Krista Neal died the morning of 30 December 2009, shortly before the turn of the year; she was 40 years old.

Krista was my friend. Nearly every weekend for the past couple of years, we’d take long rambles through the beautiful Sussex countryside, while she’d spin fascinating tales of her childhood in a back-to-the-land community in Kentucky, or share hair-raising adventures from her time as an adult volunteering in Bethlehem, negotiating the crazy West Bank traffic and checkpoints with vanloads of disabled children. She also liked to recount her work with newborns as a nurse in a private clinic in the States.  Often she’d remember her mother Carole, who died of cancer in 1998. Carole had faced death with great courage, and remarkably matter-of-factly: she preferred showing up for work at our community factory, despite her declining strength, to spending those last days in a hospital bed. It was not only the way Carole faced death, but the way she’d lived life--jokebook in hand, despite severe recurring bouts with depression--that was an inspiration to Krista.

Last spring, although she started to complain of strange, unexplained ailments, Krista kept on as energetically as ever.  She was always busy making a bouquet or cake and bringing it to someone who needed encouraging. On Krista’s daily two-mile hike through Robertsbridge and Salehurst, a neighbour might pop his head out of the window to remind her there was a speed-limit in the village! It was at this time she began to speak to me about her faith in Jesus, which she hadn’t talked much about before, but which was clearly the compass point of her life.  She told how at a young age she was influenced by stories from the Bible and Francis of Assisi, as well as by her parents’ search for truth and readiness to do God’s will. One anecdote from her childhood went like this:

I remember the story of Francis of Assisi especially impressed me, how he prayed all night, “My God and my All”.  I went home and wanted to do the same. I think I only lasted about twenty minutes on my knees, but that is the impression this made on me.

Krista began to feel increasingly miserable in the following weeks. Her doctor thought it might be cancer, and scheduled some tests. In May I accompanied her to a specialist cancer hospital in Surrey. She came away from that visit with a whole string of further appointments and tests for the next weeks. Lymphoma was suspected, a type of cancer that the doctor told her could be treated with a reasonable chance of success. When we got back from the appointment, Krista was completed exhausted. She could hardly walk home and was worried she might collapse in the shower.

Our community met in the evening a few days later to pray for her. That’s when Krista told us the following:

I have been thinking a lot today, and I realised if I really want to put my whole trust in God, I can’t put my trust in medical help anymore. So I called the hospital today and told them that I don’t want any more appointments, I don’t want any more treatment, and I am just going to trust in God. It definitely didn’t go without a fight. They can’t understand – they think I am totally crackers; I don’t know if I even managed to convince them yet. But that is my longing – that whatever is to come, God’s will is done, and that God is glorified through this. I just want to live every moment I have left with everybody in love.

That really stopped me in my tracks. Krista was only 39 years old. Was she throwing her life away? Does that what trust in God mean? Krista felt that in her situation she could not put her trust in both God and medicine at the same time. Besides, doctor’s predictions are guesses at best, and she didn’t want to waste what might be her last weeks or months prostrated by strenuous therapies or alone in a hospital; whatever the consequences of foregoing medical solutions, the time she had left she wished to live for and with others. For Krista it was not how long she lived, but how she lived that was important. So why then do I and medical science place such a huge value on longevity? I had to think how many “short lives” have had so much meaning, throughout history.

During the next months she never wavered in her decision. The hospital, as well as friends and relations (Krista had many all over the world), tried time and again to persuade her to change her mind, but to no avail.

I realised that submitting her will to God’s will was not a new idea for Krista. She had struggled for many years already, giving up her own ideas and wishes for her life, including marriage and family. As she said:

It’s so important to submit everything to God--everything. Every last thing! To do everything and anything, and to do it joyfully. When you can really do that, then the joy and peace comes. And it never stops. Even this week when I was having a horrible day, I realized that a lot of it was me still fighting God’s will--you know, still clinging to my ideas: ‘No, I’m actually not sick, I’m going to get better,’ and not accepting that God has a different plan.

Also, having a real relationship with Jesus and a firm faith will hold you through anything and everything that you will encounter later on. Most of the time you’re not going to be having this warm glow that you are feeling close to Jesus. Most of the time you’re just going on in blind obedience, and you have to have the faith even if you don’t feel like God is right there with you. And that will hold you through.

Krista then asked our church for a special prayer to be said for her healing. Our pastor encouraged us all with these words:

We have to trust that our prayers will be answered to God’s honour and to His glory. Now Krista feels the closeness of eternity. And we are promised, “He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev 21:4)). This is a wonderful word also when we think of the terrible wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, of the conflict in Israel and Palestine, and the culture of violence and death we live in.

There is also the wonderful passage from Revelations where God says, “I will make all things new”. (Rev 21:5) Let’s go into this time letting this sickness that Krista carries draw us together, focusing us on the Kingdom of God. In our prayer we also want to intercede and ask that any sins Krista has committed are really completely forgiven and wiped away. Our prayer is that she will find complete healing and be able to serve in the church again. But we also have to accept God’s will. We don’t know what his will is, but we long that whatever time she has is used for the building up of his kingdom.

It wasn’t long after this that Krista was being pushed around in a wheelchair, assisted by young sisters from our community, eager to help. Since I knew Krista as such an independent person, it was hard to see her having to rely so much on others. But she made the most of every moment, organising all kinds of joyful events for those around her – parties, Mexican food take-outs, trips to the beach. At our summer festival, she was the first to try out the water slide and “big splash”. She even went camping for three days in a nearby wood with friends.

Krista’s greatest wish as her strength waned was to go to the States once more to see all the brothers and sisters she had known there. This wish came true in November, and she had a wonderful three weeks in New York. She came back exhausted.

In the days after Christmas, Krista got rapidly worse, and she found it very hard when she realised she really couldn’t do anything for herself anymore. Friday, she had walked to a neighbour’s house for breakfast; but when I went to visit her the next day, Boxing Day, her spirits were at a low ebb, and she told me, “I don’t think I can even stand by myself anymore”. By Sunday she was a lot worse, and on Monday she had some very difficult moments. By Tuesday evening Krista was no longer responding, yet had become very peaceful, her breathing laboured but even, as her body entered the final struggle. On Wednesday morning, 30 December 2009, she died.  As she took her last breaths, a group of teens outside her window was singing a hymn, “Come to the Saviour”:

Joyful, joyful, will the meeting be,
When from sin our hearts are pure and free,
And we shall gather, Saviour, with Thee
In our eternal home.

Then she was gone from our world, to a world which is much more real than ours. It was such a privilege for me to be there with her at that moment.

Krista’s faith is what I take with me for the future. For her, it was much more important than the length of her years. In her words:

Really all I have left is this relationship to Jesus. I know I fail every day to totally and absolutely put that faith in Jesus and nothing else. I feel so often that I fail in using every last moment to witness to Jesus. And that’s really the only important thing that’s left in life.