You are Held

The last few weeks have been something of a blur as our plans for Scott to visit me in England had to be canceled in order for him to undergo various medical tests, and the anxiety of awaiting results from those tests was nightmarish.  Upon receiving the unwelcome diagnosis of cancer, we immediately made plans for me to return home to be with him as he undergoes further tests, has meetings with the oncologist and medical team, and waits to learn more about where we go from here.  We know more than we did, which is helpful, and the news that this particular cancer is slow-growing was better than we had feared, but we still have the next couple of weeks of testing and consulting with the medical team ahead of us as we begin to come to terms with this new and unwelcome visitor in our lives.  We thought 2020 had brought quite enough grief into our lives, thank you very much, but hey, presto! there's this to contend with now.

As I write this, it is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and if this were a tear-jerking Hallmark movie, this would be the cue for me to be writing about the overflow of thanks we are giving because of the better-than-feared news.  I'd be waxing lyrical about God's grace in the midst of our fear and our sense of the presence of the Spirit even as the storm rages.  Well, this isn't a movie, and I certainly don't feel sentimental about the fact that it's Thanksgiving and almost Advent, but I do indeed feel a deep sense of gratitude.  I am grateful that the doctor who was checking something completely different decided that Scott needed a biopsy.  I am grateful that it was scheduled quickly and that we got the results relatively soon.  I am grateful that it is not the kind of swift killer that takes one's life almost before the diagnosis is made.  I am grateful that the people at American Airlines went out of their way to be kind and compassionate in their efficiency of getting me home quickly so I could be with him.  I am grateful for the outpouring of prayers and the dozens of cards, social media messages, emails, texts, and calls that we have received.  I am grateful that I have been able to look my beloved in the eye and tell him that we are not alone, that God in fact IS with us.  I am grateful beyond words, beyond measure, beyond belief. 

But.  I'm still scared.  We're still anxious.  Incurable cancer, no matter how slow-growing, alters everything.  We are still trying to assimilate the knowledge that this unwelcome visitor has shown up, still trying to figure out how to balance that awareness with a desire to live as normally as possible, still trying to neither ignore nor deny the reality but also not giving into the fear and obsession of thinking of nothing else. And it's hard, friends, it's really stinking hard.  

It's hard.

But.  I am grateful that all the years of praying, of reading scripture, of singing hymns, and of trying to follow Jesus have given me a vocabulary and a foundation for gratitude and for hope even as the waiting continues.  And yes, we're almost into Advent, that season of waiting with intensity, that time of yearning and desiring the active in-breaking of God into human life more than anything else.  With the prophet Isaiah and the children of Israel, I have been crying out for the heavens to be rent open, the skies to be ripped apart, the veil between heaven and earth to be torn to shreds and for God to be right here, right now.  With Charles Wesley, I am prayerfully singing as I beg for the long-expected Jesus to come, to release us from all fears and sins, to be strength and consolation, to bring rest and joy to our longing hearts.  And with John Wesley, I find myself affirming dozens of times a day the glad tidings that lie at the heart of Christmas, the Incarnation, which means we can confidently trust that the best of all really is that God is with us.  

Affirming those things does not banish the dark clouds, nor does it bring immediate calm and peace to our anxious spirits.  Affirming those things does not act like some kind of magical incantation that hypnotizes one into denying the reality of the hurt and the fear and the uncertainty.  But affirming those things does reassure us that we're not in this alone, that the same God who entered human history as an infant some 2000 years ago is the same God in whose loving arms we are held, and that the words I wrote weeks before any of this happened are true --

You are held fast by the One whose steadfast love endures forever. You are held by the God who is always with us. You are held by the One who has been in the deepest pit and emerged victorious. You are held.