Death of A Loved One: The End, or A New Beginning?

For those of you who have followed my lifelong work (books, spiritual direction, and psychotherapy), carried on with my beloved and magnificent wife Kate, I need to share with you (so prepare yourself).

Kate passed away on July 5, 2019.

Oh my God! I was shocked and absolutely devastated. Annihilation is a good term for the inner chaos and nothingness that gripped my soul. I hardly remember the whole month of July. It felt like I was having open heart surgery every day. The emotional pain around my heart area felt like a knife had been plunged there.

On the other hand, there was a profound and surprising bright side. Kate has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's over a year ago, and the doctor believed it had begun long before that. She was also suffering with heart problems, and intractable pain from two recent back surgeries.

Nonetheless, what had kept her intellectually alert for so long was her vigor to always read new books, always begin writing a new one of our books (which she did the very week of her diagnosis!), always learn a new Tango or Salsa step, and always have invigorating and intimate conversations with me. Talk about bearing the Fruit of the Holy Spirit!

In Memory of the Magnificent Kate Montgomery

Even though we both saw the ravaging decline in her capabilities over this past year, I can tell you she prayed her heart out and tried her best to keep some kind of hardiness throughout her deteriorating condition. This in the face of agonizing memory lapses, memory erasures, and occasional severe identity confusion.

I let my private practice go during the last nine months so that I could attend to her. Through God's compassionate empowerment, we managed to experience the most peace, joy, and love we had ever known. But there was an ever-menacing dark side. Kate would slip into borderline personality episodes, where she would be overwhelmed by paranoia and thrown into bouts of rage -- then remember nothing of this the following day.

I felt so sorry for her, and would often stand over her while she slept at night, my hands raised in holy supplication for God to keep the nightmares away. I was also deeply moved that in lucid moments Kate's concern was for my well-being after she passed. She wanted me to continue with my Grand Adventure in Christ, which started at my conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of seventeen. And she said she would be watching over me as soon as she died and went to heaven.

She said the week before she died, "Danny, go ahead and grieve my passing for a season. But then rejoice in the Holy Spirit that I'm happy with Jesus and all who are in heaven. You must get out and date again. If you don't, I'll kill you -- just kidding. I know how relational you are. I want you to know that I won't feel jealous if you date and fall in love again. In fact, I'll be cheering you on with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"

What a brave and compassionate woman, this glorious soulmate/wife I loved for 30 years! In fact, we had just celebrated our 30th anniversary shortly before she died.

Dr. Dan and Montgomery - 30 Year Anniversary

 Dear friends, it's been about 3 months since God took Kate home peacefully in her sleep. I am thrilled to know that because of Jesus Christ she is whole and happy and united with the heavenly family of God.

Kate Montgomery Resurrected by the Holy Spirit As She Died!

I miss her terribly, and every now and then another 90 foot tsunami smacks me down into heartbreak and heartache. But each time the Holy Spirit provides a ready help in my time of need. By God's grace, I am invariably revived and rejuvenated.

I KNOW NOW THERE IS LIFE AFTER DEATH OF A LOVED ONE. I BELIEVE THAT OUR ADVENTURE IN CHRIST ALWAYS MOVES FORWARD. WE CAN BY HELPED BY THE SPIRIT TO GRADUALLY, AND EVER SO SLOWLY, REPLACE FEAR AND LOSS WITH FAITH AND HOPE. THE BODY OF CHRIST ON EARTH WILL SEE US THROUGH!

And I'm determined to live life abundantly, as Jesus said. I do this for Kate's sake, for Jesus' sake, for my sake, and for your sake.

Thanks so much for your love, prayers, and support—and your special love for Kate Montgomery!

Naturally Supernatural Life for Christians

Christianity begins with Jesus. After dying on the cross, he is raised up on the third day, his personality restored, his human faculties intact. His first recorded act is to warmly greet Mary Magdalene. Then he says, “Go and tell Peter and the boys that I’ll meet them in Galilee,” an especially tender sentiment since Peter had three times denied even knowing him. 

By the time the month is out, Christ has met with the disciples and another four hundred people who believe in him. His death and resurrection have turned history upside down. You’d never guess he’d been recently betrayed, interrogated, whipped, spurned, and crucified, busy as he is creating rendezvous with the individuals he loves. 

Now two millennia have passed and Jesus is making rendezvous with you. He calls your name and seeks opportunities to be in touch with you. Do you hear his whisper? Can you feel his warmth?

How do you integrate this Jesus of Nazareth with your life in the 21^st century? Certainly it tests your capability, since a good part of humanity now believes that science and reason are the primary means of acquiring knowledge, understanding human behavior, and explaining the universe. This point of view has made a worthwhile contribution to humankind by revealing natural laws and improving the quality of life.

Yet for the individual in Christ, a graced awareness of heavenly power challenges the artificial distinction made in today’s world between the natural and supernatural—between reason and faith. 

When your baby gets sick, you not only want a good doctor, you want God’s help. When someone you love is dying, you want more than a prognosis of how many weeks are left, you want to bring spiritual comfort to the loved one. When a dire situation has you by the throat, you want Almighty God to intervene and deliver you from evil!

