Tag: John Piper

Preparing For The Next Year

It is absolutely incredible to me that it’s been a whole year now since I stood in the hallway of the oncology floor with Chase’s doctor. 

“Did anyone call you?” She paused. “The results of the MRI were great. His brain and spine are clear.”

“Yes,” I remember saying. “We met with neurosurgery right after the scan.” And I remember thinking: another year – we’ve bought ourselves another year with this news.

“There’s just one thing…” the doctor said, casual and calm in the hall. Because it wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. “The MRI picked up something in his thyroid. It’s most likely just a nodule, but we will get you set up with endocrinology for some tests in the next few weeks.”

January 2019

One whole year ago now. 

Diagnosis.

Surgery.

Tests.

Relapse/growth.

And finally treatment.

What a year!

But now it’s is a new year, a new decade, and Chase is hopefully turning a new corner.

The radioactive iodine will be a present force in his body for weeks and months yet, so it’s very difficult to define exactly what his status is in this moment, because he actively has active cancer, but he passively, invisibly has active treatment too. I suppose the best way to describe the fight he is in right now is with the picture of a muted TV. The screen is still on and the watcher is still completely aware of it, but cannot follow the details of the game/movie/show because it is silent. That is Chase’s fight right now. He is in passive treatment; an active fighter, the battle on mute, but completely still occurring. The only way we will be able to have a view into the fight will be through ultrasounds every few months, and lab work every four weeks or so – an important part of maintaining his thyroid medication levels, and an early warning system for anything else growing.

And on that same subject, Chase’s last labs showed numbers that reflected his fight in other areas. He had to discontinue his growth hormone shots when he was diagnosed, and his most recent labs confirmed what has been suspected about his little body for years now – it does not have what it needs to sustain an endocrine system long-term. And that breaks my heart because he’s a broken body in a broken world and I’m sad for the struggles he faces along the way – even as he braves them again and again – but for now, these pieces are also treatable. 

So, we will treat him and care for him with careful monitoring and daily injections – giving his body the best chance it has to thrive.

December 2019

And none of it individually is hard or horrible, but altogether, it makes all of us a little weary because it’s the price of doing business as broken bodies in a broken world and our hearts long for the day of healing when we can see Jesus face-to-face and can be free of things like cancer and tears and poking with needles again and again. 

And until then, we keep breathing because there will always be hope and purpose in the journey. Thank you for doing another year with us on this road.

Moment by moment

“God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them. … There is no power in the universe that can stop him from fulfilling his totally good plans for you.”

John Piper

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

Job 42:2

The Hospice Angel

If you enter our building from the parking lot, it feels like the front, but it’s really the back, and you have to walk right by the laundry room before hitting the lobby.  We’re a very classy establishment.

I came in late on Monday night from an appointment, and saw one of my neighbors doing a little late-night laundry.  We chatted for a few minutes and, in the course of our conversation, she mentioned that she knew me and she knew the kids (everybody in our building knows my children … you’d have to be deaf and blind to NOT know my children), but that she’d never met my husband.

I said it was quite probable that she hadn’t, but then remembered that she had briefly met Bob on the morning after the blizzard in late January.  When I mentioned this, she looked shocked and said, “Oh my word!  He’s the hospice angel!”  This took me by surprise.  I have heard my husband called many things, but “hospice angel” has never been one of them.

Here’s what happened:  On the morning after the blizzard, Bob was home (as was half the state).  There were 3-foot-high drifts around our cars and we suddenly saw this neighbor trying to dig her little car out of the snow.  I should probably mention … since we have an outside service at our condo for snow removal, none of us keep shovels …something you really wouldn’t consider until you’ve spent 45 minutes unearthing your car with your floor washing bucket.  Anyway, if I remember correctly, she was using her windshield scraper to try and clear out the parking space.  What stood out to us was that she was wearing scrubs.  We figured she must be a nurse on her way to a hospital, so Bob had grabbed his coat, found a garbage can lid, and went to help her scoop the snow away from her car.  She got in to back out, got out of the space, and Bob came back inside.  End of story … or not?

Here’s what we didn’t know until Monday night.  Lourdes is a hospice nurse.  She couldn’t get to any of her patients that day because of the snow, but she’d gotten a call from a nursing home close to where we live begging her to come because nobody else could and they had a patient who was actively dying.  She told them that she would try and get her car out, and if she couldn’t do that, perhaps she could try to walk.  She told me that she was just about to give up when this guy with dark hair and glasses (Bob) seemed to come out of nowhere and helped her get her car out.  By the time she backed out of the space, he had left (having come back inside).  She said she’d never seen him before or since, but because of his assistance, she made it to the nursing home and was with the patient when he/she died that day.  The hospice and nursing home staffs still refer to her unknown helper as her “hospice angel.”

This is a crazy and rather humorous story, but it reiterated something to me.  I never know how helping or serving another person is going to be used–in their life or in my own.

I once heard John Piper address our understanding of the mind of God and now I wish I could find the quote … something to the effect that we see only one thing and God sees everything all at once.  In this tiny instance–how helping to get a car out of the snow ensured that a hospice nurse got to the bed of her dying patient.

When I thought about this, I felt a reminder to “Be ready.”

Are you looking for the opportunities that God puts before you to serve others?  Will you be ready?