Stronger Than Fear
All I know about Stephanie, someone I've never met, is what I've heard from some friends at church. Basically, it can be written in a single sentence: Her father died because of AIDS.
I have never known anyone with AIDS. Like most people, I've read a lot about the disease in magazines and seen a lot about it on television. But as I prepare to talk to Stephanie on the phone, I'm aware that reading about AIDS is a lot different than watching AIDS take the life of someone you love.
So I call Stephanie, and we wade through the basic awkward chit-chat of two strangers who are about to discuss something very painful. After a few minutes, I ask Stephanie to tell me about her dad, and she begins her story.
"My parents got a divorce when I was in grade school," she tells me right away, "but their relationship was friendly, so I saw Dad quite a bit. I went to college in Chicago, where my dad lived, and we got really close. He was my only family in a new city.
"My dad and I could talk about a lot of things, but not about God or faith. I'd accepted Christ when I was younger, but in college, I felt somewhat disconnected from the church. I wasn't very involved with other Christians.
Dad had searched for 'religion' in all kinds of places after the divorce, trying out different churches and even different faiths. During my college years, he was a member of a church I didn't agree with, so God wasn't tops on our list of discussion topics."
Stephanie goes on to tell me that during her senior year of college, she began noticing things about her dad that concerned her. "He was experiencing some pretty serious dental problems, which I later found out were a result of AIDS.
But what really caught my attention was how exhausted he was. He helped me move once, and he was tired after going up the stairs only a few times. He was obviously having a hard time carrying things. He had always been a strong, active man, so I knew something was wrong."
At this point, Stephanie stops talking to get a drink of water, and I wonder if our conversation is about to get harder for her. She comes back to the phone and says, "One day my dad called and asked me to stop over on my way to school. I went to his place often, so I didn't have any reason to suspect something was wrong. When I got there, he sat down with me and told me straight out that he had AIDS."
Stephanie is quiet for a moment, then adds, "I don't remember much about that morning—what he said or what I said. But I do remember feeling very anxious to get out of his apartment so I didn't have to hear any more. I just wanted to be alone. I remember telling him I had to leave for class. It was just an excuse to get away."
She never made it to class that day. "I had to walk through Grant Park in downtown Chicago to get to school. I'm sure it was a beautiful spring day, but I didn't even notice. I was in shock, I suppose. And I couldn't stop crying. When I got to school, I just couldn't face the teachers and students. Instead, I called my boyfriend from a pay phone and told him I needed to talk. He came to get me and brought me back to my apartment."
I ask Stephanie if it helped to talk with her boyfriend.
"Not really," she says. "When I told him about my dad having AIDS, he responded to me almost the same way I'd responded to my dad. I could tell he didn't want to hear about it. Like me, I suppose he was in shock. He wanted to get away, probably because he didn't know what to say or how to react."
After knowing about her dad's AIDS for only a few hours, Stephanie had already learned something: AIDS makes people uncomfortable. Even close friends and family members. Sure, it's a disease, just like cancer is a disease, but it's a disease that carries a serious stigma.
As Stephanie tells me about her reaction, about her boyfriend's reaction and about the reactions of so many other people when they find out a person has AIDS, something strikes me. I wonder if a person with AIDS feels something like the leper in the New Testament who had to yell, "Unclean, unclean!" as he walked through the streets so everyone else could scatter and avoid touching or even seeing him. Not much of a life.
But I also think about how Jesus was right there, caring for the leper, touching the leper, ignoring the fear others felt in the face of a horrible disease.
Stephanie knew she had to put her fears aside and, like Jesus, act out of love. "I really loved my dad a lot," she says. "One of the things he taught me as a child was to hug the people you love and tell them that you love them. He taught me how important it is to show love to people. That's probably one of the greatest gifts he gave me, and his illness was a chance for me to give something back to him."
So Stephanie, along with her dad's twin sister, began caring for her dad as much as possible. They took him to doctors' appointments, cleaned his apartment and fixed him meals. Stephanie says, "I could help my dad physically. I could support him emotionally by loving him. But spiritually, there was little I felt I could offer.
I hadn't given up on God, and in fact, I was spending more and more time praying. But for some reason, I wasn't able to share that part of my life with my dad.
