Kara Tippetts, a Christian author and blogger who wrote an open letter to right-to-die campaigner Brittany Maynard, has died after a three-year battle with breast cancer.
The 38 year old pastor's wife and mother-of-four was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2012 and died on Sunday, according to Religion News Service. The latest post on Tippett's blog, Mundane Faithfulness, explains that she died with dignity, refusing to give up to the very end.
"She believed that cancer was not the point, but Jesus was; how she responded and trusted Christ in the midst of this hard was where she would find Grace," reads the blog post, which is titled "Homecoming."
Last year, Tippetts made national headlines after writing to Maynard urging her to reconsider ending her life. Maynard, who died by assisted suicide in November, suffered from a brain tumour and campaigned extensively for dignity in dying, becoming the face of Compassion & Choices.
Before Maynard's death, Tippetts wrote her an open letter encouraging her to reconsider her decision to end her life:"Dear heart, we simply disagree. 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," she wrote.
"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... That last kiss, that last warm touch, that last breath, matters - but it was never intended for us to decide when that last breath is breathed."
"Knowing Jesus, knowing that He understands my hard goodbye, He walks with me in my dying. My heart longs for you to know Him in your dying. Because in His dying, He protected my living. My living beyond this place," Tippett told Maynard.
"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."
In an emotionally-charged blog post written shortly before her death, Tippett explained that extensive treatment was no longer helping the cancer, and that she was ready to go home to her Savior. "My little body has grown tired of battle," she wrote.
"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. I get to draw my people close, kiss them and tenderly speak love over their lives.
"I get to pray into eternity my hopes and fears for the moments of my loves. I get to laugh and cry and wonder over Heaven. I do not feel like I have the courage for this journey, but I have Jesus-and He will provide. He has given me so much to be grateful for, and that gratitude, that wondering over His love, will cover us all. And it will carry us-carry us in ways we cannot comprehend."
