A Christian author and blogger with terminal cancer who desperately — but unsuccessfully — tried to convince cancer-patient Brittany Maynard to reconsider her November decision to end her life through doctor-assisted suicide has been admitted to hospice care.
Kara Tippetts, 38, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, published a blog post December 29, detailing her continued health struggles, sharing insights about the valuable lessons her health crisis has taught her and explaining that she finds immense comfort in Jesus even as she faces death.
“I’m learning what it is to die by degrees. Parts of my body failing, parts of my abilities vanishing, and what then?” Tippetts, a mother of four, wrote. “Yesterday, I kept thinking — I drove for the last time and didn’t realize it was the last time. I don’t remember the last time in the drivers seat or the music we played.  I just realized I will likely never again drive.”
Kara Tippetts has entered hospice (Image via Kara Tippetts/Facebook)
Kara Tippetts has entered hospice (Image via Kara Tippetts/Facebook)
She went on to explain that she heard her husband, Jason, “make the impossible phone call” to hospice on December 29, telling staffers there that his wife was dying. A spokesperson for her publisher later confirmed that Tippetts has entered hospice care, according to Deseret News.
“So, there it is. My little body has grown tired of battle and treatment is no longer helping,” shecontinued. “But what I see, what I know, what I have is Jesus. He has still given me breath, and with it I pray I would live well and fade well. By degrees doing both, living and dying, as I have moments left to live.”
Reflecting the sentiment she shared in her October letter to Maynard in which she begged the 29-year-old woman not to take her own life before cancer claimed it, Tippetts wrote in her latest blog post that, though she is dying, she still has the chance to love, to laugh and to cry.
“I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus — and He will provide it. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love will cover us all,” she wrote. “And it will carry us — carry us in ways we cannot comprehend. It will be a new living and trusting for many in my community. Loving with a great big open hand to my story being the good story — even when it feels so broken.”
Tippetts concluded her blog post by imploring readers to trust in Jesus, not to pity her and her family and to pray for her and walk with her to her “last breath.”
“Will you trust Jesus that He knows the moments, He holds the moments, and He will take me away to the land of no more tears at exactly the right moment — and He will also shepherd and love my people after that last breath,” she wrote.
Read her entire blog post here.
Kara and Jason Tippetts (Image via Kara Tippetts/Facebook)
Kara and Jason Tippetts (Image via Kara Tippetts/Facebook)
Back in October, Tippets thanked Maynard for sharing her story in an open letter and said that she understands what it’s like to know that one’s life is coming to a close — but added that she believes Maynard would be making a terrible mistake by ending her life through doctor-assisted suicide.
“Suffering is not the absence of goodness, it is not the absence of beauty, but perhaps it can be the place where true beauty can be known,” Tippetts wrote, claiming that people aren’t meant to choose when they take their last breath. “In your choosing your own death, you are robbing those that love you with the such tenderness, the opportunity of meeting you in your last moments and extending you love in your last breaths.”
Maynard went through with her plan to end her life on November 1, ignoring Tippetts’ pleading.
Regardless, Tippetts is clearly cherishing her final moments and inspiring others in the process.
(H/T: Deseret News)