Friday, September 13, 2013

Wrestling

Yesterday I spent part of my day getting some computer training with a head honcho kind of guy. A guy who told me, when I answered the phone at work last week, "It is so good to hear your voice." I hadn't spoken to him since before my cancer diagnosis. I don't know him well at all but he said it with a warmth and sincerity that touched me.

When we were done work for the day he asked me how my energy was holding up and I knew he was meaning in light of what this past year has held for me. So we talked.

At one point, after sharing about the mistake that saved my life,  he said to me, 'You are blessed. Someone was watching out for you." I looked away from him and nodded feebly. I wasn't ready to have a conversation about my difficulty in hearing things like that.

I feel like I do a disservice to those I know who've died from cancer by saying, "why yes, God was looking out for me." and I feel like I do a disservice to God by not proclaiming it. Blech.

There's that part of me that says if it's Truth [with a capital T] then it has to be true for everyone or else it's just empty words. It's what makes me grimace when people talk flippantly about God stuff and I cannot help but think whether their statement holds true in a third world country or a refugee camp. If it doesn't, then what?

I came home late last night after Dearest One was asleep. He woke as I crawled into bed to tell me that the woman who took me to my first AA meeting over 25 years ago had phoned while I was out. She had told him of the death of a mutual friend of ours. He was diagnosed earlier this year with cancer and was gone in four months. He and his wife are a bit older than us but we met when our kids were babies. I lay in bed last night and thought about how next week Dearest One will walk Only Daughter down the aisle. And between now and then he will most likely hold his first grandbaby in his arms. Outloud I said, "Our friend is never going to walk his daughter down the aisle. The sun rose and set on that girl."

I don't want to wrestle with this stuff anymore.

4 comments:

Erin said...

xo

(just wanted you to know you're not standing alone)

Daisy said...

Yes, there's just no making sense of it, is there?

annie said...

I've wrestled with my own version of this, Hope, concerning my son. Like you, I have no clear answers as to why some are given life and others death.

Jim said...

Just commented on Annie's site, ma'am, and maybe it applies here also: "Theology isn't bad until we demand God fits the image we have created. Questions are not evil until, in asking them, we are not willing to accept God's answer." We in the Church are often guilty of both offenses, having no grace for those who suffer addiction or wrestle with life as it comes to us in other ways. It remains a journey, Hope, a personal one and yet one that requires recognizing the highway holds a multitude of others trying to navigate the course. It's always good to stop here and hear a truthful heart who has already come great distance in her walk with Him......