So this cup has passed. Just a lymph node. No biopsy, no cancer. Giddy with relief, I joke with my girlfriends that the cute radiologist was the youngest man to touch my chest in years. My interior world has lined up and righted itself and of course, I’m grateful.
Perhaps this being Holy Week is a coincidence but this four day Lenten
journey felt like 40 days in the desert – barren, lonely and dry, complete
with you-know-who whispering lies in my ear. It may seem counter-intuitive as a Christian not to have asked the Lord to work
a miracle and heal what may be lurking in my breast. Truth is I knew He may not and I didn’t want
to be angry with Him. I allowed a short visit to that murky place posing the question of the centuries – why a loving God
permits suffering. And it is all around - my cousin who lost his
teen to a drunk driver, my neighbor who lost her child to a brain tumor, and my
dear friend recently treated for breast cancer – the harsh truth that sometimes
the cup doesn’t pass.
Not even for God. Alone
in a dark garden, in fear so intense He sweats blood.
I knew whatever the outcome He would use this opportunity to imprint something new upon my heart. He is a God who wastes nothing.
It sinks in - the solitude of the garden, the heaviness of His heart, the intensity of His pain, the depth of
His obedience, the breadth of His love, the enormity of His sacrifice.
What He gave for us. What He gave
for me. For a short few days, the way of the cross stretched
before me and I am humbled to feel my humanity in its entirety...
Uh Lord, yeah, I love
you. I trust in you but really who am I
kidding, I don’t want to follow you there.
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