On the morning of January 1, 2017 I sat down in my usual spot between Kelly and Isaac and waited for the praise team to begin our Sunday morning worship. Isaac suddenly commented that his phone had vibrated and how odd that someone was trying to call him at that time. We assumed it was a telemarketer and he nearly ignored it as the music began but a quick peak told us that my sister had been trying to reach me on my silenced phone. Within minutes Kelly was steering his truck behind the ambulance that carried my father to the hospital and we began our new year in the emergency room waiting area, taking turns with my siblings to join Mom and Dad as the doctors tried to determine if Dad had another heart attack as he had relaxed in his recliner a few hours earlier.
Going back a few months to Labor Day 2016, Dad vomited out of the blue and was given his first tiny clue of what was ahead. As the months of 2016 wore on, Dad experienced longer bouts of illness with shorter bouts of feeling better in between, and in the last two months of the year was only able to work about half of his usual schedule. My parents hid it well. We knew Dad was getting sick and going to the doctor again and again but we didn't realize just how bad things had gotten, in sickness and in lost work. Maybe a few days in the hospital would give him the answers he needed but the doctors added another misdiagnosis to the growing list and sent him home. Only now it wasn't just nausea. Now he was having excruciating pain in his chest that should have healed within a few weeks but did not.
More doctor visits. More misdiagnoses. And then one day we get a phone call that my 23 weeks pregnant sister is being taken by ambulance from the small hospital where she planned to deliver to the big hospital 45 minutes away in Harrisburg as they tried to stop her labor. Four of the next eight weeks she spent in and out of the hospital before they could no longer control the contractions. Finally at 31 weeks along the team of specialists and doctors required to keep her alive during her high-risk delivery began preparations for her baby boy's birth. Dad was too sick to be there so I gathered with our mom, brother, and his wife, and we waited and we prayed. And at 12:15 am we began the long drive home filled with relief and gratitude that the news was good. Good news that we desperately needed at that point.
During the eight weeks that we waited with my sister, Dad's string of five misdiagnoses came to a screeching halt with the news that he has stage four pancreatic cancer that has spread to his liver. After seven months of symptoms, seven months without any treatment for an incurable illness, Dad's new reality began. And boy did it make an entrance. With a stroke. A stroke that landed him in the hospital and nearly derailed the doctor's urgent plan to start his chemo the following week. Nearly derailed but did not succeed, and finally, eight months after his first indication that something was wrong, Dad began the treatment that does not offer any hope of a cure, only the hope of living out his remaining life in comfort, doing the things he loves to do with the people he loves.
Hope. Where does one find such a thing in the face of a nine months to a year prognosis, a prognosis that is nothing more than a slightly educated guess? We are not naive in the reality of the giant he is up against, but still we hope. Many with stage four pancreatic cancer will not live through the year, but some do, and since the number of days God ordained for Dad was determined before he was born, we don't lose hope. If God can breathe stars into existence, He can certainly handle Dad's cancer. This ugly disease is all around us, in many different bodies and many different forms, some with hope, some with no hope. Dad should fall into the no hope category, but still we hope because we worship the Author of hope, the One who is sovereign over life and over death, over health and over disease. We hope for a few more years together, a few more years to sit around campfires listening to Dad's stories, a few more years for Dad to make memories with his grandsons, one brand new and the other almost grown, a few more years of life for this man from whom his children's lives came. We have hope for all those things and more but we know that we may not get what we hope for. That is his and our reality, but still we hope. Our hope extends beyond the limited horizon of our earthly lives together. Our hope extends into eternity. We hope for more time with him here and now, but we HOPE and trust and believe with all our hearts that Christ will make all things new and one day we will all be together once again. Together for eternity, that is where our true hope lies, and that is a hope that is not dependent on the outcome of our earthly hopes. Nothing can shatter the hope of eternity with Christ and with each other. That is our true reality as children of God, saved through the blood of Christ.
Sin and death can destroy our earthly tents but Christ walked out of the grave 2000 years ago to secure our eternal life, a life that no disease can steal. Christ is our only hope in a hopeless, sin infested, disease filled, broken, and terrifying world. Christ is our peace, our salvation, and our firm foundation. Christ is our hope, and we stand secure within the family of God. We will not be shaken.
And that tiny baby boy who made his grand entrance into the world nine weeks early? He came home this week. Home to a momma and a daddy and the love of an extended family. God gives extravagant gifts even in the midst of heartache, and you don't get more extravagant than 10 tiny fingers and 10 tiny toes on a perfect tiny body. Sometimes life hurts, badly, sometimes life feels gloriously good, and sometimes it is both at the same time. But in the midst of whatever comes our way, God is faithful and good, always.