At first, you scramble to get your bearings. You try to understand. You try to SEE through the fog. You wonder where God is and how He could have let something like this happen. Because afterall… you were doing life the RIGHT way: hardworking, tax-paying, church-attending, dinner-together-as-a-family.
But slowly, the shock wears off and you begin to grasp your new reality. Things that seemed hard and
inconceivable begin to take shape. You
shift your question. Instead of asking “WHY
God?” you dare to let yourself ease into acceptance mode and ask “Ok, what NOW
God?”
Slowly, you begin to let yourself
breathe again. You THINK that maybe –
just maybe – there is purpose, and perhaps you are even beginning to imagine
what that purpose might be. There are rays of hope, and little by little, momentum
begins to swing back into your camp. You’ve
weathered some setbacks, but a big breakthrough comes. You get accepted into the best clinical trial
in the country for your type of cancer.
But then there is a curveball.
I love getting up early on our family beach trips. I love having the beach to myself in the still of the morning. I love that a sweatshirt feels good at 6:30am. I love feeling the wind in my hair and tasting the salt from the breezes. But mostly, I love to watch God paint a sunrise. No two are alike. His nature is infinitely artistic.
This morning I watched as He began by simply stroking the colors of dawn onto the canvas. There was no particular shape. Sometimes when I arrive on the sand, there are NO clouds.
On those mornings, I know I am in for a real treat. The sunrise will be unfettered and spectacular. Those are my favorites.
This morning, however, there was ONE cloud.
ONE.
And it was in the exact spot where the sun was going to crest the horizon. Why would He deliberately block my view like that?
So I asked Him.
He began to whisper, “sometimes in life there are seasons when NOTHING seems to
make any sense…”
And then I
watched as He formed the cloud into a shape.
To me, it looked like a manatee or perhaps a whale. Definitely a sea creature with a whale-like
tail sticking out of the water off to the left. Then He painted the edges of the sea
creature with dazzling orange light. I
laughed. God was playing with His Lite
Brite set.
I felt
myself relaxing as I sat on a towel in the sand. A jogger ran by with headphones at full
blast, seemingly unaware of the Master at work.
Next God turned on His floor spotlights. GIANT
rays of light fanned out from the sea-creature-cloud straight up into the
air.
Then God posed a question to
ME. “These rays I
just added give you hope, do they not?
Even though a cloud is blocking your view of the big orange ball
cresting the horizon… the rays give
you hope don’t they?”
“Well,
yes. I suppose they do.”
“Why?”
“Because the
rays come from the source, so the source must not be far off.”
Then He
brought a portion of scripture to mind. “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we
shall see face to face. Now I know in
part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” – 1 Corinthians 13:12
For reasons
that are difficult to grasp, Keaton has not responded to the new drug that was
rumored to be the most promising thing on the horizon for his type of brain
cancer. A recent MRI provided medical
proof that the cancer has the upper hand. Thus, he is no longer a participant in the Clinical Trial. They dropped us like a hot potato.
So what's next? It's very simple. We continue
to pray for a miracle and we continue to ask God to open the next door of
treatment for our boy. It just so happens that we don't know exactly what that is right now. There's a big cloud blocking our view.
It is hard
to see clearly right now, but we have great peace. We do. We have seen
the rays, and we are confident that the Source is not far off.
Keep praying
for Keaton. And keep believing that even
though we see dimly now… the day IS coming when we will see a new dawn crest
the horizon. Some believe that when that day comes, we will FINALLY get all our "WHY?" questions answered. Perhaps they are right. But I tend to believe that when that day comes, we will find the Source of our Hope so dazzling and so amazing... the whys won't matter much anymore. None of them.
