As I write this, I am sitting in the infusion center getting a maintenance dose of Rituximab immunotherapy. I spend a few hours in a recliner every other month with an IV in my arm. It's painless, other than the needle stick-- not a bad gig at all. I realize now that a year and two days have passed since I first noticed a baseball sized lump in my armpit. (It later became softball-sized.) "THAT'S weird" was my initial reaction. It was a Saturday, so I headed to my local Urgent Care clinic. The doctor asked what the trouble was, so flashed him. (Haha!) He had a SEVERE flinch at the sight of my armpit... and that's when I started to realize I was in trouble.
The urgent care doctor sent me to the hospital for an ultrasound, and THEY seemed rather anxious. Results came back a week or so later and the urgent care doctor did a blood test, asked me if anyone had talked to me about cancer, and referred me to a general surgeon. THAT doctor ordered a biopsy, which lead to a referral to an oncologist. The oncologist ordered a PET scan and a bone marrow biopsy... which led to another referral-- this time to a specialist in Charleston, two hours away. That specialist ordered ANOTHER bone marrow biopsy, which in turn had to be analyzed by specialists in Boston. Eventually they decided I had Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL), a rare and invariably fatal sub-variety of Non-Hodgkin's B-Cell Lymphoma. Fatal as in "you die with it or from it, but you never get rid of it." You just treat it and beat it back, then go back to living your life until it returns. Then you treat it again. The diagnostic process took about three months, which is pretty good. I have cancer buddies with MCL who went YEARS before they got the correct diagnosis.
My team decided to treat me with chemotherapy and immunotherapy, followed by a stem cell transplant. Today is day 131 after the transplant, and I am doing very well. I am stiff after sitting for a while (my upcoming road trip to Texas this week is going to be ROUGH. (I may face-plant while trying to walk into the gas station to use the toilet.) My toes have neuropathy and are swollen, but it is an annoyance, rather than debilitating. In all, I'm doing good. Very good, all things considered. I have a lot of cancer buddies with tons of complications, and my only significant one is a nodule on my Thyroid. A biopsy has been ordered, but my medical team appears unconcerned. Worst case scenario-- they remove it and I go on Thyroid meds for the rest of my life. No biggie.
I wrote last time about puzzle pieces, and about God moving our pieces around, for his purposes. Ecclesiastes 8:2-5 in The Message tells us:
Do what your king commands; you gave a sacred oath of obedience. Don't worryingly second-guess your orders or try to back out when the task is unpleasant. You're serving at his pleasure, not yours. The king has the last word. Who dares say to him, "What are you doing?" Carrying out orders won't hurt you a bit; the wise person obeys promptly and accurately.
Our tendency is to question God's orders; or sometimes, whether we got them from God in the first place! And sometimes... SOMETIMES, the serpent is quietly whispering in our ear just as it did to Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:1, "Did God REALLY say?..." I fall into that trap myself at times. I have a favorite meme, where a guy is poking his head around the corner to check up on God's progress.
[Me trying to monitor the thing I "left in God's hands."]
"Hey, it's me again, just checking up on the status."
I did that a few of days ago, trying to check up on God. He spoke immediately to my heart,
"Why can't you just trust me?"
I had an employee once who defied my orders on which rope to pull as we were trying to move a floating dock into position. We were fighting strong current in the river, and it was imperative that he pull on the specified rope to get the desired result. But instead, he pulled the wrong rope. Not because he didn't understand the instructions, but because he didn't understand WHY I gave him the instructions. He was second guessing me. His defiance of my orders because he didn't understand "The Why" was almost catastrophic. "You don't HAVE to understand why," I yelled at him. "You just have to DO it!"
Paul was in a similar situation where he didn't understand why God had given him specific orders. He explains his upcoming travel plans to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:22-24, quoting from The Message:
But there is another urgency before me now. I feel compelled to go to Jerusalem. I'm completely in the dark about what will happen when I get there. I do know that it won't be any picnic, for the Holy Spirit has let me know repeatedly and clearly that there are hard times and imprisonment ahead. But that matters little. What matters to me is to finish what God started: the job the Master Jesus gave me of letting everyone I meet know all about this incredibly extravagant generosity of God.
Paul didn't understand the WHY of his orders, only that God required him to go to Jerusalem, and that beatings and imprisonment there. But he went anyway. God wanted him to witness to the leaders of the Jews, to Roman kings and governors, and to Emperor Nero himself in the coming years. And that all started with his obedience in going to Jerusalem under God's orders-- even though he didn't understand the why.
In my own case, I know God allowed me to get cancer and he SENT me to that hospital on assignment. There were people I needed to meet and a book I needed to write. And perhaps there were other reasons that I am unaware of. I was fearful of the process, and He sustained me. It really wasn't all that bad. Many of my cancer buddies had a far worse go of things. Honestly? Being in the hospital with Covid for ten days over Christmas 2021 was a lot harder. I attribute my easy time through the process to God's mercy and the many prayers of the saints. Thanks for praying for me!
So maybe you are in a similar situation right now, where God has given you a mission. Maybe it is a distasteful one, or maybe you don't understand why God wants you to do it. (Or maybe you don't understand why God would give you such a distasteful mission?)
I urge you to trust the King and get on with it. Even if you don't understand.
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