My mom has cancer, and other things you never want to say
My mom got diagnosed with cancer soon after the start of the new year. Something like that changes the way you experience church. It changes the way you sing the songs, hear the scripture, and respond to people asking you how you are. The first thing I had to deal with was coming to terms with the fact that God is good and that this is an objective statement through which I evaluate the world around me instead of using my circumstances to make a statement about who God is. No matter what, this is a true statement. He is good--and just like so many of the Bible characters that I learned about as a child, I have to trust what I know to be true over what I can see. Some of those characters were used in amazing ways without ever getting the advantage of seeing what, exactly, God was doing with them. So that means that what is going on with my mom, no matter how much it sucks, does not change God's goodness. As I throw up my hands and say, "I don't get what you're doing here!" God responds with, "Trust me." Good will come from this. Maybe not the good I envision, and definitely not good in a temporal, physical world, but in a story much bigger than my own, God is doing something good.
Recently, my church has been preparing to leave our property. We lost the suit brought against us, so we are required to turn over all of our land and property, as well as any money we had on the day that we left the Episcopal church. The pastors have been trying to prepare us for the upcoming challenges of being a church in serious transition. We've been talking quite a bit about God's provision, His divine plan, and the way He cares for His children. On Sunday, so many of the songs focused on God's faithfulness in the past and his promise of his faithfulness in the future. As I sang those songs, tears came to my eyes. One of the songs I had heard for the first time when I was in my hometown church over spring break. This is the song:
While in my hometown church, I had such a strong reaction. As we were singing it, I realized I was on the cusp of sobbing. As the tears rolled down my cheeks I realized that it was the first time I had been back in the church since I attended the funeral of a young friend over Christmas. And my mom was at home, sick from her cancer treatments. I just cried realizing that He was with us--all of us--the parents of that sweet boy, my sick mom, and me. A month later, as we sang this song at my church here in DC, I was reminded again of His faithfulness and could sing with all my heart that He has indeed been faithful to my family--at every step. When my grandmother was going through the slow and painful experience of being terminally ill with cancer, when Zoe was in a care center halfway across the world being nutured by nannies that took such loving care of her as a "tiny baby" (as she describes herself), when my dad came down with Polio as a 2-year-old, and now, as my mom has finished the first stage of treatment.
And I was reminded of the things I have been reading in Elizabeth Elliot's book The Path of Loneliness about how God's true desire for us is for us to find Him and know Him in these times--that solving our problems isn't His main goal. Making us more like Him, drawing us to Himself so that we know the fulfillment we were created for--that's what He cares about. So as I sang about His faithfulness I had to come to terms with the truth that God's faithfulness is not proven by how often He fixes my problems or heals those I love or keeps me from feeling like an idiot. His faithfulness to me is a promise that he is IN those situations--that no matter what happens, He is there, He has His hand in the situation, and He will use all that I experience to bring about His perfect plan in the world, even if I can't see how that plan is good or fair or just or kind. I know it is--because He is good and fair and just and kind.
Recently, my church has been preparing to leave our property. We lost the suit brought against us, so we are required to turn over all of our land and property, as well as any money we had on the day that we left the Episcopal church. The pastors have been trying to prepare us for the upcoming challenges of being a church in serious transition. We've been talking quite a bit about God's provision, His divine plan, and the way He cares for His children. On Sunday, so many of the songs focused on God's faithfulness in the past and his promise of his faithfulness in the future. As I sang those songs, tears came to my eyes. One of the songs I had heard for the first time when I was in my hometown church over spring break. This is the song:
While in my hometown church, I had such a strong reaction. As we were singing it, I realized I was on the cusp of sobbing. As the tears rolled down my cheeks I realized that it was the first time I had been back in the church since I attended the funeral of a young friend over Christmas. And my mom was at home, sick from her cancer treatments. I just cried realizing that He was with us--all of us--the parents of that sweet boy, my sick mom, and me. A month later, as we sang this song at my church here in DC, I was reminded again of His faithfulness and could sing with all my heart that He has indeed been faithful to my family--at every step. When my grandmother was going through the slow and painful experience of being terminally ill with cancer, when Zoe was in a care center halfway across the world being nutured by nannies that took such loving care of her as a "tiny baby" (as she describes herself), when my dad came down with Polio as a 2-year-old, and now, as my mom has finished the first stage of treatment.
And I was reminded of the things I have been reading in Elizabeth Elliot's book The Path of Loneliness about how God's true desire for us is for us to find Him and know Him in these times--that solving our problems isn't His main goal. Making us more like Him, drawing us to Himself so that we know the fulfillment we were created for--that's what He cares about. So as I sang about His faithfulness I had to come to terms with the truth that God's faithfulness is not proven by how often He fixes my problems or heals those I love or keeps me from feeling like an idiot. His faithfulness to me is a promise that he is IN those situations--that no matter what happens, He is there, He has His hand in the situation, and He will use all that I experience to bring about His perfect plan in the world, even if I can't see how that plan is good or fair or just or kind. I know it is--because He is good and fair and just and kind.
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