The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
All To the Glory of God
John 9:1-3 describes part of a conversation between Jesus and His disciples: “And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’
“Why is there suffering?” is the perennial question that frequently comes up in conversations about God and the Bible. Among Christians, the assumption of personal sin as the causative agent in suffering is often embraced. However, in John 9 you have a man who was born blind, not because of any sin committed by him or his parents, but that God would be glorified in the healing of this man. Likewise, when Lazarus died, Jesus told His disciples that it was “…for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby” (John 11:4).
Over the past five years my husband and I have experienced successive catastrophic medical issues with little space between each event. It started with my broken arm in 2017 followed shortly after by Dan’s Melanoma diagnosis. Severe side effects from his immunotherapy were followed by neurological symptoms during the following summer – the same summer that we both experienced sternum fractures (and loss of a vehicle we really liked) in a collision with a drunk driver. The neurological issues sent Dan into neck surgery for a vertebrae fusion just a few weeks after our move from Susanville early in 2019. When he was done with physical therapy, Dan once again took up the pursuit of a total knee replacement (work-related injury in 2016).
I smile to think that we considered this would be a straight-forward journey and then we could move on. The insurance company wanted a second opinion from a doctor whose next open appointment wasn’t until January…2020. By the time we had his opinion and were ready to schedule surgery, elective surgeries were shut down because of COVID-19. Once we recovered from our own Corona infections, the knee surgeon had moved to a different office. In doing so, his staff had to negotiate re-certification with the insurance which took until December, 2020.
On December 31, 2020, Dan’s oncologist informed us that Dan’s most recent PETScan showed massive lymphoma involvement, a return of the Mantle Cell Lymphoma he had had in 2006. The doctors had told us it would recur within two to five years, but God gave us fifteen. Once again, the knee had to wait. Three surgeries within two months followed by six monthly doses of chemotherapy brought us to September, 2021, when a PETScan revealed no further cancer. But we still had hoops to jump through before the knee could be fixed.
The Oncologist’s release was not enough for the insurance company; they also wanted Dan’s primary care physician to approve it. A questionable EKG during his doctor appointment sent him to a cardiologist whose extensive testing revealed a strong heart and no health concerns to hinder the knee surgery. It wasn’t until Friday, December 10, that the surgeon’s office called to say they had received the cardiologist’s approval and could we be at the hospital for surgery the next Thursday morning, the 16th. Of course we said, “Yes.” Dan began Physical Therapy last week and is doing very well. It is great to see Dan walking upright without a cane and able to drive his manual transmission truck comfortably for the first time in several years.
Sharing our story with a new friend recently caused me to pause, shake my head, and think, “Yes, this past five years has been enormously upending for us,” and yet we calmly continue to walk in God’s light, knowing He knows and has provided for our needs from the beginning, and is walking with us; no, carrying us. Yes, we have experienced frustration, mourning, and sadness at times. But we don’t consider where we are in life to be suffering. It is what God has trained us for to bring Him glory.
How do I explain to someone who has never been through any of this, or who is also in the middle of similar experiences, that we continue to go forward in peace through life as God intended us to because there is not one iota of all this that we can change. We do not have the luxury of time or energy to go outside God’s will into despair that would accomplish nothing but to deplete us of resources we need to deal with the complexity of our life right now.
A large part of the cocoon of peace in which we live stems from our first experience with cancer in 2006 (chronicled in the book The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith) when God’s promises went from head-knowledge to heart-knowledge for us. In the interim since then, we continued to grow in faith as we remembered God’s presence, care, perfect timing, and comfort during that time. Philippians 4:6-7 has become an oft-recited passage for comfort to both us and others needing encouragement: “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
