Difficult Seasons

I’m just a work in progress.

Sometimes I forget that.  I get busy dealing with situations, trying to help others, and don’t work on Jim, or more accurately,  allow God to work on Jim.

That’s been happening lately.  What brings it to consciousness is usually a combination of emotional and physical symptoms: feeling tired, struggling to get things done, feeling overwhelmed, wanting to pull the sheets over my head, looking for things to keep my mind occupied.

When this alarm goes off and I become conscious of what’s going on, I know pretty quickly what the problem is and what I have to do to reverse course.

I have to very intentionally turn control of all of the things that are weighing me down over to God. It’s not that I haven’t prayed often about all of the situations and all of the people, or that I don’t have faith that God will provide exactly what’s needed. It’s just that I have unconsciously retained a portion of the responsibility for the outcome.  I haven’t completely given these things to God, robbing myself of the peace that comes from doing so.  And of the joy of watching how He works and allows me to participate.

So today I began the day intentionally by doing just that — naming names, and listing situations, verbalizing my trust in Him to provide and lead. And I feel more peaceful, more able to respond to His urges for these situations and these people.

I’m adding “Turn Over Control” to my daily calendar.  I need daily explicit recognition that I am not in control, but that the One I serve is.

One of the books I’ve been reading is a commentary by Edward Fudge on the New Testament book Hebrews.  While scholarly, it reads more like a devotional book, which is what I’m using it for.

Last night I was reading the portion of the book that deals with Hebrews Chapter 4, which talks about entering the Rest of God. The point that jumped out at me was that we enter this rest only when our work is done.  Just like God worked for six days creating and then rested on the seventh day, our work will be ongoing until it’s done and then we will enter God’s “Sabbath” rest.

Perhaps the reason this jumped out at me is because several friends are struggling with seemingly unending times of difficulty.  John Dobbs wrote about the stormy days that he and his family have been going through.  In addition, just before I was reading Hebrews last night, I had read a note from a friend about a new difficulty their family was having to deal with — on top of other ongoing challenges.  And just to be honest, I’m a little worn out myself by some of the challenges we have been dealing with.

So here are some thoughts that occurred to me as I reflected on this portion of Hebrews:

1.  This life can be difficult.  We can look back and see how God has gotten us through difficult times in the past, and know that He will do the same in the present and the future.  But these difficulties wear us out.  We get tired — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

2.  Sometimes God relieves us of a difficulty.  A week ago, the doctors had given up hope for John’s father-in-law.  This week he’s at home recuperating.  My dad doesn’t require chemo or radiation for his bladder cancer.  You have similar stories you could tell.

3.  Sometimes God doesn’t remove the difficulty and challenge from our lives.  Our daughter Sara continues to suffer from a number of medical conditions that can be temporarily disabling, in spite of fervent prayer by so many.  You have similar stories in your life.

Our tiredness from dealing with these ongoing difficulties and challenges, however, does serve to make the Rest of God seem so much more desirable.

Rest is a wonderful thing to look forward to after our work here is finished.

“Your dad has cancer” are words we never want to hear.  But in fact, those are the words the doctor spoke when he called me Friday.

My dad, who is approaching his 85th birthday, is happily quite independent.  We went through a spell a few years ago when that was not the case.  He was quite dependent on me.

But for the last year or so, he has been functioning quite independently.  That includes scheduling and going to his own doctor’s appointments.  In fact, I was unaware that he was visiting his urologist on Friday.

So the call from the doctor’s office came out of the blue.  I was in the process of mowing, and was just taking a break when the call came.

Mr. Hughes, your dad is here, and this morning I scoped his bladder to determine the cause of his frequent urination and urgency.  He has a tumor in his bladder.  If you asked me to guess, I’d say it was an aggressive cancer.  We’ll schedule a procedure to remove it and get a pathology report.

I asked a question or two, and asked that he also talk to my daughter, a nurse practitioner at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

It’s Sunday night as I write this, and I’m still in the early stages of processing what I heard mid-day Friday.  But here are some of the things that have been running through my mind.

