In the Shadow

I recently flew over the Exumas, Bahamas.  There’s something about flying high above the world that draws you to a different perspective- watching the cars seemingly move in slow motion and feeling as though you could reach down and rearrange the houses like legos.  The world seems smaller.  On this trip, everything below me was blue- a bright, vibrant turquoise that is unique to the waters of this part of the planet. Flying thousands of feet off the ground in a small plane, I was transfixed on the clouds. Not the bright white puffs of air, but rather the dark shadow they cast underneath.  The intensely dark grey that masked the glory of the blue below.

I am in the shadow.

Sometimes by choice, and other times, inexplicably lost.

Cancer affects everything.  It changes the way you think, the way you plan, the manner in which you speak, the way you relate to others, the desperation of prayer, and the dynamic of everyday life.

Sometimes, I’m hiding in the shadows, desperately seeking shelter from the harsh exposure to all that cancer is.  I try to escape from the pain of the constant cough, side effects of treatment, and deep fears that constantly circle my mind.  Occasionally, I’ll disappear long enough to forget the gravity of all that lies before us, where I am not vulnerable to the effects of this disease that refuses to be masked.

Oftentimes, there’s a shadow over life.  True agony is watching the person you love most suffer and having absolutely no power to change it.  Many pieces of good news seem tainted in my mind by the persistent questions. Day by day I am living out my heart’s deepest fear- losing my mom.  She is my absolute best friend, a warrior on my behalf, and a faithful follower of Jesus. Walking through this season is like walking under the shadows.  I know the colors around me are brighter than what I’m seeing, but there’s an unavoidable darkness that looms over me.

Too often, I feel overcome by the shadows.  Alone, cold, forgotten by God, and detached from life-giving light.  Absent of direction and left shivering. With every test, we get more and more bad news and the shadows seem to grow bigger and more bleak.  A few weeks ago, we learned it has metastasized to her brain and are facing the pain and tears of more treatment. All of us have felt heartsick and weary after this last round of scans as we battle great fear and as my mom endures more side effects and the loss of her hair yet again.  In the midst of treatment, we are also in the ER almost every two weeks for complications, tests, and procedures.  Personally, I wonder where God is taking me. I thought I had a job lined up after graduation that aligned with my giftings and passions, but through multiple disappointments, never came to fruition. I then nervously applied and got a job that I didn’t feel qualified for and seemed opposite of my skill set.  The shadow of uncertainty seems to grow almost daily.

But, by its very definition:

A shadow is only visible in the presence of light.

Thinking back to that plane, I realize just how small the shadows were in comparison to the vastness of the sea and sky.  Yes, the boats under the clouds below were surrounded by darkness at the moment, but as they pressed on, they traveled closer to the edges of light and bright glory.

Although this season of shadows feels daunting, He is ever-present, going before us in every step in this process.  So, He’s called me to recognize glimmers of His light in the midst of the shade:

Bleak numbers and statistics are reminders that our hope lies solely in Jesus and faith in the things unseen {Hebrews 11:1}.  As young adults, my parents were told it was impossible to have children; so impossible that it was pointless to even try IVF.  But by the power of prayer and countless cries for mercy, my parents received what they call “their first miracles”, my sister and me.  With every doctor’s report, we chose to turn back from the grief and trust the One who created the very presence of light and the life and beauty of my mom.  We choose to trust that our hope is in Him- not in the numbers from scientists. If we believed in the power of their words over the power of prayer, my sister and I would not exist.

The last month or so after learning about the brain metastasis broke our hearts and tested our strength, but also fueled an urgency to pray without ceasing.  My mom’s cough  is improving for the first time since September, and she is able to wean off certain medications.  Although we’re still walking through the fire of brain radiation, the Lord’s Hands kept my mom from the dangerous side effects of the brain metastasis,  At her last appointment, her doctor looked at her MRI and said, “you must have friends in high places, because the location of these legions in your brain were extremely dangerous and had the potential of impacting major motor skills”.  Although there will be more scans to physically see the complete healing we’re praying for, we trust that we do have a Friend in High Places- Jesus, who hears every one of our desperate prayers.

More and more ER visits and procedures are exhausting, but each one brings my mom a different relief.  The Lord goes before us in every stay and intimately knows her pain. We watched Him miraculous restore my mom’s strength a few weeks ago so that she could be home and worshipping at church for Easter, when she had serious surgery for a chest tube just a day before.  And thankfully, we haven’t been back to the ER in almost 6 weeks!

My job has turned into one of my greatest blessings.  Although I was unsure of my qualifications, I’ve learned so much in this field from a company that values their employees and makes work fun.  I’ve met people that cheer me up on hard days and work for compassionate bosses that give me flexibility to work from home in order to be present for treatments or just to spend the day with my mom.  It’s given me opportunities to grow and be challenged, and it’s provided the ability to live in a new house and to treat my mom with small gifts.

Although this pain seems lonely, He’s surrounded me with incredible community over the last few years.  I am blessed daily by incredible roommates and phenomenal friends who are willing to fall on their knees on my family’s behalf, who send thoughtful notes and gifts to cheer us up after hard days, who intently listen and intentionally serve, who laugh with me in moments of joy, and cry with me in the midst of the heartache.

I believe the shadows of this season will one day seem small in reference to the vastness of His light over my family.  I know He will bring us to the other side of this period of darkness into warm, inviting sunshine. We will sing of who He is, because we’ve seen Him move miraculously time and time again.

The Lord reminded me of Psalm 91:1-2, a verse my mom asked my sister and me to memorize when we were younger.

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

As scary as these circumstances feel, He only asks that I rest in the protection of His shadow with full assurance that what He has for me is good, even in the darkness.  He doesn’t call me into action or to search for an explanation. Instead, He asks me to trust that He is who He says He is, and He’ll do exactly what He says He’ll do. He is The Healer who works miraculously.

So what does rest look like?  Pastor Rick Booye of Trail Christian Fellowship defines rest as this:

“Rest is a relationship with God in which a person has let their full moral, physical, and spiritual weight down completely on Jesus Christ for all of life and all of eternal life. Rest is not effortless sleeping, not stressless drifting, not painless medicating, and not sorrowless singing.”

I cannot sleep on the daily reality of what our family is facing.  I do stress about what the day will hold or what the future will look like.  I enjoy time with friends and family, while still brutally aware of the pain.  I still praise Him in song for who He is and what He did for me on the cross, through tears that can’t bear to understand why this is His Will for my life.  But, I want to rest; to live in the reality of the Gospel and under the shadow of who Jesus is.

I won’t pretend that the shadows of sorrow don’t loom- that I don’t have pressing questions and agonizing disappointments, as I pray and continually face my heart’s deepest fears.  But, I will choose to trust the Sovereign Savior of the universe. While diagnoses change, He has remained the same since the beginning of time. Our hope lies in the very existence of His light, and we will fight to follow the sun, His Son, Jesus.  If He learned obedience through what He suffered {Hebrews 5:8}, then so will I. I will depend on Him to teach me how to live amidst this cloud of cancer.

2 Corinthians 1:3-11 says this,

“3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

The troubles we are facing are real and raw every single day, but our joy and hope comes from our trust in Jesus.  We are reliant on God for our daily bread, to deliver us and sustain us day by day. We believe my mom will be completely healed, because God is not done with her yet.  Will you join us in faithful prayer? So that you will rejoice and celebrate with us when my mom lives cancer-free and that you can be one of the “many [who] will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many”.

Thank you from the very depths of my heart.

xox

ellie