Jarring and Comforting

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3)

First of all, I'd like to share that Chester seems healthier than anytime this fall, physically, since last June. Less pain. More energy. And yet, this has been a hard few weeks as we have come out of "emergency mode" and begun to process more.

Yesterday we had a home visit from a Pastor and he said something I found jarring. He said "You might die from this cancer, Chester."

Do you know how rare it has been to hear that spoken out loud in a normal tone of voice? Without any qualifiers? Without a touch of pity? It was refreshing in a way, because it needs to be faced. And it's just as true that each of us will die from any number of threats, sooner or later. He followed up "You might die from this cancer, Chester," beautifully. He spoke of the faith of Daniel's friends, Shad, Rack, and Benny, who said, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (I've been thinking of this story a lot.) He spoke of how Daniel looked death-by-Lions in the fangs and trusted God.

He spoke of how Job's friends asked "Why?" "Why this suffering, why this pain, why this death?" and they came up with all sorts of reasons, but how God silenced all their wonderings, assigning, and whining with his presence. And how even after Job was restored; skin healed, flocks multiplied, new babies held, the "why's" weren't answered, and they didn't need to be.

He shared the emphatic, loving, firmness behind the command in the Psalms to "Be still, and know that I am God."

All of this is so much more comforting than trying to figure out the "Why's," or to somehow earn or ensure (which is absolutely impossible anyway) Chester's longevity through sheer grit, research, finding the right medical teams and adjunct treatments, and buying organic.

It's more comforting than beating ourselves up about the dozens of stressors or sins that "could have contributed" to cancer. There's good advice out there about avoiding cancer, but it's exhausting to try to optimize everything when facing stage 4 cancer. Facing death is facing meeting God.

God who so Loved...

God who IS Love...

God who promises to... Another Pastor today put it this way: "If you had a menu of all the treatment options to beat cancer...

1.) Chemo

2.) Immunotherapy

3.) Naturopath Oncology

4.) That Vegetable detox place in Florida

5.) Radiation...

and so on...

If "The LORD" was on the list...

...and you could truly only choose one plan for treatment, where would you put your trust?

The rest are tools - only One determines the outcome. Only One has already determined the eternal outcome.

This reminder to not fear death/trust God still leaves so much freedom for us to do the best we can with the time and resources that he's given us, but it takes away so much stress around the effort.

It's being honest about who is in control. It's knowing that the will of God will be done and we know his will is good because of Jesus. It's honestly, comforting.