astrocytoma

My son is sick, and I am afraid.

Because he is a cancer survivor (eight years, bless God!), when something happens that interrupts that heart relief of his healing – my soul fears.

Last week, he was disoriented. He couldn’t drive, couldn’t write his name, had trouble putting words together to make a sentence.

The honest prayer of Reverend G poured from me, “Oh God oh God oh God. I can’t stand it.”

We scheduled an appointment with the neurologist who ordered the usual lab work and then an MRI.

The night before the imaging test, I woke up every two and a half hours to check on Caleb – to tiptoe into his bedroom, touch his forehead, check his breathing.

Every two and a half hours – the same amount of time that he woke me up for feedings when he was a baby. Now, 29 years later, my mommy heart somehow answered an internal alarm to check on my grown child.

Every time I returned to bed, I fell to my knees to beg God, “Please! Will you take my last living child? You already have my first two babies. Please, please, save my son!”

My prayers became whimpers of pleading along with the recitations of verses to remind God of his promises:

“No weapon used against us will prosper. No weapon, God. Please.”

“God delivers us from all our fears. Deliver us, oh God.”

“Peace I leave with you. Peace I give unto you. Your beloved peace, I beg of you.”

Then the morning sky, the day of the MRI, that metal machine surrounding my son’s body, imprinting its pictures on the radiologic screen – answers that will bring relief or sorrow.

Oh God oh God oh God. I can’t stand it.

Then the waiting. They read the results. Fax them to the doctor. Contact my son. He texts me.

No tumor. No reoccurrence.

Oh God oh God oh God. I thank you.

But then a reminder of other mothers who will receive bad news this day. Some will not thank God but fall to their knees in grief, stand before a coffin and place flowers on a grave.

Oh God – deliver us from the ravages of death. Come, Lord Jesus.

We still have no answers for this attack on Caleb’s body. More doctors. More tests.

But in the process, hope revives. We will deal with whatever it is and thrust our fear-filled hearts toward the only One who knows the answers.

Hope still survives.

A pocket of time separates Good Friday and Easter Sunday – a day we often ignore because we don’t celebrate that day – we just wait.

We live through Saturday, anticipating Sunday.

After the execution of Jesus, the disciples – both men and women – huddled together in fear. At least one of them, Peter, hid alone, ashamed at his refusal to acknowledge the Lord.

They waited during Saturday, daring to hope and waiting to see what Sunday might bring.

We are often stuck in the same time warp.

My son was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In one moment, an astrocytoma’s ferocious prognosis changed our lives. Surgery, chemo and radiation. Five years of MRI’s, oncologist appointments and medical bills.

A lifetime of Saturdays, waiting, hoping, praying. Then the glorious ending – a miraculous healing. The Sunday arrived with joy, but the Saturday required guts and perseverance.

A seed germinated in my creative soul – the idea for a novel. Hundreds of Saturdays working, revising, praying and submitting to publishers. Then the good news and more Saturdays until finally – the finished manuscript became a book, “The Unraveling of Reverend G.”

My mother stepped into the shadows of Alzheimers. Thousands and thousands of Saturdays morphed into 36-hour days as she changed from a mature and intelligent woman into a child-like version of herself.

Day follows day and years repeat until one day it ends. We will lower her shell into the ground. She knows this. We anticipate and dread it each day.

The crosses of our lives thrust us into expanded weekends as we experience pain, separation and the perseverance of waiting.

We know on some level that the pain does end, that Resurrection follows Crucifixion.

But it is the waiting during our Saturdays that tends to shove us into discouragement. Our Saturdays seem interminable as we beg God to send us Easter sunrise.

Yet within our Saturdays, as our character is tested and our perseverance questioned, we learn the most about faith.

For hope that endures requires massive faith and teeth-grinding strength for the length of the journey.

Because we must wait through the Saturdays, the end result seems that much sweeter when Easter Sunday finally arrives.

RJThesman.net

Author | Coach | Speaker | Editor

Hope Recovers from Fear

Living in the Saturdays