Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
** Kara has a blog called Mudane Faithfulness, http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com, where she, her friend, and her husband all blog. If you have a chance, please look at it **∼Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
Source: Mundane Faithfulness, by Blythe Hunt, March 22, 2015
Kara Tippets chose this image for the final blog post she wrote herself. She died Sunday, March 22, 2015 Photo courtesy of Mundane Faithfulness
Kara Tippetts, 38, has died. Metastatic breast cancer took her from her pastor husband, Jason, and their four children on Sunday (March 22).
But in her last years of life, her saga of accepting suffering became, in a quietly powerful way, a cultural force for another way of choosing death with dignity, one that refused to hasten death.
In recent years, the movement for physician-assisted dying has seized the phrase “death with dignity” in its campaign to expand this option beyond the five states where it’s now legal. Compassion & Choices, a leading lobby for this, brought national attention to Brittany Maynard, who chose to die November 1 when she was just 29, by taking a legal lethal prescription rather than lose her mind to an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.
I wrote about Maynard and Tippetts here at Faith & Reason.
Maynard starred in tear-inducing videos circulated by Compassion & Choices. There was no record of any mention of a religious or spiritual superstructure underlying her reasoning.
Tippetts, the Colorado wife, mother and writer didn’t release national videos (that I know of) but she wrote a book The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard and she kept a blog, Mundane Faithfulness, full of praise for God and illustrated with images of a woman well loved by friends and family. Her writing was imbued with a Christian vision that physician assisted dying as a betrayal of love, God and faith, not an act of loving life.
In calm and elegant posts, Tippetts’ evangelical Christian faith wrapped her in spiritual comfort. In a post titled “By Degrees — Dying and living” she wrote:
“My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.”
Tippetts wrote an open letter to Maynard in October. It began with gratitude.
I think it is good for our culture to know what is happening in Oregon.
It’s a discussion that needs to be brought out of the quiet corners and brought brightly into the light. You sharing your story has done that. It matters, and it is unbelievably important.
But, Tippetts wrote: “Dear heart, we simply disagree … hastening death was never what God intended.”
Jesus, she told Maynard, “overcame the death you and I are facing in our cancer. He longs to know you, to shepherd you in your dying, and to give you life and give you life abundant- eternal life.”
Tippetts offered the altar call of traditional Christian belief, one in which suffering has meaning, to the dying reader. On her Facebook page Dec. 31, where she mentions she has now turned to hospice care, Tippetts writes that in God’s time… “Doors will appropriately open and close.”
Her voice was amplified in the mainstream media. Rod Dreher writes : “Tonight after I put the kids to bed, I will gather myself before my icon of Christ, and pray the prayers for the departed, for Kara. How strange and wonderful that I’m rejoicing that her pain is over, and that we have all gained a phenomenal intercessor. I know. Crazy Christian stuff. That’s how we are…”
When Maynard died, I wrote in Faith & Reason about what her choice to set her day of death says about the meaning of suffering. She saw no spiritual gift in it.
Tippetts did and she saw it as a gift.
Her obituary is now on the blog. “Mundane Faithfulness began as her chronicle of motherhood and living in kindness. Then, the Sunday, March 22 entry says, it “became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described ‘mundane’ life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.”
Jason and their friends wrote the blog entries in the last 12 days but March 10, here is what Kara said in what became her own final post. It begins with the arrival of a hospital bed so her days in hospice care might be more comfortable. Then she wrote:
“The nurse delivered us hard news today. News I frankly don’t believe. She said how many days she feels I’ll remain, and I’m struggling to believe her. I do see where cancer is having it’s way with my body. Where I’m growing weaker or pain is growing stronger. It’s been made clear to me I’m fading. I’m just in denial. Tonight my guy and I will sleep beside one another but separate. We will speak sweetly to each other. We may share tears about what is happening. Our goodbye. Our long goodbye is getting not so long. How do we do this? There will be grace. We need to seek it, pray for it, and rest in it. Some days it’s hard to see, hard to know- to navigate. …
“There is so much about this we cannot understand. I can’t understand that I’m not sleeping in my wedding bed with my guy tonight. I hurt that I understand what this greater pain I’m experiencing means. I feel too young to be in this battle, but maybe I’m not in a battle at all. Maybe I’m on a journey, and the journey is more beautiful than any of us can comprehend. And if we did understand, we would hold very loosely to one another because I’m going to be with Jesus. There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don’t understand. In the places we don’t understand we get to seek. And how lovely is one seeking truth. Stunning.”
