Cancer and A Cup of Water

I remember Friday nights spent driving to St. Louis Family Church, but not before we first made a pit stop at Crazy Bowls & Wraps.  I remember nights spent talking about politics and crazy professors and what it really means to say you're a follower of Christ.  I remember countless trips to Columbia in a little red sports car whose nickname I have since forgotten.  I remember the hard conversations talking about broken hearts and broken dreams.  I remember yelling at each other through the doorway of the bathroom that we shared my freshman year.  I remember the awkward moment when I woke up one morning and found a friend of hers sleeping on the floor next to my bed and wondering why the heck he's there.  (Turns out he was sleepwalking and had zero recollection of any of it happening.) I remember a lot of good times with Kristina.

We actually met online long before I ever left for college in Missouri.  In this divinely orchestrated situation, I wound up joining Delta Gamma, of which Kristina was chapter president at the time.  She would eventually become my big sis and one of my saving graces my freshman year.  We were often each other's only form of sanity and I don't know that I would have made it through my first year of college if she hadn't been around. 

But I've been slapped in the face quite often here lately - especially in light of returning from Kenya - with this simple truth:  Life isn't fair. 

And I feel helpless in the face of that.

Kristina was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer recently.  Barely into her thirties and the girl is potentially facing the end of the road.  And that's not fair. 

I want to get overwhelmed by that thought a lot, this idea that there is just so much bad in the world, so many things going wrong - and no one is exempt.  I remember thinking that a lot in Kenya, just looking at all of the poverty and overwhelming sadness and contradictions and disparity and unfairness in all that I saw around me.  I sometimes would stumble into this vicious cycle of thinking, while standing in the village kitchen, "Does any of this really matter?  Does anything that I do really make a difference?  People are dying all around me - and what am I doing?  Cutting up carrots?  Making paper crowns?  What good is that?" 

I still wrestle with that thought process, but I remember, too, the words of one of the pastors in Nairobi.  He was talking about the next steps the church needed to be taking and he simply asked the question, "What is our community's cup of water?" 

In Matthew 10:42, Jesus said, "And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.”

I have to figure out what my cup of water is.  Jesus isn't asking for the moon here, he's asking for a cup of water.  He isn't asking me to save the whole world, he's asking me to see a need and meet it in very simple ways. He's asking me to extend my hands out to those around me, to those in my own family, to those in my community and to those I now call global friends.  There's a world of hurt out there and I've got to start somewhere, even when I feel like life is so terribly unfair.  If I get bogged down in all that I can't do, then I'm doomed.  If I let cancer and rare disease diagnoses and the death of a friend stop me, then I'll never get anywhere.  If I get overwhelmed by all that is wrong in this world, then I might as well just lie down and die myself.

"This is my one and only life and it's a great and terrible and short and endless thing...and none of us come out alive." - P.S. I Love You

Yes, none of us come out this thing alive.  And yes, life is unfair.  And yes, I don't understand God.  But that doesn't mean that I'm no longer responsible for going to the well, filling up my cup, handing it to someone who needs it and whispering, "Drink deeply, my friend."    

You can continue following Kristina's story over at her blog - http://www.girlonajourneywiththeking.blogspot.com/.