I’ve done a lot of public speaking in my time but speaking in pajamas, this is a first. Though I am pretty sure Tiffany would have loved it.
First, I want to say a few quick thank yous. From our family, thank you all for the support you have given us over the past 4 weeks. Hospitalization is never easy, and with Tiffany’s needs, someone had to be with her 24 hours a day. Your support and prayers have carried us. But more than these past 4 weeks, thank you for the past 38 years of loving and serving Tiffany alongside us. You helped to make her life what it was.
Now, let me take a few minutes to tell you about my big sister.
People would often mistake me for the oldest, but if they ever made that mistake around Tiff, she was quick to correct them. Though she was not the oldest in terms of breaking our parents in. I mean, did you meet her, she was an angel, and quite honestly their favorite. But she acted like the oldest in that she taught me so many valuable life lessons. So many things that have influenced my life and the person I have become.
I’m going to share with you some of the things that Tiffany taught our family.
Tiffany taught our family to defy expectations. Middle School me didn’t think it was always the coolest, but Tiffany did almost all of the activities I did growing up. My parents' motto was, well if the other kids do it, Tiffany can do it too. From Student Council at school to Church Kids Chorus to being a Girl Scout and spending the night at overnight camp. My parents even found a way to convince the staff there to run her across the zip line, and one can not forget her elementary years of playing kickball and having runaway wheelchair moments in the school hallway. She even decided to try her hand at college, amassing almost the number of hours required to earn a bachelor's degree, just in lots of different disciplines at the local community college. Tiffany outlived her life expectancy by more than 15 years, she was truly a rolling miracle.
Tiffany taught our family how to laugh, and usually at some of the most inappropriate times. Tiffany loved potty humor, we joked that she had the sense of humor of a 3rd-grade boy. Even in the ICU, she figured out how to make the BIPAP machine make a fart sound, and would just crack herself up. Every day when I would come home from school, she would ask me how my day was. I would usually tell her a story involving lunch duty, or hallway duty and there was no way I could say the word duty without pausing the story for her to laugh at the word duty. And don’t get me started on what would happen if you hurt yourself in front of her.
Tiffany taught us about joy. Her smile and laugh were contagious. Watching her experience life was so much fun. You should have seen her face when she was pushed around the skating rink or pushing a ball off of the ramp at the bowling alley. You were left with no doubt as to how joyful she was. Her face was priceless.
Tiffany taught our family to love big. She loved her parents and her siblings. She loved being Aunt “Teeny” to her four nephews. Even if she claimed they got on her nerves. She loved her community, and those providing care to her. To know Tiffany was to love her, and if you loved her, she loved you right back.
Tiffany taught us about patience. We Maxwell’s are not naturally patient folks. But Tiffany had patience in spades. Tiffany had to wait for everything in life, can you imagine needing to scratch your nose, needing a drink, or wanting the channel on the TV changed and having to wait for someone to come around so you could ask them to do it for you? Tiffany had patience.
Tiffany taught us to live without fear. From being the first kid with special needs to be mainstreamed into a neighborhood school in the Shawnee Mission School district to riding roller coasters at Disney World. To facing more surgeries and medical procedures than we can count. While at the same time teaching medical providers to look truly at the person, not just at the condition they were seeking treatment for. Tiffany faced hardships with grace and a smile.
Tiffany taught our family about service. One of my mom's favorite stories to tell, from when we were little bitty was when she briefly left the room and came back in to find one year old me, feeding 2-year-old Tiffany a cookie. Helping others became a default setting for our family because of Tiffany. And I would be remiss to not take a second and thank my parents for their years of selfless service to all of us, but especially Tiffany. Caring for her 24 hours a day for 38 years was a big task, but because of their selfless love, care, and defiance of the world's expectations Tiffany lived a long, rich and full life.
The most important lesson Tiffany taught us was about faith. Tiffany LOVED Jesus. I think because of her more frequent quiet and still moments, Tiffany got to know the Lord in a way that we can not begin to understand. Tiffany enjoyed worship music and would sing along, even if it wasn’t pretty, it was a joyful noise. I remember at the first youth rally we ever went to, Tiffany started weeping at the baptisms, so much so that it kinda freaked everyone out, but she was just moved in a mighty way. She would later go on to be baptized at the same youth rally a few years later. Tiffany loved her New Story church family and the space that was made for her here. She wasn’t an afterthought, but a member of the Body. New Story, we can’t thank you enough for that gift.
We have seen the hand of God all over Tiffany’s life, and even in this really difficult season. What landed her in the hospital was a giant cyst attached to her ovaries, and her biggest fear was cancer. On the day after Tiffany passed, mom got a call from the surgeon with the pathology report from her hysterectomy. They had found cancer. Not only did the Lord spare Tiffany from one of her greatest fears and the suffering that would have come with it, but with that discovery, she is providing for her sisters, and Ashley and I are qualified for preventative genetic testing. We don’t doubt that His plan is perfect.
To have the faith of my sister would be tremendous. When she would have more reason than most to run from God, she turned towards Him. In that I think maybe the biggest lesson my sister ever taught me, look to the Father, God’s got you.
Tiffany lived a full and beautiful life showing the Lord to those around her. Don’t be mistaken, her body was her biggest burden, but that did not hinder the influence she had on the world around her. And now that she is with Jesus I can’t help but think of the words of Jesus in Mark 5, when he says, “Little Girl, get up.” And based on our conversations before her surgery, she’s going to be turning some cartwheels in heaven with our mom’s mom, Granny B.
I firmly believe that Tiffany was the initiator of a ripple effect that we will see and hear the effects of in heaven one day. Her faith, her influence, and her story will have changed the eternity of those she may have never met.
And though we miss her terribly, and are so grateful for what she has taught us, we are also grateful that Tiffany now has freedom from her body and that dang wheelchair, because of her freedom in Jesus, and even though it isn’t fun to be missing her, it is Good News.