Brittany Maynard had the spotlight for autonomy and defiance. Kara Tippetts takes the spotlight now, in “mundane faithfulness.”
Source: http://cathylynngrossman.religionnews.com
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
** Kara has a blog called Mudane Faithfulness, http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com, where she, her friend, and her husband all blog. If you have a chance, please look at it **∼Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
Source: Mundane Faithfulness, by Blythe Hunt, March 22, 2015
Kara Tippets chose this image for the final blog post she wrote herself. She died Sunday, March 22, 2015 Photo courtesy of Mundane Faithfulness
Kara Tippetts, 38, has died. Metastatic breast cancer took her from her pastor husband, Jason, and their four children on Sunday (March 22).
But in her last years of life, her saga of accepting suffering became, in a quietly powerful way, a cultural force for another way of choosing death with dignity, one that refused to hasten death.
In recent years, the movement for physician-assisted dying has seized the phrase “death with dignity” in its campaign to expand this option beyond the five states where it’s now legal. Compassion & Choices, a leading lobby for this, brought national attention to Brittany Maynard, who chose to die November 1 when she was just 29, by taking a legal lethal prescription rather than lose her mind to an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.
I wrote about Maynard and Tippetts here at Faith & Reason.
Maynard starred in tear-inducing videos circulated by Compassion & Choices. There was no record of any mention of a religious or spiritual superstructure underlying her reasoning.
Tippetts, the Colorado wife, mother and writer didn’t release national videos (that I know of) but she wrote a book The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard and she kept a blog, Mundane Faithfulness, full of praise for God and illustrated with images of a woman well loved by friends and family. Her writing was imbued with a Christian vision that physician assisted dying as a betrayal of love, God and faith, not an act of loving life.
In calm and elegant posts, Tippetts’ evangelical Christian faith wrapped her in spiritual comfort. In a post titled “By Degrees — Dying and living” she wrote:
“My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.”
Tippetts wrote an open letter to Maynard in October. It began with gratitude.
I think it is good for our culture to know what is happening in Oregon.
It’s a discussion that needs to be brought out of the quiet corners and brought brightly into the light. You sharing your story has done that. It matters, and it is unbelievably important.
But, Tippetts wrote: “Dear heart, we simply disagree … hastening death was never what God intended.”
Jesus, she told Maynard, “overcame the death you and I are facing in our cancer. He longs to know you, to shepherd you in your dying, and to give you life and give you life abundant- eternal life.”
Tippetts offered the altar call of traditional Christian belief, one in which suffering has meaning, to the dying reader. On her Facebook page Dec. 31, where she mentions she has now turned to hospice care, Tippetts writes that in God’s time… “Doors will appropriately open and close.”
Her voice was amplified in the mainstream media. Rod Dreher writes : “Tonight after I put the kids to bed, I will gather myself before my icon of Christ, and pray the prayers for the departed, for Kara. How strange and wonderful that I’m rejoicing that her pain is over, and that we have all gained a phenomenal intercessor. I know. Crazy Christian stuff. That’s how we are…”
When Maynard died, I wrote in Faith & Reason about what her choice to set her day of death says about the meaning of suffering. She saw no spiritual gift in it.
Tippetts did and she saw it as a gift.
Her obituary is now on the blog. “Mundane Faithfulness began as her chronicle of motherhood and living in kindness. Then, the Sunday, March 22 entry says, it “became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described ‘mundane’ life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.”
Jason and their friends wrote the blog entries in the last 12 days but March 10, here is what Kara said in what became her own final post. It begins with the arrival of a hospital bed so her days in hospice care might be more comfortable. Then she wrote:
“The nurse delivered us hard news today. News I frankly don’t believe. She said how many days she feels I’ll remain, and I’m struggling to believe her. I do see where cancer is having it’s way with my body. Where I’m growing weaker or pain is growing stronger. It’s been made clear to me I’m fading. I’m just in denial. Tonight my guy and I will sleep beside one another but separate. We will speak sweetly to each other. We may share tears about what is happening. Our goodbye. Our long goodbye is getting not so long. How do we do this? There will be grace. We need to seek it, pray for it, and rest in it. Some days it’s hard to see, hard to know- to navigate. …
“There is so much about this we cannot understand. I can’t understand that I’m not sleeping in my wedding bed with my guy tonight. I hurt that I understand what this greater pain I’m experiencing means. I feel too young to be in this battle, but maybe I’m not in a battle at all. Maybe I’m on a journey, and the journey is more beautiful than any of us can comprehend. And if we did understand, we would hold very loosely to one another because I’m going to be with Jesus. There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don’t understand. In the places we don’t understand we get to seek. And how lovely is one seeking truth. Stunning.”
