How to Live and Die in Christ

For the past 25 years, Mary Shinar has shown me how to live with her heart focused on and resting in Jesus. She was my high school boyfriend’s mother. And I was drawn to Jesus’ radiant love in her like a moth to a flame. Mary and I grew closer every year. She was a mother in Christ to me, and she called me her adopted daughter. She was the Christ-like, gentle, humble, kind, servant-hearted, fun-loving, compassionate, and wise adult with whom I shared all of my hopes and fears, struggles and sins, joys, sorrows, shattered dreams, and God stories. Oh, how she loved to hear and to share “God stories.”

She showed me how to listen to and obey God’s Word and voice, how to trust His heart, how to pray, how to listen to people, to mentor, to encourage, to show hospitality, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, to be generous in sharing who God has made me and what He has entrusted me to steward, to not take life so seriously, and to enjoy God and every holy and delightful moment He gives.

I remember asking her many years ago what she would do if she knew Jesus was returning in one hour. She thought about it, and with a gentle radiant smile she replied, “I would put my wedding dress on.” She adored Him. She loved waking up early to watch the sunrise with Him and listen to His Words to her. She greatly loved and patiently prayed for her husband, and he came to know the Lord 20 years after she did and he walks with Him now. In addition to faithfully loving and prioritizing her family’s needs throughout her life, during the last 20 years, she planted women’s mentoring ministries at 3 different churches, mentoring dozens of women directly, and training hundreds to become mentors to younger women in Christ.

Throughout the year 2022, she discipled me and many others in a new way. She showed us how to suffer and die with a heart focused on and resting in Jesus Christ. This started with the radiant gratitude to God and trust in God she possessed in the midst of being diagnosed with Advanced Uterine Cancer in January. It continued as she suffered the symptoms of cancer and the side effects of chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and multiple hospitalizations. During her 11-month cancer journey, many women (including some unbelievers) came and sat with her at her home. She would have them read the Forward in the book “Every Moment Holy, Volume 2: on death, grief and hope” and then select a prayer in that book to read together. As they read these beautiful words on how suffering and dying help us know Jesus more, many of these women were in tears as these words brought to the surface past or present griefs and the fear of death. And she- the one suffering and dying- would sit and patiently listen to these women and be present to them in the midst of their pain, comforting them and praying with them as His Spirit led.

Along with her husband, I was beyond blessed and amazed to witness her final 3 days on earth. Philippians 3:10 had been what she had called her “life verse” for decades: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.” Her cancer journey obviously brought new opportunities to experience this reality. And 47 hours before she went to Heaven, she shared the following words of reflection on this verse: “Every day we should strive to know Jesus, in ways only He can show us; we can’t muster up the power to do that, we can only invite Him into our lives every day and He will show up in amazing ways. And He will show us the way. We don’t have to path our own way, for He will do that. Join Him every day, and He will show the way.”

There was a ring on a table in her living room. I asked her about it. She said “It reminds me that I am going to be a part of the bride of Christ soon, and I look forward to this more and more every day! I have peace. I know He is with me, and it gives me so much comfort. And when the time comes for me to cross over the river into heaven, He will take me by the hand and carry me across the river.” And on December 29th at 9:23 am, while we were also holding her hand, it was so. How I thank our Father for her beautiful life in Jesus, for how brightly His loving light shined in her even unto death, and for her present fullness of joy in His presence. And I thank Him for her example to me and to so many others: Of How to live in Jesus and how to suffer and die in Jesus, our Gracious Redeemer, Closest Friend, and Eternal Bridegroom.

Julie Bennett