• This is more evidence that life’s not fair.  Dad has survived two wives who both died of cancer.  It doesn’t seem fair that he should have to battle cancer too.
• I spend a lot of time with cancer patients.  I really don’t want my dad to be a cancer patient.  I don’t want to be a cancer caregiver.
• Maybe because I know a lot about cancer, this won’t be as hard as if I were a novice.  Then again, maybe it’s gong to be harder because of my knowledge.
• None of us gets an exemption from life’s struggles.  Being an oncology nurse practitioner doesn’t exempt your family from cancer.  Serving as a lay chaplain to cancer patients doesn’t get an exemption either.
• Dad’s doing better with this news than I am.  He’s been expecting everything that comes along to be cancer.  I think that’s because he saw Mom develop it, and then his second wife, Carol.
• We really don’t know what to expect until we get the pathology report.
• I’m going to have to work a lot harder on my own self care.  I’m going to have to take my advice more seriously.
• This is not a good time for me to take on additional care giving duties.  I’m already kind of full up.  I don’t guess that matters a whole lot, however.

I’m trying to take this news as much in stride as I can.  I’ve spent time in prayer about it.  I’ve asked my church family to also pray about it.

Because through all of the other thoughts I’ve had the last few days, one predominates.  Dad is in God’s hands.  This whole situation is in God’s hands, as are all of our situations.  Whatever is ahead, we will be sustained.

Deathbed confessions carry more weight in law than normal confessions.

That’s because we believe that a dying person has nothing to gain by telling a lie, and everything to gain by telling the truth.

The same logic also makes us pay special attention to words spoken to us from a dying person.

Lots of people became acquainted with Debutaunt (Deborah Greer-Costello) during her battle with cancer through the internet.  She blogged extensively about life and her illness.  Through her suffering, she attracted legions of followers, many becoming true friends who never met face-to-face in this life.  Deb often requested prayer, and her requests were quickly relayed through Twitter.

Here’s a handwritten note relaying one of those requests on Flickr.

Deb passed from this life on May 18, 2009.  But she had her final say — posted today by her sister Steph on her blog.  She knew she was dying, and she had a lot to say.

Give yourself a blessing today, and read Deb’s final post.

Amy VanHuisen writes about faith and struggle, and I often find that her blog makes me think.  Today she wrote about the loss of a young mom in their community who leaves behind a husband and three young children, the youngest only 8 days old.  She titled the post, “God, How Could You Do That?”  Amy’s writing is honest, and you’ll be blessed by clicking over to read her post before coming back to read some thoughts that occurred to me.

The first thing that jumped into my consciousness was a conversation my daughter Sara, a nurse practitioner, had with a colleague this week.  They are members of a palliative care team, and deal with patients and families suffering tragedy daily.  Faith nearly always becomes a part of the conversation with the patients and families, and sometimes among the medical staff.

The conversation went something like this.  The colleague said, “I don’t believe in God because if there were a God, he wouldn’t let the things that we see happen to people every day happen.”  Sara’s response was, “Do you really believe that God is the only force active in this world?  What about Satan?  What about the free will God allows people?”

This is a good summary of the faith struggle that we all go through as we experience events like Amy writes about, and our question often becomes like Amy’s, “How could God…”

I don’t have the answer.  But I will offer a couple of thoughts.

1. God has not yet won the final victory.  The Bible makes clear that we live in an active battle ground with God on one side and the forces of evil led by Satan on the other.  Until that final victory when God creates the new heaven and the new earth, this earth that we live on will continue to experience injustice, tragedy, illness, poverty, and all of the other things that are wrong, that are unfair.  And these come equally to all of us, whether we are people of faith or not.
2. When I read what we call The Beatitudes in Matthew 5,  I see Jesus talking about people who have suffered and who are suffering what’s not fair about this world.  He doesn’t say that we won’t have to mourn (v4), for example, but he says simply that those who mourn will be comforted.  Jesus seems to be offering hope for those of us who suffer in this life.

Which leads me to this final thought.  The more of life I experience, the more I look forward to that point in time when God claims the final victory, when all the bad stuff ceases, when God is fully in control.  That doesn’t mean I don’t love this life and getting to experience it with my family and my friends –  just that more and more often I am aware of how flawed this world is, and how wonderful heaven will be.