In everything give thanks, Paul says. And indeed I have so
much to give thanks for that if I started a list, you’d have to scroll and
scroll and scroll…Here‘s one item: my chemo got switched from Fridays to
Mondays, so instead of sitting in an armchair getting blasted, I am at this
sisters’ retreat in Niagara-on-the-Lake where I've met Suzy, a Kenyan mom whose
hair extensions come from Africa and take eight hours to put in. She has to go
to a shop an hour away, run by Congolese teenagers (what does one talk about
for eight hours with a teenager, I ask), and I've met Chris, whom God allowed
to suffer hurtful things before she discovered his Father love, and I room with
Marianne, a nurse and one of the most empathetic women I've ever known. I’m
thankful!
But it’s a mixed bag. My chemo is switched because I transferred
from Juravinski (an hour away) to St Catherine’s General (15 minutes away). I
switched from 30 people waiting in the chemo suite to 8, plus my host’s corn
field outside my window. These things matter to me. But I lost Dr. R, the lovely,
pregnant, Persian, twenty-year-looking old doctor who went to bat for me at Juravinski,
pushing my acceptance through the bureaucratic hold-ups, and now have Dr F,
whose bedside manner my sister Diana sums up as: “Anne, he wears blue and brown
together!” And this is nothing. I have
two friends walking the cancer trail with me right now, and they don’t have a
miracle drug on the shelf for them. How do I give thanks for that?
I don’t. I plead.
And as I've been thinking about it all, I have come to this
conclusion: God hates cancer. God hates death.
It’s what is wrong in the world, and I don’t give thanks for evil. He
uses ALL evil to bring about ALL good (I love it that with God that it’s all
irony and no hyperbole whatsoever) but I don’t have to like the evil. I’m glad
when God finds chinks in the world’s walls and slips in care packages, a
healthy Friday, a visible cornfield, and I give thanks for those every time
because they are love promises, and Robert and I work with Mixtecs to open a
mail room there--but I long for more. Remember when Jesus shocked the pants off
both his friends and enemies by beating Death? Well God never does the same thing
twice. He goes bigger. WAY bigger. I mean WAY bigger. He’s got the biggest
shock, the biggest bang in the universe planned for his next move…He doesn't
just beat Death…He doesn't just barely win, rescuing those lucky few from the
flames. No. It’s BIG. He takes Death and all its victims and…keep
scrolling…keep scrolling…
THANK
YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
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