Brittany Maynard had the spotlight for autonomy and defiance. Kara Tippetts takes the spotlight now, in “mundane faithfulness.”
Source: http://cathylynngrossman.religionnews.com
Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
** Kara has a blog called Mudane Faithfulness, http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com, where she, her friend, and her husband all blog. If you have a chance, please look at it **∼Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
Source: Mundane Faithfulness, by Blythe Hunt, March 22, 2015
Kara Tippets chose this image for the final blog post she wrote herself. She died Sunday, March 22, 2015 Photo courtesy of Mundane Faithfulness
Kara Tippetts, 38, has died. Metastatic breast cancer took her from her pastor husband, Jason, and their four children on Sunday (March 22).
But in her last years of life, her saga of accepting suffering became, in a quietly powerful way, a cultural force for another way of choosing death with dignity, one that refused to hasten death.
In recent years, the movement for physician-assisted dying has seized the phrase “death with dignity” in its campaign to expand this option beyond the five states where it’s now legal. Compassion & Choices, a leading lobby for this, brought national attention to Brittany Maynard, who chose to die November 1 when she was just 29, by taking a legal lethal prescription rather than lose her mind to an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.
I wrote about Maynard and Tippetts here at Faith & Reason.
Maynard starred in tear-inducing videos circulated by Compassion & Choices. There was no record of any mention of a religious or spiritual superstructure underlying her reasoning.
Tippetts, the Colorado wife, mother and writer didn’t release national videos (that I know of) but she wrote a book The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard and she kept a blog, Mundane Faithfulness, full of praise for God and illustrated with images of a woman well loved by friends and family. Her writing was imbued with a Christian vision that physician assisted dying as a betrayal of love, God and faith, not an act of loving life.
In calm and elegant posts, Tippetts’ evangelical Christian faith wrapped her in spiritual comfort. In a post titled “By Degrees — Dying and living” she wrote:
“My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.”
Tippetts wrote an open letter to Maynard in October. It began with gratitude.
I think it is good for our culture to know what is happening in Oregon.
It’s a discussion that needs to be brought out of the quiet corners and brought brightly into the light. You sharing your story has done that. It matters, and it is unbelievably important.
But, Tippetts wrote: “Dear heart, we simply disagree … hastening death was never what God intended.”
Jesus, she told Maynard, “overcame the death you and I are facing in our cancer. He longs to know you, to shepherd you in your dying, and to give you life and give you life abundant- eternal life.”
Tippetts offered the altar call of traditional Christian belief, one in which suffering has meaning, to the dying reader. On her Facebook page Dec. 31, where she mentions she has now turned to hospice care, Tippetts writes that in God’s time… “Doors will appropriately open and close.”
Her voice was amplified in the mainstream media. Rod Dreher writes : “Tonight after I put the kids to bed, I will gather myself before my icon of Christ, and pray the prayers for the departed, for Kara. How strange and wonderful that I’m rejoicing that her pain is over, and that we have all gained a phenomenal intercessor. I know. Crazy Christian stuff. That’s how we are…”
When Maynard died, I wrote in Faith & Reason about what her choice to set her day of death says about the meaning of suffering. She saw no spiritual gift in it.
Tippetts did and she saw it as a gift.
Her obituary is now on the blog. “Mundane Faithfulness began as her chronicle of motherhood and living in kindness. Then, the Sunday, March 22 entry says, it “became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described ‘mundane’ life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.”
Jason and their friends wrote the blog entries in the last 12 days but March 10, here is what Kara said in what became her own final post. It begins with the arrival of a hospital bed so her days in hospice care might be more comfortable. Then she wrote:
“The nurse delivered us hard news today. News I frankly don’t believe. She said how many days she feels I’ll remain, and I’m struggling to believe her. I do see where cancer is having it’s way with my body. Where I’m growing weaker or pain is growing stronger. It’s been made clear to me I’m fading. I’m just in denial. Tonight my guy and I will sleep beside one another but separate. We will speak sweetly to each other. We may share tears about what is happening. Our goodbye. Our long goodbye is getting not so long. How do we do this? There will be grace. We need to seek it, pray for it, and rest in it. Some days it’s hard to see, hard to know- to navigate. …
“There is so much about this we cannot understand. I can’t understand that I’m not sleeping in my wedding bed with my guy tonight. I hurt that I understand what this greater pain I’m experiencing means. I feel too young to be in this battle, but maybe I’m not in a battle at all. Maybe I’m on a journey, and the journey is more beautiful than any of us can comprehend. And if we did understand, we would hold very loosely to one another because I’m going to be with Jesus. There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don’t understand. In the places we don’t understand we get to seek. And how lovely is one seeking truth. Stunning.”
