The Bride of Christ

Here's a piece I've been working on since Kitt's homegoing celebration, a celebration that so many of you helped make into a tender worship gathering instead of a somber farewell. As one friend's son said, "I'm surprised how much they talked about Jesus and how little they talked about Mr. Kitt." Amen. (If you'd rather not cry, stop reading now.) This is dedicated to the Rodriguezes, who continue to teach me what it means to love Jesus and grieve, and to their son Mark, who continues to inspire us to pursue our passions.


The Bride of Christ, by Adkittrell, 5/21/18

Distraught and spent, I trudged through our snow-draped backyard and flung myself down in my pajama pants in the middle of our woods, our beautiful woods that God gave us nine years ago when life was simple. There I wept - tears of disbelief, brokenness, elusive dreams of ‘happily ever after’ that had abruptly ended for us. My breathing reminding me that my body was healthy, my body continued to function, yet my soul hung limp and lifeless. As my snowy surroundings witnessed my private grief, I felt the Lord with me. He sat in the snow next to me, the cold no match for our anguish. The knotty bark pressing against my back, the snow numbing my legs, reminding me of my present home - earth, contrasted with Kevin’s present home - Heaven. Kevin and I were just united, how could we already be separated? I met him the first day of college; we had the same RA; lived in the same dorm; shared the same crazy adventures. We dated each other’s friends until the Lord revealed his perfect plan for us: each other. That was yesterday. And that yesterday seemed more real than the 14 months that had painfully passed from his shocking diagnosis to his last earth-bound breath.

My mind played through our 51 hospital days: hours spent waiting to catch a smile or read him a Psalm; quiet conversations about Heaven; clogged tubes from a contraband smoothie; lavender oil foot massages; farewell visits from faithful friends; in-law drama of epic proportion; surreal funeral home decisions, our children’s heartbreak; our lonely bed; shoes at the back door that would never protect his feet again. As I pictured my husband’s shrunken earthly body in his oaken casket, dressed for burial in his regimental Dress Blues uniform, I was reminded of a day 24 years prior when he wore the same uniform: our wedding day. With the January 1st date of our wedding, and the black and red color theme of the celebration, we knew his Dress Mess jacket with the crimson silk lapels would be the perfect complement to my white organza and lace gown. Although money was tight, we splurged to buy the uniform: $500, if my memory serves, a hundred dollars more than my wedding gown. Images of that day, the breathtaking beauty of the snow, the candlelit church, joyful friends, the anticipation of our new life together brought tears of joy to my eyes as it felt like that day was just a short time in the past. In the middle of the snow covered woods, as I wept, the Lord spoke to my shattered heart. He spoke to me so tenderly, barely louder than the swaying limbs above me: “Kevin is the Bride of Christ now. Thank you for loving him well on earth; He is with me now. He is my beloved.” These words followed by Holy quiet. And I understood with a resonant clarity that sliced through my tears, halting the movie track of my memories: Kevin is the Bride of Christ now, and he is united with his Groom - Jesus himself. They are eternally united. What a beautiful image.

Passages about the Bride of Christ (the Church) and her Groom (Jesus) have always intrigued and perplexed me. The enlightened Paul even admits to the “profound mystery” of the metaphor. In the New Testament, Paul tells us, “For this reason, a man shall leave his mother and father, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31). There are so many functions of a marriage: procreation, relationship and intimacy, tag-team parenting and shared chores, binge-watching Netflix together, to name a few. Based on Ephesians, is it safe to assume that God’s greatest intention for earthly marriage is to help us understand the union that is to come? With that assumption, earthly marriage is a reflection, a shadow of the luminescent, eternal union of Jesus with his people. Metaphors inherently are tools to bring deeper understanding of some other entity or truth. Perhaps in this case the metaphor of the husband and wife’s union is an expression of God’s glorious heart and perfect design, a gift to help us experience on earth a taste of the perfecting union of Jesus and the church, one that we will perfectly experience only in Heaven. Paul expresses this longing aptly as he concludes his famous passage on love, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). On earth we can only guess and wonder; in heaven we will possess the contentment and peace that comes from true understanding.

Earlier in Ephesians, Paul discusses a man’s calling in marriage: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25-27). This is a high-calling, one to be taken seriously; glad I’m not a husband. What a powerfully intimate metaphor to describe our relationship with the Savior of the World. Gender issues aside, Kitt dressing in his wedding uniform - the most expensive, luxurious piece of clothing that he had - was profoundly appropriate as his soul in death joined with Jesus in eternal life. In fact in this verse from Revelation, the author John uses the reflexive pronoun ‘himself’ - a male reference - when talking about the bride of Christ: “For the wedding of the Lord has come, and his bride has made Himself ready” (19:7-9).
Tears on wedding days seem to be a common occurrence, every tear holding a different meaning: joy for new life together; sadness to release a child; bittersweetness to let go of childhood; gratitude for the gift of love and commitment, and the promise of the days and adventures to come. Tears on a funeral day are also common: joy for the life well spent; sadness to let go of a friend, a father, a husband, a son, a brother; celebration of the life eternal the beloved is now experiencing. January 1, 1994 and January 7, 2018 were two such days, both filled with tears of joy mixed with angst, both days of celebration for what was, what is and what is to come, a sacred union of the past, the present and the future.

Heartbreak and longing are the fees we pay when we give our hearts away, when we love abundantly without self-protection; selflessly, without regret. This fee is more costly than earthly treasure; this fee is a reflection of the mysterious relationship we are created for: union with Jesus, relationship with God. But as so many poets and country songwriters have said over the centuries: “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” (William Shakespeare) or “You’ve gotta love like there’s no such thing as a broken heart” (Old Dominion). These relational epiphanies aren’t limited to male and female unions, existing in the love between parents and children, and true friend to true friend. The joy of this love and intimacy, and the longing that comes from its loss are a taste of heaven, a foreshadowing of what could be, the perfection, the fulfillment that we will only truly reach “when we (one day) enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”

No mortal can pinpoint the time continuum for this Heavenly Wedding. Did it occur for Kitt as soon as the breath left his depleted earthly body? It reminds me of the biological concept of the ductus arteriosus. In utero, all babies have a valve that shunts the blood away from the lungs since the lungs don’t start functioning until after birth. Sometime immediately prior, during or shortly after birth, this ductus arteriosus naturally closes on its own. Doctors can’t fully explain how or when it occurs. It’s such a beautiful, mysterious occurrence, another indicator of the brilliance of our Holy Designer. Is that what Kitt’s Holy Wedding was like - a union no mortal can pinpoint, that occurred at a time existing outside of the time continuum? In the hospital, Kitt talked a lot about the definition of time in God’s mind, speculating that time in Heaven was nothing like our conception and understanding of it here on earth. As Peter says in this beautiful chiasmus, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). One day Kevin roused from a nap in his palliative care room and said to a dear friend sitting at his bedside, “Maybe when I get to Heaven, you’ll all be there waiting for me and we’ll enter Heaven together.” Maybe, sweetheart, maybe.