Thursday, 11 September 2008
Houston, Texas

The tender voice of truth

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Although my son Everett had recently made good progress with chemotherapy in gaining control of the Ewing's sarcoma in his left pelvic bone, the last follow-up scan revealed a new spot in his right pelvis, and a biopsy showed spread of his cancer to that area. The team of sarcoma specialists at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston believes the new spot is due not to direct local invasion by Everett's primary tumor but metastatic, distant spread of his disease. The distinction is crucial, because finding one metastasis implies there other metastases not yet evident on the scans. It also means that Everett's chances of being cured are now very low. The immediate plan is to melt the spot on the right with high-frequency radio waves delivered through a probe, continue to shrink the tumor on the left with chemotherapy, and support Everett in every way we can.

If you could read my devotional journal entries from the past year, you would see how many times I have prayed that we could contain Everett's disease and offer him potentially curative surgery. Now that we are losing grasp of that possibility, the agony I have suffered since last September is grinding harder and harder upon my soul. The malicious forces from which I prayed to God for deliverance are now raising their hideous, vengeful voices against me, ridiculing me for ever hoping for life and happiness. Every morning they wake me up before my alarm with piercing reminders of my harsh predicament, and during the day if I even begin to lose myself in the beauty of a crisp blue sky or in my favorite music, they prod me back to my tragic circumstances. During my devotional times, they taunt me: “You, who tried to live a life of faith and follow God's calling; you, who trusted that God would protect you and your family as you served him; you, whose hopes are now dashed upon the rocks—admit it! God has forsaken you! Go ahead, ask him why! Just say it, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I was about to write those painfully clear words in my devotional journal this week. But I could not put them on paper. My pen hovered millimeters above my journal, but my hand would not lower it to the page. A tender, compassionate voice from deeper within stopped me and told me the truth—that Jesus Christ has already spoken those words for me and my family; and because for us he has already gone to that place of deepest agony, we don't have to. Nothing, nothing can separate us from God and his love.

I also understood then that to write that hopeless question in my journal would be to deny the very proclamation I, as a medical missionary of the church, bring to those who suffer. It would deny the care I provided for Milon, an orphan with tuberculosis; for Morjina, a woman in a Dhaka slum who was abandoned by her husband after she had a stroke; for Babulal, a deaf boy in the rural village of Komlapur; for Fulmoni, a severely malnourished girl with rickets; and for Benjamin, a man in Dhaka whose young son died of meningitis. And most importantly, it would deny the truth that I want with all heart to convey to my son Everett, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Yours,

Les

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 89