed, and I know a lot of y’alls’ are too. . . . Any of you that have walked through something like this know that it’s a new emotion and there’s nothing that can describe it. The only word I’ve been able to come up with is confusion. . . . We feel so many different things. We have joy and we have sadness, we feel loved and we feel lonely . . . but I have never been this confident in Jesus Christ. And I’ve never been this confident of heaven.
The only analogy I can come up with is this: it’s like God is an abstract artist . . . and when you’re real close to a painting like this, it’s hard to focus, it’s blurred, and you can’t see what’s going on. You have to walk really far back, and then the whole painting comes into focus and you can see what the artist was doing.
That’s what this experience is like for us. We’re just really, really close to this mess . . . but I think the farther we get away from it in time, the more we’re going to see this picture come into focus. Man, it’s a really big one too, so we’ll have to walk pretty far away.
You know, I feel like as Dad held Maria, I held my brother. I held Will that day. We prayed for healing for Maria, but God healed her in a way that we didn’t like. But God is going to heal my brother in a way that I think we’re all going to like a lot.
[At this point, people all over the sanctuary jumped to their feet, and soon seven hundred people were applauding in a standing ovation of praise to God and support for Will Franklin Chapman.]
I just challenge you guys, nothing matters in this life except for relationships, especially with Jesus Christ. I know we’re coming from a bunch of different backgrounds, but I can tell you, because I’m in the midst of this, that Jesus is real, and man, He shines through some really, really dark places. So thank you everyone for supporting us. We love you guys.
Mary Beth Chapman
This is something I wish I wasn’t doing. And I really don’t have a whole lot to say, because so many beautiful people standing with us and behind us have already said everything. But I just wanted to tell you a couple of things about Maria so you will remember her the way we do.
Probably no less than ten times a day Maria would say, “I love it when my whole family is together!” And obviously, it’s hard schedule-wise for us all to be together. So on those occasions when we were, she would just love it when we would do the group hug and “kiss the monkey,” and Maria was always the monkey. And she loved, loved, loved to be naked.
I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I’m going to say it anyway because I’ll regret it if I don’t. Besides my husband, Maria loved my boobs. Any way she could get her hand down my shirt, she would. I don’t know why, maybe it was just the physical closeness and touch.
Anyway, I have lots of last