Not Devastated

“I think more realistically without treatment you have six months to live”.  His face was alert, keen, and intelligent.  We had only met the Medical Oncologist a few minutes earlier, but my wife Shallena had characteristically gotten straight to the point. 

“This cancer is aggressive…”  I heard echoes of the original conversation with a radiologist two and a half years ago when the presumptive diagnosis was made, and brought me to my knees.

It was another soul sigh – adding to all of those that have come before, and are yet to come – when I wondered to myself, “Is this real? Is he really talking about my wife?”  Then I looked at my wife – sincere, serene, not flinching one bit…

“That’s what I thought all along.” She had been reading him the whole time.  For those who don’t know her, she has a gift for reading people.

Our cancer journey – from the beginning in 2013, but more especially in the last several weeks -- has been a constant challenge to the core of my faith.  I have grown up a Christian Seventh-day Adventist.  My heroes in Academy were Jesus, Huss, Jerome, and Luther.  I looked way up with wide eyes at anyone who lived their life from conviction despite inconvenience.  From a young age, I wanted to join them.  I wasn’t keen on a normal life or the American dream; I wanted something real and meaningful that was honest to the core of the calling God had on my soul. 

Going on in life I have come to walk in two worlds that seem to be separated by something like a wide river.  One world is that deeply significant world I talk about in which Christian heroes lay themselves aside and sacrifice, struggle, suffer, and sometimes die in the fight for truth and the kingdom of heaven.  It would be embarrassing to say how little time I have actually spent living in this world, but have many times become excited talking about it.  Most of the time I am afraid to visit it for fear of crossing over. The other world is the one I live in – this safe world of “Churchianity” where our safe religion, job, culture, and material existence prevent any of the woes of the world from catching up with us.  We live mostly as invincible demi-gods who are accountable only to our taste and desires.  Could the two worlds be more different?  Who can cross that raging river?

“We walk by faith, not by sight” 2 Corinthians 5:7.  What does it mean to walk by faith when you have three little ones, and your wife is given what most would consider a terminal diagnosis?  All the gods of materialism just became more impotent than Baal on Mount Carmel.  Money, culture, knowledge, education and whichever other post-enlightenment god we may worship, doesn’t fork the hay for a day.  I walk by sight, and I’m very comfortable trusting my eyes, and they can see the water raging.  They can also see that talking about faith gives me a lot more control than living in it.

That is the beauty of grace.  God in His mysterious goodness stoops low to help –  I’m quaking looking at the raging water.  I want to hold on to control of my life, but don’t have any answers.  My old meticulously planned solutions don’t work. While I tremble and quiver with fear, He holds out his strong promises and guarantees them with answers to prayer – slowly, gently leading me over the water one step at a time.

As I toggle between these two worlds – venturing into faith on good days, plummeting back to sight on weak ones, I have started to become more acquainted with that river.  I still don’t know its name, but the noisy water and currents call out at me every time I cross it.  Death and doubt call out the loudest, but fear is always there adding to the raucous noise:

“You don’t know what’s going to happen”

“How are you going to raise three children?”

“It’s going to be a lonely house”

“What are you going to do?”

It used to be easiest not to go near the river, but recently I’ve noticed I have been hearing those same voices even in the other parts of my life by sight, and all of my old answers just aren’t working.

But on the good days – oh those good days!!!  The rickety walk across the river is noisy and treacherous at first, but the King holds out his staff to steady me, and about halfway over I start hearing the most beautiful music:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”

“If God is for us, who can be against us”

“Look to me and be saved”

“Nothing can separate us from the love of God”

“Don’t let your heart be troubled”

I want to live in that land.  It used to be more comfortable in the land of sight, but somehow…some way I can’t explain or write on this paper, God is making it more difficult to walk by sight. That is not because my faith is strong.  I’ve been many things recently, but strong is not one of them.  It is because God is strong.  Somehow, some way He has started this welcome, new, terrifying change.

Some would say, and some have said to me that having faith means knowing that God is going to heal my wife from breast cancer here and now, and that not believing that is a lack of faith.  I long for Shallena to be healed – I would love to trade my health for her disease, or anything else that I could.  Today I truly believe that Shallena is being healed.  However, the stories of Job, John the Baptist, and Jesus tell me that I don’t always know the whole story – and sometimes our greatest blessings – and the greatest advances for the kingdom of heaven -- come from the suffering we endure.  I am hoping and praying with all of my heart that Shallena is healed, but my confidence in God does not depend on it.

I would rather suggest that walking by faith in the middle of uncertainty when sight has failed means having confidence that God is still good, and can take care of us and our future, especially when it is uncertain.  Leaving far behind the noisy fear of death, doubt, and selfish ambition, and abandoning our deep-seated dogma that money can solve our problems, I want to cross over the river.  I don't just want to talk about it -- I want to live in it.  I want to let God deal with the diagnosis, the prognosis, the questions, the answers, the tears, the fears, today, tomorrow, and everything else I can’t even put into words.  I want Him to be in charge of the success of our future, so that we can stop worrying about it, and start once again to do His work.

Fortunately, there is treatment for Shallena’s cancer.  While it gives us comfort to know that medicine has treatment that can potentially extend her months to years, our hope and trust is in God. 

We have been overwhelmed by the love, support, and prayers of those who love us, and have heard about our situation.  Thank you for remembering us and all of your support.  Thank you for the empathy for our situation – it’s not easy.  But we didn’t ask God for easy.  We asked for God to use our lives to glorify Him, and to do that at any cost.  He has been given the right to use our lives for His glory, and somehow He has allowed us to have cancer to bring glory to Him.  I don’t know how He is going to do that, but I know that day by day, one faltering step after another we are going to follow Him, and take from His hand what He gives us.  One day when we can see the end from the beginning, we will thank God for the faith that he grew in us while we walked this dark part of our path.  We have struggled, we are still barely crawling, but I hear that sweet music coming from the other side.  The roaring river is fading out – it is losing its hold on us.  By nothing greater nor less than the infinite mercy of God, we are not, and will not be devastated.

“For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38,39.