6 months, 25 days, 2 hours, 20 minutes and counting... By my best "guesstimation," that is the amount of time that this journey has taken thus far (and there's still some left to go). Occasionally, it feels like time has flown, but on gloomier days, the time seems to have slowed to a crawl. The toll that it has taken exceeds the physical. There have been vicious struggles on the emotional, psychological, and spiritual fronts as well, so describing the experience as a "roller coaster" might not do it justice. Yesterday was one of those struggles.
Monday morning's visit to the Cleveland Clinic was a preliminary appointment to set things up for my ensuing radiation therapy. I was informed that it would be starting a full week later than I anticipated, and the additional appointment yesterday brought all of my exhaustion and frustration to the surface. There have been numerous points throughout my treatment where I thought I was so close to finishing, yet it just kept getting dragged out longer and longer. This timeline of completion has caused some unwanted repercussions with the plans that I had previously made before my diagnosis. The struggle of choosing to have confidence in God's sovereignty and timing has slowly bled me of my energy. After several hours of frustrated venting and worrying, I had nowhere else to go but His word. I came across this well-known passage from Isaiah 40 and in it, I found solace...
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God?" Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint (v. 27-31).
These words had been committed to memory since I was a elementary school boy, but they struck new meaning for me this time around. You see, my subconscious desire was that the Lord would mount me up on the eagle wings and carry me far away from this desert to the lush oasis of cancer-free life. I'd prefer to close my eyes and wake up the next morning and be free of appointments, needles, treatments, and 45 minute drives to the clinic. Is God capable of doing that? Absolutely. Will He do that? This passage suggests that He probably won't. The precursor in these verses is that our everlasting God created the ends of the earth with a knowledge that we are hopeless to understand. That means that my 16 years of top-flight education make me totally and utterly unqualified to question His timing and His purposes. But He doesn't just leave it at that and tell us to simply deal with it. To those who wait, He renews their strength... so that they can run again. He mounts them on wings like eagles... so that they can put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.
Maybe you're like me. Maybe you want a quick fix to things that aren't going to well in your life. Maybe you have prayed for the eagle wings to take you far, far away from your problems. I hate to admit it, but we've goofed up; we're asking the wrong things. We need to pray for the grace to acknowledge His sovereignty. We need to pray for strength that we clearly don't have. And we need to pray for the endurance to not just run, but run well, a race that is worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Mounting up,
MH
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