Less than a week ago, I was given a diagnosis of cancer. I will spare you the details. Suffice to say, the diagnosis is preliminary. That is, there’s still no information on whether it’s spread or not. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. Best case scenario, the doctors will be able to surgically remove the effected area and that will be the end of the story. The worst case scenario, I will be on my heavenly journey home a lot sooner than I had expected.
Which has led me to think over my life, and whether or not I’d live my life differently if I knew I had only a few days left to live. What would I do? How would I do things differently? What legacy would I want to leave behind?
There’s a woman at our church who has suffered from cancer for many years. I’ll call her Rachel. That’s not her real name, but I use an alias to preserve her privacy. Anyway, Rachel is quite literally a walking miracle. All her doctors tell her, “it will be any day now”. There is nothing they can do. She is on nothing but pain medications, the strongest her doctors are allowed to give her. And yet, she’s as happy and content as can be. She always attends church. She always has a smile. She’s at Bible Study every Wednesday and even cooks meals for people who are on the prayer list. And she’s dying. To be honest, I would never have known she was dying except someone told me about it. For the last several weeks, she’s been attending church without her walker. She’s a little unsteady, but not dangerously so. And she’s completely alert and aware of her surroundings. She’s convinced God keeps her alive because He wants her to keep serving the church. In Bible Study, she talks about her heart “bursting” for love for God. She has such a heart for the Lord, and a heart of service, I’ve been praying for a miracle.
Just a week ago, my husband got an urgent message from her family and friends. They said they had trouble waking her, that when she woke up, she was only partially conscious, and that her breathing was very labored. Her blood pressure was also dangerously low. She hadn’t eaten much in days and had been having trouble swallowing. They urgently asked for a personal visit. The very next day, Rachel got up the next morning looking perfectly fine, busily going about making herself a pot of coffee. Her friends and family who were staying with her were in shock. “What are you doing?” they asked her. “I told you I’m not going to die until Tony gets here!” she reminded them (Tony is our head pastor). I had to chuckle when I heard this! I can imagine Rachel saying those words.
Well, Tony couldn’t visit till three days later. And she was still around to receive him. And she’s still alive and kicking as I write this. In fact, she attended church yesterday, just as she usually does. She keeps holding on, still smiling, still serving, whenever she can. In fact, last week she asked ME if I wouldn’t mind if she made a meal for me while I recovered from my recent surgical cancer biopsy procedure. I was humbled!
The kingdom of God includes women like Rachel. People who love the Lord and love to serve Him. And their hearts are so full of His love and Spirit, that nothing in this world matters. As long as we have life and breath, and bodies that move and speak and can perform acts of charity, we are of use to God.
I’ve been reading a lot of the book of Psalms. Many chapters talk about praising God for His good works, for His renown, to magnify His Name and majesty. So, I thought to myself. What has God been doing? What good works has God been up to lately? What magnificent deeds has God performed?
God is always at work. It’s just that we don’t always see it.
In my own life, I see myself as another “walking miracle”.
At six years old, I was diagnosed with iritis (inflammation of the iris of the eye). From that day till I was about sixteen, I suffered many bouts of “pink eye”. The inflammation was unusually chronic. A reduction in topical steroidal eye drops would always lead to another nasty inflammatory “flare”. Over time, this led to other complications: glaucoma, cataracts, corneal endothelial decomposition, and other issues. I remember as a young child, my pediatric ophthalmologist took my parents aside. He tried to prepare them for the worst, warning them that there was a very high risk that I could go blind eventually.
I wish I could tell you that my parents were sobered by my doctor’s words. I wish I could tell you they had turned their anguished hearts to God. I wish I could tell you that they responded by wrapping their arms around me and telling me that they loved me, that they’ll love me no matter what happens, and they’ll be by my side no matter what.
But none of those things happened. My doctor sought to reveal to my parents the sobering reality of the situation – and it completely backfired. To my parents, the prospect of their daughter going blind was frankly unacceptable. My sister vividly remembers our mother angrily responding with the adamant cry, “We are NOT going to let our daughter go blind!”
