Keep The Faith

 A few summers ago, we had a surprise encounter with an out of province couple that we had rubbed shoulders with regularly in the 2010s. Of course we defaulted to the standard icebreaker question, "How are you doing?" Rather than give us the rote icebreaker response, she paused and said,  "That's a complex question. I have learned to ask people, 'How are you doing today? ', and today I am doing alright."  As we learned the back story, that response made sense. She and her husband had tragically lost a young-adult son and they were on their way to the place of his death to mark that somber anniversary. "How are you doing?" in that context is a very complex question. I'm know all of you can relate. Life is complex. Keeping the faith is hard. Aside from its use as an icebreaker, "how are you doing?" has anwers as nuanced as life itself. There are so many layers. For Kathy and I, life is lived in the context of God's relentless l

I replied to a recent comment on this blog that “we all live our lives on a fault line.”  Perhaps I should have said, “on multiple fault lines.” Fault lines between lament and joy, between faithfulness and drifting, between hope and despair, between… Kathy and I  have once again, this week, found ourselves squarely on one such fault line. On one side is hope-draining discouragement and on the other side is a reliance on God’s promises. After more than 2 months of advocating and many prayers said by friends and family, I was scheduled to finally begin taking a new, unfunded drug on Feb 23. Not long before my appointment in the treatment room, I received a call that the new drug had not arrived at the cancer centre. A clerical error had been made and it had been decided that I would need to wait another month for Isatuximab to join the chemo battle. Another fault line. One where we experience tremors originating from what we know about how quickly my cancer gains strength. On this faul