I knew something was going on in my body.
I felt tired. Two blood clots had developed in my legs. I was starting to bruise easily. Then, two days before Christmas, my doctor called: “It looks like you have leukemia. I’ve arranged for you to meet with the doctor at the cancer centre today.”
I was shocked. As I walked upstairs with trembling legs, I began to cry. I struggled to tell the news to my wife who was taking care of our year-and-a-half-old son.
“I … they … think … I … have … have … cancer.”
After a whirlwind day of blood work and several meetings with the doctor, the diagnosis came back as acute myeloid leukemia. In other words, an aggressive blood cancer.
I was anywhere from a few days to a few weeks away from death.
Pain and Sickness Are Everywhere
I had no illusions before I was diagnosed, and I have none now. There is pain, sickness and death everywhere. I know that suffering is part of the current order. So why should I ask, “Why me?” Why not me?
I had to learn this truth in painfully new ways. I’ve never liked getting my blood drawn. I’ve passed out a half dozen times in my life from blood work. And ironically, I ended up with a blood cancer. I never got used to the poking and prodding or even the pain of bone marrow biopsies. Thankfully, my wife was always right there, holding my hand while I was forced to curl up like a baby so that the large needle could be pushed into my hip bone.
But even in the midst of this pain, God did not leave me alone. Often I would lie on my hospital bed, with hardly a shred of energy from the chemo drugs or from the hardened bone marrow, yet I only needed to look beside me at my wall and read the words my wife wrote out from Psalm 73:
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
I cried to these words several times. They were so real. It was never a despairing cry; it was a cry of joy. God is present. God is my strength.
So this is what it means to know God’s presence!
As beautiful and important as this was to me, there was still the added knowledge of a future hope. There isn’t just a God out there who’s able to bring forth creation. He’s also able to bring forth new creation.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)
God’s Presence Is Everything
All of history is heading somewhere. God is remaking the earth and all of us with it. And that presence of God I was talking about? It will be total in the new creation!
The four rounds of chemotherapy were effective and the cancer hasn’t come back since. All the same, I do have a 50 per cent chance of relapsing.
Through the difficulties of not knowing whether I would live out the week or the year, I can’t imagine what it would have been like to go through this cancer without knowing God’s presence, and without believing in the promise of his new creation. That knowledge was so partial before the diagnosis, but now it’s a knowledge of different kind.
In the here and now, I want to use every minute to glorify God with what He has given me. Having been so close to death, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. I get emotional every time I think about not being around to support my wife or to raise my sons. But just as my life is wholly in God’s hands, so too are my wife and sons. If we have to go through this sickness again, I’m glad to know that by God’s grace I am even more prepared for it than the first time.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Ed Uthman
Originally published in Issue 12 of Converge Magazine.
