Remembering Heather
by Kevin Cramer

I met Heather on Labor Day Weekend in 1991 while hosting the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I had a full head of hair and a tuxedo and Heather had braces on her legs.

She was like every other four year old you know. She was bright eyed, smarter than most, but full of life and curious about everything. She was beautiful and inspirational. She was also living with a death sentence. Not a death sentence like we all have, but a future certain to include suffering that would increase, intensify and ultimately destroy.

After that telethon we/I did what we always do. Go about the business of living a comfortable, prosperous, blessed life.

Then shortly after becoming a public service commissioner, I received an e-mail forwarded to me through the ND Family Alliance Web Site from a girl named Heather Nelson. Reminding me of our first encounter some 14 years earlier, she humbly asked if I would ever consider attending her graduation from Richardton-Taylor High School. Her e-mail, which I still have, started out, "You probably don’t remember me but I always remember you."

Doesn’t that say it all about Heather?

Distracted by all the burdens that come with a healthy body, material wealth and worldly ambitions, how could someone like me remember someone like a four year old girl with braces on her legs?

After drying my tears I responded by accepting her gracious invitation. Curious about this courageous 18 year old who had the guts to e-mail me and reintroduce herself, I began my research and found a remarkable story Heather wrote for the school newsletter. It was a thank you letter to the students, teachers and staff at Richardton-Taylor High School for their support of her during her time there. She even thanked the janitor for making the school a clean, safe environment.

How many of us take for granted the safety of our conditions? Probably all of us.

Of course I attended Heather’s high school graduation and the relationship was renewed, and like all of you I have been blessed beyond words for having known this most exceptional woman of God.

Her writing whether in a card, e-mail or Fuzzy newsletter always touched my heart. She was gifted with more than an ability to put words together. She was gifted with eyes that see in the spirit, things that most of us will never see while on this earth. Her theological insights about healing and God’s will would make the most devout Catholic and extreme Pentecostal seminarians rethink their academic credentials.

 At the wise old age of 20, Heather was admitted to St. Luke’s Nursing Home where she would live with a whole building full of old and sick people. Here’s a part of what she wrote in her newsletter about this new chapter in her life; "I welcome this change, and embrace it for what it could be. In a nursing home, the Physical challenges I deal with will not be such a burden to me or my family, and we can focus on the more important things. I’ve always wanted to be able to visit and encourage the sick and differently abled, and now, I will be in a full-time mission field! Praise God!

Whenever I was in the area, I tried to stop by St. Luke’s to visit Heather. I wish just once I could have been half as encouraging to her as she was to me.

I have some great memories of our visits in her room, but perhaps the most profound was shortly after she had made the decision to reject further intrusive treatments that may extend the days of her life but not the quality of it. I asked about her decision to stop fighting for life and she taught me this lesson;

"I was reading about David in the Bible," she told me, "and when he volunteered to fight Goliath, he put on Saul’s armor, but it was too much of a burden. The king’s armor didn’t fit David, so he took it off and picked up five stones and his sling. I’m not giving up the fight," Heather told me, "I’m just not wearing the world’s armor."

Feeling encouraged at the same time as foolish, I felt Heather had entered  an even higher level of spiritual maturity than previously and I never worried about her again. It was me I had to worry about.

Of course in these final months she was restricted to her room and even her bed. Yet even laying helplessly in bed, able to do nothing for herself, she witnessed to everyone she encountered. Her attitude of gratitude served as witness to how much she loved and trusted her savior.

Heather taught me more in dying than any preacher ever taught me in life.

The sharing of her dreams of heaven were so vivid and real that it finally occurred to me that while most Christians struggle to understand what eternity may be like, Heather was already there.

So today we remember and celebrate the life of our dear sister Heather Nelson, confident she is living the promise Christ declared to the thief on the cross when He said, "Today you will be with me in paradise."  And we cling to His promise when He said, "My grace is sufficient."