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I’m John’s wife. I wrote this the day of his death, October 11, 2018.
“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”
Many of you are asking what you can do for us. One thing I know John C. Hathaway wants us all to do is forgive, from the bottom of our hearts. He had an intense dark night of the soul, but he was graced with healing and light by Jesus in the weeks before he died (1am on 10/11/18). So, please, know that John and I and the children ask forgiveness for trespasses committed, extend forgiveness, and encourage everyone to repent and extend forgiveness as Jesus adjourned us all to do in the Our Father/Lord’s Prayer. His 3 months in the ICU (after descending aorta replacement surgery) in 2013 were fraught with disturbing images. He saw hell, and God told him he needed to extend mercy to receive mercy. We have been deeply hurt by many people, often being misunderstood, rejected, and abandoned as we struggle in a world that is hugely cruel to the weak. Yes, even amongst our own brothers and sisters in Christ. It makes for a lot of bitterness, I must confess.
As a kid, I never understood why “Mary,” the name of Jesus’s Mother, would mean bitter. It was only in the past several months that I realized there are two types of bitterness. There is a bitterness that causes the drying up of one’s soul from holding grudges, losing hope, giving up, shoving people away. Conversely, there is also the meaning of bitters as a medicine or herb. The type of bitterness that we can allow by God’s grace to bring healing, slowly, yes painfully, but very surely to our souls of all wrong. I read that bitters are a part of the Seder meal, which got me to thinking of the Last Supper and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. Catholics have a devotion to Our Lady as the Mother of Sorrows. As I lay in bed last night, desperately missing his warm presence next to mine, it dawned on me that Mary is also a Widow. As a Catholic, I believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity but for the first time, it dawned on me how much she would have ached for her husband’s chaste presence, who guarded them through so much in the temporal life. John, I love and miss you so. Your name means God is gracious and Manly, and that you are.
The Lewis Crusade 