And after a few moments of sharing our journey, the elders gathered around our family, laid hands on Isaac, and we begged God for life healed and whole for our boy. Jesus' ministry and the first church is filled with stories of people being healed, and I imagined the cancerous cells in his body melting, healthy blood filling his veins. I half hoped that we would be surprised at the results of his tests the following week. I hoped that we would be able to declare him healed in Jesus name without any need for chemo.

In the moment, I believed this was a key moment in his healing. At the same time it felt like just a drop in a bucket of hope. Would this work? Would God heal him? And now, a year and a half later, how much can I trust that Isaac will stay in remission?

Especially now, we long to know that the broken things will be made whole again. But I’m starting to think that the lesson of this season isn’t about avoiding everything painful and broken, but walking with both gratitude and grief hand in hand. Knowing God turns everything upside down. When I ache in grief, I am somehow that much more grateful for who he is. In the moments where I have felt most broken, most desperate, he sees. He knows. He cares. He’s never given me cliches to stuff my grief, make it less intrusive. He makes room for it, welcoming it into the weaving of my story of need and hope. The thread makes it beautiful as it shapes who I am and who I am becoming. The lie of comfort as the goal becomes less and less appealing, I’m learning that pain means I’m beautifully human.

Against my better judgment and the advice of every friend and counselor I’ve ever had, I spent the car ride flipping between Isaac’s ultrasound report and google. Words like multi-lobular and conglomerate were used to describe the lymph node, and nearly everything I read associated that with malignancy. To be fair, I also know Dr.Google can associate headaches or a bad knee with cancer if you go digging enough. But this piece of information wrecked me, and I had to get through the next few days with family somehow holding it together. I had enough information to feel wrecked, and not yet enough to know what was going on. To this day, that weekend remains one of the most intensely difficult of this whole experience. The fear, the waiting, was eating me alive.

It’s hard to see your kid go through all of this. And I don’t even know the half of it yet. But it’s not hard to be here by his side for it all. He’s still the same amazing boy he always was. Loving him through this is the easiest part and it’s my joy. I’d do anything if it meant seeing him conquer this thing and get better. I have no doubt he will.