Notice the pronoun “we”. As if my mother or father could take the place of God and had any sway over the matter.
My parents went into complete “control mode”. They cleared their calendars and filled them up with all my doctor appointments. They took meticulous notes during each appointment. They charted my daily medicine schedules and followed them to the letter. They took complete responsibility of the matter, whether for good or for ill, as if by sheer will and determination alone, they could steer the outcome of a myriad of complex diseases in which there are no cures. But I never saw them take the matter to God. They believed in God – or so they claimed – but they didn’t seem to trust God enough to take care of the situation. Instead, they took the entire burden onto themselves, not trusting anyone else to help them, not other Christians, not in prayer, as if God himself had abandoned them, had left them with a burden they never asked for, a burden they resented, but a burden they were determined to take mastery over, to force the outcome into submission, one way or the other. The results were devastating, hardened hearts, demoralized spirits, emotional overload, and spiritual bankruptcy. No one from my family goes to church anymore. No one, that is, but me.
Why was I the sole receiver of God’s calling? The child in the middle of the mix, the one “cursed” with disease and hardship, who had no friends, no one who could relate to her inner sorrows and cares? How is it I was able to “see” what the rest of my family failed to notice: I saw God’s blessings everywhere. Every time I had a successful surgery, I inwardly praised God. Every time I went to the doctor expecting bad news and received good news instead, I praised God. I praised God that I was able to go to school. I never had to learn Braille. And I got straight A’s. I praised God each time I got behind the wheel and was able to drive. I knew one day I might not see well enough to drive anymore.
And I praised God for my church and my church family. I praised God for my Christian friends, of whom I’d meet at school. I praised God for those who showed the love of God, in kindness, in grace, in charity, in generosity, in joy, in service to others. I praised God inwardly, like Mary who “pondered all these things in her heart”. That was me. I pondered them in my heart. I marveled at God’s goodness that was all around me despite my circumstances. And I marveled at my Savior, my Redeemer, my Healer, my Defender, my Friend. I marveled at Jesus’ willingness to die for a lowly half-blind, half-crippled, shrivel-handed, uncoordinated, tone-deaf worm, such as myself. What was Jesus thinking???
And then I remember Jesus’ prayer. He prayed aloud that it pleased His Father to impart His wisdom unto little children and not to the scribes and Pharisees. In other words, it pleased His Father to call those unto Himself who the world despises and assumes are too “naive” or “stupid” or “weak” or “afflicted” or “infirm” to be called or used by His kingdom. Why did it please His Father to do this? Jesus said it was to shame the proud.
Some years ago, my husband and I were visited by relatives who are very proud. My husband and I were doing very well for ourselves. We were happy. We talked to them about our vacations, our plans for the new home we bought, etc. We told them our hopes and dreams and happiness. We thought nothing of it at the time, but sometime later, I found out they had spread false rumors behind our backs, of how rudely we had treated them. It made no sense. It’s not like we were bragging or anything. We were just… happy. What’s wrong with that? But then I was reminded that that is just what proud people do. They resent it when people they view as “undeserving” are happier and better off than themselves.
And God has been good. He has been VERY good. He has been faithful. He has blessed me with more than I had ever asked for!
More than four decades after my first diagnosis of serious eye disease, I still have my sight! Even more, I can see better now than I have in twenty years. I’ve had fourteen eye surgeries and have seen probably at least a hundred or more ophthalmologists in my lifetime.
And I thank God every day that I can see! That I can see at all is a wonder and a grace-filled blessing from God! Did any of my ophthalmologists who examined me as a child predict that I’d still have my vision at my age (I am now 50)? I seriously doubt it! It’s not exactly a “miracle” as miracles are demonstrated by Jesus in the Bible (Jesus healed a man born blind – an unexplainable and undeniably supernatural occurrence). But at minimum it is a HUGE unexpected blessing that I can appreciate each and every day.
What other wonders do I see?
What wonders do you see? Surely, God’s wonders are all around us.
Share your stories of God’s wonders at christfollower376@yahoo.com