Forgiveness—it is so abstract a thing in the face of concrete realities. And this is the realm in which, for me, it is tested: the mystery of faith pitted against leukocyte levels, pounds and centimeters, brain tissue, blood vessels.
Titus has been accepted to the Mayo Clinic, and his appointment is next Monday. Amber leaves on Sunday and will carry him northward to Rochester, Minnesota. They’ll drive through midwestern cornfields and sleepy towns and into the heart of the Great White North. I’ve always wanted to see Minnesota, a land I imagine that’s filled with ice-fishing huts and fur trappers, but it’s not to be this time. I’ll be here, tending to Isaac, Jude, and Ian.
In addition to his continuing weight-gain issues and a slight (and likely benign) brain malformation, the neurosurgeons wonder whether his skull is growing properly. At least one doctor believes that instead of growing orbitally, it might be expanding more from front to back, more like the head of an Egyptian pharaoh. Although most would not notice the growth pattern, it might be enough to put pressure on his brain.
This week we also discovered that his leukocytes percentages may be below normal levels, and his vaccinations have not taken hold. Then again, we seem to get conflicting reports from the Arkansas doctors. We hope the doctors at Mayo can put an end to this mystery. In any event, these things, along with his history of infection, have been cause for our referral to the state-of-the-art medical clinic.
For more than a year and a half we’ve dragged these issues with Titus behind us like too many chains. They are heavy, and too often we try to hide the clank of their dragging from friends and family, afraid that we’ll be seen as the needy ones.
In any event, we are on the eve of another great round of this mess, and we’re going right into the heart of it. If there is anyone who deserves healing and wholeness, it is Titus. He is a gem of a boy, a rocket-powered child who runs as much as he walks. His joy is inexhaustible, especially for a boy who’s spent so much of his young life hooked to a feeding tube. He is a born joker who’s learned the power of sideways glances with his oversized brown eyes. He has already learned to lean into the art of life: the crayon on paper, pen on pad, marker on wall.
There are no easy answers for the lack of his healing, or any other child’s, for that matter. I think of Matt—my David House compatriot—whose baby boy Eliot died just ninety-nine days after being born. I consider John and Jane Ray, whose daughter Olivia was taken too soon by a careless driver. I often wonder how those losses could be predestined before the foundation of the world. There are no easy answers for the suffering here, for the famines, the earthquakes, the wars. We can pin it on God’s sovereignty, but isn’t that a sick way of scapegoating? We can pin it on the evolution of the world under the weight of Eden’s sin, but isn’t that an embarrassing show of ego? That kind of grandiose onus shouldn’t be placed on either God’s plan or the free will of man—should it?
Couldn’t God come and make it straight? Couldn’t he set all things right for the love of himself? It has been two thousand years since Jesus was here, and I don’t count on his coming back anytime soon, at least not in my lifetime. The preachers tell me this is folly, but isn’t living for the magical return that sets everything straight, that heals my son—isn’t that its own form of nihilistic folly or escape-hatch theology? Isn’t trusting God through the tragedy and drudgery of life a purer form of faith?
You might build a framework around these questions, attempt to explain exactly why there is suffering in the world. I certainly have. You might build doctrines to God, up and up and up to the sky like a grand tower. Others might gather around the base and worship the tower, might say they’ve built a bridge of explanation to the heavens.
I’ve tried to systematize the pain, and it only brought more pain; systems are great until they cut in unfair ways, see. The answers for God’s lack of movement help us make sense of God, until, of course, we need him to move. In those moments, if he doesn’t act in accordance with our felt need, we see him as absentee, capricious, or a predestining God of sorrow.
Instead, I’m giving in to the great mystery.
My will is that Titus be healed. My will, when I was a child, was for my own healing. What is God’s will? I do not know. Yes, I’ll still pray without ceasing; I’ll muster every bit of faith I can. I’ll hope I’m Jairus with the sick child, but if I’m not, I’ll give in.
Lord, not my will but yours be done.
Yesterday, my therapist talked to me of David’s child, the offspring of his illicit night with Bathsheba. He said, “This is my go-to story of healing prayer in the Bible.”
I stole time later in the day and read. David’s child was stricken with a morbid sickness. David, doting father as he was, retreated to his chambers, wailed and wept for healing. He tore his clothes, engaged in mourning. Word came to his servants that the child had died, and they whispered among themselves.
“How will we tell David about the death of his son? He’ll surely kill himself!”
David noticed their secret sharing, said, “He has died, hasn’t he?”
The servants confirmed it, and David ceased his wailing. He rose, put on fresh clothes, and called for a meal. The servants asked why David mourned as if he intended to go about his life as usual after the child’s death. David said, “I prayed because I thought God might change his mind, but he didn’t. Why should I weep now? I’ll see him again one day.”
David struggled in prayer for his son, but in the end, he gave in to the mystery that God did not relent. David embraced the present reality of death, while looking forward to the future reality of wholeness. Isn’t this embracing the mystery? Isn’t this the way of conformity to the will of God?
Perhaps my story and David’s are similar. Perhaps not. But whether or not Titus is made whole in this life, embracing the mystery means embracing both present death and eternal life.
How did I come to be trained to hold so fast to my will despite all of nature’s efforts to train me otherwise? The wind blows where it wills, holds the kite up, sends it ducking and dodging. The Spirit blows much the same too.
I once stood in our front yard, the Texas hardpan pocked with fire ant hills. It was summer, and my sister and I had been chasing each other in the yard. She was bigger, stronger, and faster, and I was unable to catch her unless she allowed me to. She skirted my reach time after time, yelling, “Nah-nah-ne-boo-boo; you can’t catch me!” And then when my frustration of being too small and too slow had reached the point of near hatred, she began taunting me while standing within spitting distance of a fire ant hill. I walked toward her, telling her I gave up, but at the last second, I gave the ant hill a good kick in her direction. But the wind wasn’t on my side. Just as I kicked the ant hill, the wind kicked itself up with a great gust, driving hundreds of tiny, angry jowls back onto my legs.
How futile is the will when pitted against the unpredictable mystery of God’s creation. It is a lesson I am still learning.
The will is too small a thing to go up against nature. My grandmother was done in by the cancer. It metastasized in her lungs and moved to every part of her body. It was the smoking that had given the cancer a foothold, I think. It was the mystery that drove it throughout her body, ending her life before she or I or anyone else otherwise willed it. This is the way nature works, the way of mystery. Even kings submit to it.