Dad and me at 2 am

My Dad has been living with cancer since January of this year. By the grace of God and with a strong will to live, he's defied predictions and suppositions of medical professionals. It's been a long road for Mom and him; one that none of us in the family would willingly choose. What I am about to write should not be read as sugarcoating of the bitterness of life's end! All things considered, I'd prefer a healthy father today. Nor is it my style to put on rose-colored glasses to improve the gloomy outlook! Dying is an ugly business even when there is the assurance that 'though a man die, yet shall he live!' (John 11.25)

But there is a preciousness in love to be found in the starkness of the moments when nothing else matters that can make the pain bearable. I have observed that love from a Pastor's place many times when offering spiritual care to others. Now, I am experiencing this amazing love first-hand. The love I experience for my parents is poignant, piercing me with stabs of incredible pain, but which I would not trade away.

On Thursday 'round 2 am, I relieved Mom at Dad's bedside and found him wrestling with the spectre of his mortality, with the questions about the 'valley of the shadow of death' that we all ask as we look over the edge of time towards the unknown. I sat down and put a pillow on my lap where he laid his head - the father becoming the child of the son drawing comfort from being held and soothed. Tears silently coursed my cheeks and I listened to his soft, raspy voice as he told me stories of God's grace, ministry partners now gone ahead to Heaven, and victories won. I wept with him as we talked of unfinished plans and hopes deferred. Though he knows the Word, I shared again the promise of eternal life, of the safety of the embrace of Christ and felt him relax. In the darkness of that hour, there was a quality of love that is almost too holy to talk about. There were not just two of us in that room. There was a Third! The Holy Spirit of God stood watch alongside of us, breathing His benediction on two ordinary sinners, held in the grasp of their Father.

Only God knows if Dad has two hours, two days, two or ten years on this side of the River but, the hours we shared last night will stay with me for the rest of my life. If God should call me to walk a similar road at some point in time, I can only hope that my sons and daughters will find the same solace in an amazing kind of love that I have been blessed to find in these recent months.

Live in love, dear Believer. Don't allow the ersatz shallow 'like' of pleasant, but untested, relationships to be your only definition of love. Don't let the contemporary infatuation with sex, the bursting fireworks of physical attraction, deceive you into thinking that is all there is to love. Don't run from sorrow, hide from pain, or escape into diversions from what's real. Instead, let God take you to places where love grows in the rich soil of pain, watered by tears, producing new depth of character and where He gifts you with a love of an entirely unexpected quality. The love of the Cross of Christ, a love that grew in blood and pain, has a new kind of meaning for me. My Dad's cancer has been a kind of cross for us birthing a new kind of love. A cross will find you, dear friend. May it be a place where you are graced to know new love, too.


"Sing to the LORD, you saints of his; praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. When I felt secure, I said, "I will never be shaken." O LORD, when you favored me, you made my mountain stand firm; but when you hid your face, I was dismayed." (Psalm 30:4-7, NIV)

"Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me; O LORD, be my help." You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever." (Psalm 30:10-12, NIV)