Brittany Maynard had the spotlight for autonomy and defiance. Kara Tippetts takes the spotlight now, in “mundane faithfulness.”
Source: http://cathylynngrossman.religionnews.com
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
** Kara has a blog called Mudane Faithfulness, http://www.mundanefaithfulness.com, where she, her friend, and her husband all blog. If you have a chance, please look at it **∼Kara Tippetts went Home to Jesus on March 22, 2015, after a long battle with breast cancer.
Born Kara Lynne Thewlies on July 14, 1976, she grew up in Noblesville, Indiana, and earned her BS in English Education at Indiana University. She met her husband Jason Tippetts at Eagle Lake Camp, a Christian camp located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They were married on May 16, 1998.
Kara was led to Christ in high school after a youth leader read her a tract about Christianity and a friend invited her to youth group. Hearing a message about forgiveness prompted her to seek a relationship with Jesus, where she found total acceptance, kindness, and Grace. While she didn’t experience instant change in her life, dramatic changes were softly, slowly occurring in her heart as she trusted Christ’s love for her and allowed it to alter how she viewed the world and the people around her. She saw the difference a gentle word could make in response to an ugly remark, how an outstretched hand could break barriers of a hardened heart. Kindness became Kara’s passion; it defined her relationship with Jason, and then her four children: Eleanor, Harper, Lake, and Story Jane.
Answering a call to plant Westside Church in 2012, the Tippetts moved to Colorado where they soon after had to evacuate their home due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. It was this same summer that Kara received her breast cancer diagnosis. Despite beginning aggressive treatment for the cancer, Kara put her whole heart into growing and developing the new community that would become Westside, reaching out to others and teaching by example how to love and care for people well and sacrificially. An extrovert with a big, warm personality, Kara befriended neighbors, grocery baggers, those in line with her at Starbucks, other moms from her children’s school. She never hesitated to share a smile and a kind word. Her personality was magnetic, attracting people of all kinds, and she treated each friend as though they were her very favorite.
Her well known blog Mundane Faithfulness, where she originally posted about motherhood and living in kindness, became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described “mundane” life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.
As the cancer spread, Kara courageously embraced her situation, trusting in a Sovereign God. She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace. As Kara and her family processed what God was calling them to live out, she invited her community to join her journey through this seemingly impossible ordeal—how would she trust God in the midst of sickness? And then, how would she trust God in the midst of dying?
In the fall of 2014, David C. Cook published her story, The Hardest Peace. The response to Kara’s book has been overwhelming. In high demand, Kara toured and spoke as her physical condition allowed, touching even more people with the gift of her story and perspective. Christmas neared, and the physical became more difficult. Kara fought harder than ever to live well and love others well and with intentionality, especially Jason and their children. She refused to be defined by cancer and considered every moment a gift and an opportunity to learn more about Grace and trusting God; she believed suffering was not an absence of beauty, but an opportunity to understand God’s love on a deeper level. Kara recently wrote, My little body has grown tired of battle, and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives. I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus—and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us—carry us in ways we cannot comprehend.
Kara is survived by her husband Jason; her children Eleanor Grace, Harper Joy, Lake Edward, and Story Jane; her parents Carolyn and Dennis Thewlies; her sister Jonna McMahon (Mike) and their three daughters; her brother Dennis Thewlies, Jr., and his son and daughter; and countless other loving family members, in-laws, mentors, friends, and her Westside Church family.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to a fund benefitting the Tippetts children:
Jason Tippetts
P.O. Box 49727
Colorado Springs, CO 80949
Source: Mundane Faithfulness, by Blythe Hunt, March 22, 2015
Kara Tippets chose this image for the final blog post she wrote herself. She died Sunday, March 22, 2015 Photo courtesy of Mundane Faithfulness
Kara Tippetts, 38, has died. Metastatic breast cancer took her from her pastor husband, Jason, and their four children on Sunday (March 22).
But in her last years of life, her saga of accepting suffering became, in a quietly powerful way, a cultural force for another way of choosing death with dignity, one that refused to hasten death.