Jesus Christ is the unimpeachable witness that your life matters to God. He is the Almighty Someone who knows your coming and going, and watches over you. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And just as the supernatural became natural for Mary and Peter, so the supernatural can become natural for you.

This world belongs to the Trinity. Far from being a Creator who wound up the universe like a cosmic watch and then abandoned it, our God interacts with us all the time.

The life of a colleague of mine, a physician, once sank to an all-time low. She got several years behind in taxes to the tune of five figures, experienced a painful divorce, lost her home, and underwent gall bladder surgery, all within the space of a year. The only thing she had left was enough reason to call upon Jesus Christ for help. 

I use the word “reason” to emphasize that when you belong to Christ, it is reasonable and makes good scientific sense to call on him for help. No, you can’t set up an empirical laboratory experiment to make God demonstrate how he cares for people and moves on their behalf. On the other hand, millions of people who know the Lord petition him for help and witness his astonishing provision for their needs.

God doesn’t mind scientific exploration. He invites, even empowers the understanding of nature, including the study of Homo sapiens. Yet when it comes to the well-being of persons, God moves freely by exerting his transcendent will to help people out. Without his compassionate heart at the center of things, we would all be transitory blips in a cold dark universe, where names don’t matter and personalities are no more significant than tree stumps. 

My physician friend knew that she was not a tree stump. She called on the Lord for help to restore a miserably broken life. Cooperating with the grace that was offered, she acknowledged her errors of judgment and followed the Holy Spirit’s lead in setting her life aright. At the end of the five years she emerged debt free, with enough income to make a down payment on a home. I could tell that invisibly, yet perceptively, she had joined the cloud of witnesses who have walked through the valley of the shadow and found Christ an able Shepherd.

While my friend’s story helps to illustrate how the Lord moves supernaturally through ordinary trials, I want to share an experience that bears witness to a miracle from God in a life-threatening emergency. 

One night I was driving through a hundred-mile stretch of remote country in the midst of a winter blizzard, when the car heater broke down. It wasn’t long before my feet turned to ice blocks and my breath fogged up the windshield. I crawled along at twenty miles an hour, fearful that I might drive off the road. 

Shaking now from the sub-zero weather, I uttered the most unusual prayer of my life: “God, please bring heat inside the car so I don’t freeze to death.” A minute later a breeze started blowing gently on my feet and legs. It was piping hot air. I didn’t know how God was doing it, but the whole interior of the car gradually heated up to where the fog cleared off the windshield, my bones stopped rattling, and I felt warm as toast. 

Thankfully, I drove the remaining distance without getting stuck in a snowbank, arriving at my destination in a fully heated car. When I checked the heater the next day it wasn’t working. I took the car to a mechanic who replaced a faulty thermostat. 

I don’t know what your needs are right now or what pressures are threatening you. But I do know that I am in your corner, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are cheering you on, as you and Jesus make the supernatural more natural in your life.

For more, read:

FAITH BEYOND CHURCH WALLS

All of Christianity in Two Simple Sentences

Two simple sentences capture the heart of Christian faith:

1) God in Jesus Christ entered human history for a relationship with you.

2) Your relationship with Christ encompasses your personality and entire human nature.

If you took time to read a hundred theology books drawn from the two hundred denominations within Christianity, you would find a hundred different opinions on what constitutes the Christian faith.

That’s why I want to keep it simple! 

I have led many people into personal relationships with Jesus and witnessed their surprise at his love for them. With sadness, though, I have watched some grow lukewarm later on, almost to the degree that they filled their minds with Christianese. In becoming religious they lost the adventure of walking with Christ.

I now understand that sometimes the Christian religion, while needed for presenting Christ to the world, can actually cool a person's heart toward the Lord. This shift from vital encounter to mental belief system did not occur with the disciples. They kept their personal conversations and emotional connection going with Jesus right through his Resurrection, Ascension into heaven, and indwelling in their inner cores through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, they knew the same kind of fear and loneliness that you and I know. But they kept talking and praying to the Lord, entrusting him with their needs, struggles, and occasional misgivings.

So I encourage you to keep it simple. Don’t get carried away with religious nitpickiness.

Learn what you will and expand what you learn, but keep renewing your love for Christ by engaging him in lively conversations. As long as you keep straight that Christianity is not Christ, and that public images of Christ are one step removed from his personal fidelity to you, you are freed from the denominational eccentricities that pervade the Body of Christ.

As long as you commune daily with Jesus, you can read Scripture from Genesis to Revelation without becoming preoccupied by tangents (like self-consciously trying to obey a bunch of rules), or thrown off track by paradoxes that are not easily reconciled (like God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil).

You diversify your exposure to the Christian heritage and enrich your perception of God’s Being by enjoying the sensual beauty of a Catholic Mass, the rousing singing of a Baptist service, the enthusiastic celebration of a Pentecostal revival, the reverence of a Presbyterian worship service, or the relational enrichment of a home Bible study.

So let's carry on today, taking the apostle Paul at his word: "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God (Eph 3:17-19)." 

For more on how to follow Jesus Christ, see:

Faith Beyond Church Walls: Finding Freedom In Christ