A new perspective

If you're viewing this via Facebook, this is the 6th in a series of posts that tell a larger story. If you are so inclined, you can read the rest by checking out my profile page, or my blog at http://andsoiask.blogspot.com/



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This summer was a big one for me in terms of my walk with God. Regular readers of this blog (all 3 of you) might remember my tale of my attempted trek up Half Dome in Yosemite at the end of June. That trip sparked a period in my life where a lot of spiritual matters across a variety of fronts - although I think it was all pretty well connected, and at some point maybe I'll attempt to piece it all together in something coherent. Today is not that day, however, and so I stick to the front I've been dealing with - my friend Lynn's condition.

As stated, I was struggling. To be quite honest, I was probably back to square one, in a place where I had lost hope and was resigning myself to what I had become convinced was the inevitable. There was only one problem with that - the whole thing about believing God had spoken to me telling me something different. So I re-evaulated those events of 2 years ago over and over again. At first, I believed I was just going back over things to re-affirm my belief in them, but later on it became clear that I was really trying to find a way to convince myself it hadn't happened, or that it hadn't meant what I thought it meant. I figured if I could do that, I could let all of this go and deal with what was ahead.

There was only one problem - I couldn't do it. No matter how many ways I looked at that night of September 10th, 2007, and the weeks that had followed, I couldn't deny what had happened. I'm not sure I can describe what it's like to be in that place - having somehow managed to lose hope that something was going to happen, while being firmly convinced that God had, in fact, told me that it WAS going to happen. Yeah, seriously, figure that one out. Somehow, that's where I was at.


In order to get there, I'm pretty sure you have to have trust issues with God, and the fact that I did was something else I was learning throughout the summer. I was basically feeling like God had told me something while fully intending to do something different. Not that I would have admitted that to anyone else (or even myself) at the time, but its where I was at. Is it any wonder I was feeling like I was hitting a wall in my relationship with God at about this time?


Anyhow, September rolled around, and it had been a couple months since I'd last seen Lynn. In the interim, I'd heard via their newsletter that the doctors believed that he had about 3-6 months to live based on the way his breathing ability was being diminished. Let's just say that didn't help me anyhow. Lynn sent me a personal e-mail in mid-September, and I realized again just how long it had been since I had seen him, so despite my discomfort, we began discussing getting together, and I wound up making plans to see him on the first Saturday in October.


A few days before this visit, my Dad was up here for a visit, and in the course of our conversations, I confessed to him that I was having a hard time finding peace with Lynn's situation, and asked for prayer. As we talked about this, I articulated a lot of what I just shared for the first time. At one point, Dad asked me point blank "Are you mad at God?"


At the time, I said I didn't know, but the next two mornings, I basically spent my morning times with God yelling at him about this. "How could You let this go on so long?" "Where have You been in all of this?" "Why did You tell me You were going to heal him if You weren't?" "Why didn't You just leave me out of all this - it would have been easier." And then, though I don't know that I knew it at the time, I got down to the heart of the matter: "God, I feel like I've been made a fool for believing this for so long." All of it things that I had been feeling for so long, but hadn't been willing to allow myself to say, even to myself, let alone God. Remember that thing I said previously about how bad it is to keep feelings bottled up just because you don't think God would like them? Second time I dealt with that on this journey in a major way.

As I vented on and on, I didn't sense God speaking to me, in terms of giving me some great answer to my specific questions. And to be honest, I didn't expect Him to. I'm only now fully reading through Job for the first, but I've known for a long time how that story ends, and that I was asking questions of God to which I wasn't really entitled an answer. What I did sense was an acceptance, kind of an "Okay, Scott, now that you're being honest with me, we can deal with this" As I took off my mask, the lines of communication were open again.

So the next day, Dad and I made our visit to Lynn. I said before how Lynn makes it difficult to be discouraged when you are with him, because his own faith remains so steadfast, and this particular visit was probably the best personal experience I have had to confirm that. There he was, confined to his recliner, using the movements of his head to type out phrases on his computer, and yet as convinced as that day over 2 years ago that healing was coming. He shared with us a story about how God had spoken to him on the very day that he had gotten the report from the doctor that he had 3-6 months to live. My own struggles with what was going on weren't gone, but here was the other side of the story, the side that was so easy for me to forget - and that I desperately needed to hear. I was seeing God's hand in this again, in a way that had been obscurred for so long. It was so evident that God was with Lynn in the midst of all this, even if at the moment, it didn't look the way I wanted it to.

There was something else that happened that day that was pivotal in what God was doing in my heart, beyond my specific response to Lynn's illness. I saw in Lynn what Paul spoke of Abraham in Romans 4 - beliveing in hope against all hope, facing the fact that his body was as good as dead, without weakening in his faith, without wavering through unbelief regarding the promise of God, being strengthened in his faith and giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He has promised. I saw Lynn, even with his body on verge of complete failure, as someone who was more alive than I, in my near perfect health, had ever been. It was humbling, to say the least, and it made me think on all of this in a new way.

In the days that followed, I found myself saying to God: "Now, this isn't a request, but I believe if I had to through what Lynn has to get to where he is with You, it would be worth it. And so if walking through this alongside Lynn in the way You've chosen me to do is part of what you need to do to make me into the person You designed me to be, and to bring me into a a deeper relationship with You, then I'm okay with that too." It's probably the most realistic picture I've ever had of what's really being said in Romans 8:28.

But make no mistake, none of this means that I've given up on Lynn's healing. And I think I've got one last post in me to talk about that.