I created this blog when I was under the impression that substitute teaching would allow me a good deal of free time. As always, my life does not allow for anything but limited free time, no matter what my occupation. With that, this blog fell to the wayside. In recent days, however, I have realized that there may be a need for such a writing outlet in my life again. Hopefully the following paragraph will catch you up on the rational behind this notion (if you have not already read my brother’s blog at http://sylvesjf.wordpress.com/)
Just last week Jared, my 21 year old brother, came home from Miami of Ohio, where he is a junior, to have an MRI on what we presumed to be a meniscus tear. On friday evening Jared’s doctor, Mike Cannone (also a good family friend of ours) called and asked for my parents, my brother and me to come over and discuss the results of his MRI. This seemed very odd considering that Jared had an appointment with him in the morning.
Upon arriving at the Cannone’s house we were, as gently as possible, informed that there was a large growth in Jared’s left knee. What Dr. Cannone and the radiologist both believe that mass to be is something called Osteosarcoma, a type of bone caner. We have spent the week since that time taking Jared to various other doctor’s appointments and scans that have only continued to confirm the original report Dr. Cannone gave. We are still awaiting the final diagnosis from the biopsy report to be taken next week, but the idea of cancer readily looms in the area around us, affecting our thoughts and conversations at every turn.
While it has been truly amazing to witness the many different arrays of life to which the potential of cancer has spread, as well as the various responses it has breed, the most earth-shattering thing I have discovered through this news is how much of a person can be uncovered upon its arrival. It is true, you are able to see how people respond to suffering, how they share their story, how people overcome cancer or let it overrun them. More than that, though, the drastic shifts in life that come from such events bring to light, more than anything else I have thus far met, the depth of human depravity and the hope of redemption through Jesus Christ. Even within the first few moments of hearing the news, my beliefs about God were brought to the surface.
The first thought that ran through my mind was, “God this isn’t what I asked for when I prayed for trials.” Even just the week prior to Jared’s diagnosis I was sitting with my friends Meaghan and Hannah discussing how much I despised the reality of circumstantial peace in my life; I was, at that point, begging God to provide opportunities in which I might experience a “peace that passes understanding” (Phil 4:7). I tried my hardest as I sat on the Cannone’s family room coach to explain to God that he had responded to my prayer’s wrongly: If anyone was getting sick it was to be me, not my family members. How could my walk with the Lord be tested in radical ways, how was I to be empowered to kill sin all the more when it was my brother, not me, who was facing excruciating suffering? That thought that we all experience at one point or another in our lives of, “Lord, take me instead,” was what ended my argument with the Lord. I instantly knew as I let the fleeting words pass through my mind that God had done the right thing. If I had been sick, it would not have challenged me to the extent that watching and caring for a sick brother will. My diagnosis would have been an usher call toward martyrdom. I would have seen the worst coming, embraced with all I had, and died nobly. I would have soaked up the glory of it all, been affirmed in my belief of my own perfection, and moved into heaven expecting shouts of jubilation and a beautifully restored body. What a shock it would have been to find the Lord looking at me with weepy eyes, wishing that I would have left my pride behind. Thanks to God’s amazing grace, I have not been permitted the opportunity to sin in that way. He has instead given me the occasion to walk through a circumstance of suffering that is far greater than I could have ever imagined. My brother’s pain over which I have no control will be far greater than withstanding a physical pain of my own that I may choose to hide from those I love. Taking care of a young man whom I love, who has the opportunity to hide his pain from me is an even graver thought. Standing in the shadow of the limelight, watching from a distance as he learn to suffer well is more humbling than I could have possibly imagined. Supporting him every step of the way, leaning on his understanding of the things to which God has called him for direction in his life when all I want to do is to shelter him from illness, that pulls to a halt my control, my belief that I know anything about how the world operates best. When I prayed that I might be able to walk through life embracing opportunities to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13) so that I might ultimately experience the peace of Christ, I did not have a circumstance like this in mind by the farthest stretch of the imagination. But God, in all of his sovereign and unmistakable majesty chose to bestow upon my brother, my family and me this gift of cancer. He has graciously plotted out for each of us a plan by which we may be sanctified, changed to his likeness so as to honor and glorify him more and more each day. For, why was the blind man born blind? "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9: 3). And so, this is my prayer, that I may say with the blind man, “...one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9: 25). Not that I would claim to be the best, not that my pride would soak into my heart so much as to make my sin appear nobel in its nature, but that I, who was once blind to my immense need for a savior, would now see him work in my life in all his amazing glory, that I might recognize his control over this circumstance to which he brings astounding peace, and that by the fact that though I was born blind-- not knowing Christ-- now I see the vastness of his perfection and grace.
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