It was early January 2020 when we left our first day at the hospital and drove down Michigan avenue, turning left instead of right to go straight to our church. It had already been a long day, full of cancer diagnosis discussions and a treatment calendar which now dictated our life. But at the recommendation of my counselor, we interrupted our church's elder meeting. I had a burning in my spirit to fight for my boy. I walked into that room as a dozen pairs of compassionate eyes turned toward us, confident that this moment was going to be an integral part of Isaac's healing journey.
There were a couple of men in that room who had been on their own cancer journey. One, battling lymphoma, a diagnosis similar to Isaac's. He dropped to his knees and put a hand on Isaac's shoulder, "We have something in common," he says.
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?
Last month I sat with a decade-long friend and we reflected on our respective cancer-journeys as our youngest ran circles around the playground. She began to tell me about a prayer meeting she was at for a family who lost their mother at her school.
"I realized that I have never asked God for complete healing. Why haven't I asked him for complete healing?" she said.
The religious circles we ran with in our childhood didn't speak much of healings or miracles. As if those things occurred in the scriptures and stayed there. Laying hands on someone or anointing them with oil and praying for healing was far too charismatic an idea for a seeker-sensitive church. Yes, God was with you. Yes, he will never leave you. Yes, he will comfort you. And yes, I think he could heal you, but we're not totally sure how that works out in the days of modern medicine. Do we even give God a chance?
But nonetheless, when Isaac was diagnosed, we brought the oil, the laying-of-hands, the prayer, all in the name of healing our boy, because I had an intense intuition that this part really mattered. In those early days of diagnosis God was so near, I felt his presence penetrate my thoughts and my emotions. As if the Spirit in me was turning them into his own groaning prayers to advocate on my behalf. My thoughts, a continuous conversation with God, begging Him to first, not make me walk this road, and then when it was clear where the road was leading, please let it be the road to healing.
Yet, I never believed that healing Isaac meant that he didn't meed medicine. I prayed over every dose of chemo, repeating the prayer that the chemo scorch the cancer and spare the child. Even in scriptures, Jesus used the things around him to bring healing and miracles. Clay over eyes and skin to bring healing. He used the fish and loaves he had to multiply, not starting with nothing. God has always used the things of the earth, the things at our own disposal, to bring health to his people. In fact, if you read the gospels and the book of Acts, miracles of healing are one of the cornerstone ways that Jesus begins his ministry and reveals the true heart of the Father to people who need hope. I fully believe that our physical body's healing matters to God, and that he has given us tools around us to lead us there.
As I sat with my friend on the bench near the monkey bars, I lamented how I felt so sure of God's healing power and nearness early on in our cancer journey, but now, nearly two years later, I often wonder, will this stick? It's like the question of, do I have to pray for salvation again every time I sin? I feel the doubt in my body and I'm drawn back to begging God to not leave us, even though he has already promised that he won't. It's when the emotional connections fade. When the dramatics of diagnosis season end, and we feel forgotten. "How much can I trust that the laying hands and oil worked? Like, did it stick? Can we move on now?" I ask my friend.
Of course she doesn't have the answers, "You have no clue what this journey would have been like if you hadn't invited God into it." And so we sit in the balance of trusting what we know, and still having a million questions about what a life healed and whole really means and really looks like while we're on earth. Why does God heal some people's physical body's and not others? Why are some roads so damn hard and some more straightforward? What should I expect when I pray for healing? And what does it mean when it doesn't seem to work?
These are the questions that haunt us during our days numbered on earth, but at the end of the day, I don't believe we should be afraid to ask them, wrestle with them, dig deep into them and be honest about our questions. I have peace with the fact that I may never have all of the answers. One thing we do know is that our earthly bodies won't last forever. Each and every one of us will say goodbye to this world someday. At the same time, God is for us, for our healing, and for our complete wholeness in Him now. He draws us near to him and wants to be invited into our most painful moments. He tells us that he will create a new heaven and new earth that is free of pain and suffering. This trust that this world isn't all there is, there is an eternity without pain and suffering, is the only thing that makes the next step possible some days.
A friend once told me that we are in a dark room peeking out the window and God is the expanse of the sky. We only have a sliver of the vision of what God is up to. And many days that means trusting that the God who put the stars in the sky will keep it all in motion, even when I cannot see.