Yesterday was one of those days. You know, one of those days where tears seemed to come on their own, unbidden, almost as if out of nowhere. We were in the car driving to Baltimore, to enjoy a family day together at the Maryland Science Center, when it dawned on me that my heart was heavy. As if I was under a cloud. I was just sad. If you know me, heaviness of heart is not something that typically describes me. But it also is certainly something that I have walked through before, and I am sure will feel again.
I began telling Jordan that I felt weak in my soul, and then the tears just came. Sometimes the reality that we have no medical guarantee of Jack being cured of his cancer, that there is always a chance that he might relapse, that we will have to go through all this again, that he might need a bone marrow transplant, and there is always the possibility that he might die from this cancer.
Sometimes this reality is more than my heart can bear. All of this. The pain, the hurt, the uncertainty, the changes in his body and life. Picking him up and feeling the port under his skin, giving him chemo everyday. Sometimes, it just grieves my heart. Sometimes I just want to curl up and hold him and cry.
I am grateful that these moments come, they make me take each moment with my children- ALL OF THEM- so much more precious to me. I have been more purposeful with them, snuggling and kissing whenever they are near. These moments, they sober me.
Jordan asked me some questions about what truth I can believe to help me not to despair... which was good. I do not think I was despairing, but I was sad. Sometimes I just need to cry. Get the raw emotion out. In my mind and heart, I am not doubting God. I know that even though we have no medical promise of complete cure, we have a savior and King who loves us infinitely more than I can imagine, and since I know that Jesus came to die for the sins of the world, there can be no room for doubt that he will give us lavish grace for whatever lay before us. I know this to be true. This brings peace to my soul.
I know that it is dangerous ground to tread, this land of what-ifs. There is no grace for it.. not yet. So it becomes a dance, a tricky balance of looking to the future, although uncertain, and holding fast to truth and faith, the only thing I have that is in fact, certain. I read today from a sermon by John Piper the following, "The ultimate purpose in our weakness is to glorify the kind of power that moved Christ to the to the cross and kept him there until the work of love was done. The deepest need that you and I have in weakness and adversity is not quick relief, but the well-grounded confidence that what is happening to us is the greatest purpose of God in the universe. That is what God is building into our lives."
So good, right? Yet, sometimes I just need to have a good cry. Even in the midst of sadness, I can still say, by the grace of God alone, that it is well with my soul.