"But my aunt is a very strong Christian who feels comfortable talking about her faith and God and salvation. She was able to give my dad what I couldn't—real spiritual support and encouragement."
As people began learning about her dad's AIDS, Stephanie was often asked how he got it. And I have to admit, I've been wondering the same thing. So I ask Stephanie how she handled that question.
"I'll be honest, I hated it when someone asked me that," she says. "I felt they'd already prejudged him. They automatically assumed he did something to get the disease. The truth is, I don't know how he got it. He was in an accident and had some blood transfusions in the '80s, before blood was screened carefully. He also lived a fairly promiscuous life after the divorce.
Did he do drugs? Was he a homosexual? I don't know. But does that really matter? If he got AIDS through a homosexual relationship, should he be thought less of than if he got it from a blood transfusion?"
I listen to Stephanie and hear obvious frustration and hurt in her voice. In my mind, I think back to another picture of Jesus. I can hear him addressing an angry crowd, saying something like, "Any of you who haven't sinned, go ahead, be my guest and throw the first stone at this woman."
The woman in that story had been caught in the act—in the act—of adultery, and still, not a single stone was thrown that day. I'm reminded that judging another person's actions isn't our job as humans.
Stephanie moves ahead a few months in her story to a turning point in her dad's disease. "I had been helping as much as I could, trying my best to be there for my dad. But sometimes I felt angry and frustrated. I was trying to finish college, work and take care of my dad … it was too much. I felt like I couldn't focus on him completely. It was just too hard.
"One morning, Dad called me and asked me to stop by on my way to school. I was frustrated, but I went anyway. When I got there, he was so weak, he couldn't get out of bed. He wanted a drink and told me he'd been thirsty all morning. But he'd waited to call me so he wouldn't wake me."
As Stephanie tells me this, I think, What an act of kindness her dad showed by thinking of her, even when he was thirsty. And what an act of kindness Stephanie showed by giving him a glass of water even when she was busy.
That morning, Stephanie's dad was admitted to the hospital for what would be the final three weeks of his life.
"What can I say about those final weeks?" Stephanie says. "They were awful. He had a tube in his throat, so it was difficult for him to talk. He would cry with frustration, and all I could do was wipe his tears. This once-strong man was helpless—and dying. He didn't even look like my dad any more.
"The day he died was the hardest day of all. I didn't have the courage to stay in the room while they pulled out all his tubes and wires, so I waited in the hallway. My aunt, though, was right beside his bed, reading Scripture to him and praying."
I ask Stephanie if it bothered her that she wasn't with her dad in his last moments.
She answers quickly, "Not at all. I knew my aunt was giving him what he really needed, so I was grateful. Besides, it was too hard for me to watch. I went into the room briefly after everything was over, and when I saw my dad lying there dead, I couldn't handle it. I just couldn't believe there was no more hope, nothing more I could do."
But in the time since her father's death, Stephanie has found that there is hope and there are things she can do.
"For my senior project in college, I made a block for the AIDS quilt, which is a project dedicated to remembering people who have died from AIDS. I scanned my dad's picture on my block and put a lot of bright, colorful images on it. Designing it and working on it helped me say goodbye."
Stephanie also started spending time with kids affected by AIDS.
"The kids I help each have a parent with AIDS. When a parent dies, I share my experience with the child involved. I think it helps them to know that someone else has experienced that same hurt and despair."
But the thing that brought Stephanie the greatest healing was reading her dad's journals. "While he was sick, he wrote a lot. His journals are full of Scripture that was comforting to him. He writes about his thoughts on the journey he was on. He was rediscovering who he was and who God was."
Though they never talked about his faith, Stephanie is confident she'll see her dad again in heaven. "In his journals, he wrote about turning back to God and renewing a relationship with him. No matter how many good or bad things he did in his life, his genuine faith at the end of his life gives me hope that he's now with God."
Stephanie and I say goodbye, and I'm left with hope, too. Hope because God is continuing to heal Stephanie's pain. Hope because God uses even the most painful circumstances to bring us closer to him. And hope because God offers his unconditional love to everyone—the leper, the adulteress, the man dying of AIDS.
To me.
To you.
And that's the greatest news of all.