In recent years, the movement for physician-assisted dying has seized the phrase “death with dignity” in its campaign to expand this option beyond the five states where it’s now legal. Compassion & Choices, a leading lobby for this, brought national attention to Brittany Maynard, who chose to die November 1 when she was just 29, by taking a legal lethal prescription rather than lose her mind to an aggressive cancerous brain tumor.
I wrote about Maynard and Tippetts here at Faith & Reason.
Maynard starred in tear-inducing videos circulated by Compassion & Choices. There was no record of any mention of a religious or spiritual superstructure underlying her reasoning.
Tippetts, the Colorado wife, mother and writer didn’t release national videos (that I know of) but she wrote a book The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard and she kept a blog, Mundane Faithfulness, full of praise for God and illustrated with images of a woman well loved by friends and family. Her writing was imbued with a Christian vision that physician assisted dying as a betrayal of love, God and faith, not an act of loving life.
In calm and elegant posts, Tippetts’ evangelical Christian faith wrapped her in spiritual comfort. In a post titled “By Degrees — Dying and living” she wrote:
“My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping. But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.”
Tippetts wrote an open letter to Maynard in October. It began with gratitude.
I think it is good for our culture to know what is happening in Oregon.
It’s a discussion that needs to be brought out of the quiet corners and brought brightly into the light. You sharing your story has done that. It matters, and it is unbelievably important.
But, Tippetts wrote: “Dear heart, we simply disagree … hastening death was never what God intended.”
Jesus, she told Maynard, “overcame the death you and I are facing in our cancer. He longs to know you, to shepherd you in your dying, and to give you life and give you life abundant- eternal life.”
Tippetts offered the altar call of traditional Christian belief, one in which suffering has meaning, to the dying reader. On her Facebook page Dec. 31, where she mentions she has now turned to hospice care, Tippetts writes that in God’s time… “Doors will appropriately open and close.”
Her voice was amplified in the mainstream media. Rod Dreher writes : “Tonight after I put the kids to bed, I will gather myself before my icon of Christ, and pray the prayers for the departed, for Kara. How strange and wonderful that I’m rejoicing that her pain is over, and that we have all gained a phenomenal intercessor. I know. Crazy Christian stuff. That’s how we are…”
When Maynard died, I wrote in Faith & Reason about what her choice to set her day of death says about the meaning of suffering. She saw no spiritual gift in it.
Tippetts did and she saw it as a gift.
Her obituary is now on the blog. “Mundane Faithfulness began as her chronicle of motherhood and living in kindness. Then, the Sunday, March 22 entry says, it “became a blog about looking for God’s Grace to show up even in the hardest, messiest, ugliest places. It was a window into her life of chemo, church planting, spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen with her littles, her passion for Jason, her passion for those who don’t know Jesus, and her struggle to accept her growing cancer as God’s story for her life. Her self-described ‘mundane’ life appeared anything but mundane to her readers who inevitably fell in love with her inviting, joyful personality and her love for and trust in Jesus; readers were attracted to her honesty, vulnerability, sense of humor, and simple faith. She never hesitated to share the hard moments, but she always pointed her readers—and herself—back to Jesus.”
Jason and their friends wrote the blog entries in the last 12 days but March 10, here is what Kara said in what became her own final post. It begins with the arrival of a hospital bed so her days in hospice care might be more comfortable. Then she wrote:
“The nurse delivered us hard news today. News I frankly don’t believe. She said how many days she feels I’ll remain, and I’m struggling to believe her. I do see where cancer is having it’s way with my body. Where I’m growing weaker or pain is growing stronger. It’s been made clear to me I’m fading. I’m just in denial. Tonight my guy and I will sleep beside one another but separate. We will speak sweetly to each other. We may share tears about what is happening. Our goodbye. Our long goodbye is getting not so long. How do we do this? There will be grace. We need to seek it, pray for it, and rest in it. Some days it’s hard to see, hard to know- to navigate. …
“There is so much about this we cannot understand. I can’t understand that I’m not sleeping in my wedding bed with my guy tonight. I hurt that I understand what this greater pain I’m experiencing means. I feel too young to be in this battle, but maybe I’m not in a battle at all. Maybe I’m on a journey, and the journey is more beautiful than any of us can comprehend. And if we did understand, we would hold very loosely to one another because I’m going to be with Jesus. There is grace that will seep into all the cracks and pained places when we don’t understand. In the places we don’t understand we get to seek. And how lovely is one seeking truth. Stunning.”
Brittany Maynard had the spotlight for autonomy and defiance. Kara Tippetts takes the spotlight now, in “mundane faithfulness.”
Source: http://cathylynngrossman.religionnews.com
