Cross-Examination

There is no sign that my cancer has yet found a way to defeat my current drug. The March 7 PET Scan results were excellent. No “glowing bones” this time! We are, in equal amounts, surprised and #thankful!

I wonder what I would have felt if instead I had been told that my bones had lit up like a child’s toy? Keeping the faith is not as hard when the news is good; what kinds of challenges and questions will I have when, once again, the news is bad?

 Someone in a recent text thread reminded me I need to think about that again.  This person, who has been in a spiritual wilderness for some time, had been thinking about someone close who had gone through a family tragedy. He said he just wanted to say to the grieving one, “Where is ur [sic] God now…it just ain’t right…. Good people and kids don’t deserve that shit, and ya, how do u explain that?"  He went on and said that he felt the same thing for our cancer journey. "Why?" he lamented. The idea of a good God in a world dripping with the tears of its people made no sense. He just had too many questions.

I understand. The questions are real and I’m glad he is asking them. It's no threat to God. But there are no pat answers.  My first six months after diagnosis (and regularly since) were characterized by desperate pounding on God’s door, and frantic rattling of the very tenets of faith. I often spoke (or wrote) bravely about trusting God while at the same time mutinously questioning what God was doing.

 Back to the text conversation. Two quick things that we wondered about: First we wondered with him if his cross-examination of God was asking the right question.  “Why?? How do you explain that?” can twist your worldview into knots. It can end up getting you so tangled that it only pulls you deeper.  In our lives, God’s grace allowed us to eventually change the question from, "Why?” to “What now?” Our grief was and still is necessary to embrace, but it has been a healing choice for us to focus on how we respond to suffering rather than to focus on its cause.  Secondly, we wondered if he wanted to visit. It takes a community to help one not get torpedoed by the doubts that darkness brings. We would not have escaped the ‘entangling question’ without family and friends who walked with us. He might not either.

If he does allow us to walk beside him there is one more thing I would love to explore the next time a text thread, phone call or visit happens: When life makes you want to cross-examine God, do exactly that. CROSS examining God this Lent will reveal the ferocious love God has for you. It’s that God and that love that carried a cross up a hill called Golgotha. God knows our pain. God walks with us. The questions, still surface, but they don't pull us under.

Keep the faith, everyone.