Kara Tippetts was 38 and a mother of four. Brittany Maynard was 29 and a newlywed when she committed suicide by lethal prescription provided by a doctor.
Both women had aggressive forms of cancer; yet, they approached it from very different perspectives.
[Sources: Kara Tippett’s MundaneFaithfulness.com; Brittany Maynard’s story on CNN.com, Sept. 8, 2014]
Read the touching letter Kara penned to Brittany, “Dear Brittany: Why We Don’t Have to Be So Afraid of Dying & Suffering That We Choose Suicide”:
…
“Brittany, when we trust Jesus to be the carrier,protector, redeemer of our hearts, death is no longer dying. My heart longs for you to know this truth, this love, this forever living.
“You have been told a lie. A horrible lie, that your dying will not be beautiful. That the suffering will be too great.
…“I pray my words reach you.
“I pray they reach the multitudes that are looking at your story and believing the lie that suffering is a mistake, that dying isn’t to be braved, that choosing our death is the courageous story.
“No – hastening death was never what God intended.
“But in our dying, He does meet us with His beautiful grace.
“The Hippocratic oath matters, and those that are choosing to walk away from it need to be challenged.”
As Ann Voskamp posted on her blog, “Kara humbly speaks important words into this current news story and national conversation about assisted suicide with a tender weight [and] compassionate gravity that only someone, a mother, a wife, a daughter, bravely facing terminal cancer can — we earnestly love and pray for both women as they each share own their stories.”
Watch KRDO News13: “Terminally Ill Mom: Assisted Suicide Isn’t The Answer.”
Listen to the Focus on the Family broadcast (Part 1; Part 2) with Kara and Jason Tippetts.
Photo from Mundane Faithfulness
