No One Has Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus

Doggone it.

As soon as I heard the first few notes, the tears started streaming uncontrollably down my face. I wanted to curl into a ball and descend into full-on ugly cry mode, but much to my consternation, that's a bit hard to do when you're encased in an MRI tube with a bracket strapped around your head and padding wedged all around so you don't move. So I held perfectly still while both lyrics and tears washed over me amid the thumping of the machine. 

"Out of the depths I cry to you / In darkest places I will call / Incline Your ear to me anew / And hear my cry for mercy Lord"

Shane & Shane have released nearly 40 albums during their career. Pandora has hundreds of their songs to choose from.

"Were You to count my sinful ways / How could I come before Your throne / Yet full forgiveness meets my gaze / I stand redeemed by grace alone"

And yet, of all those hundreds of songs, it is this one that played first.

"I will wait for You, I will wait for You / On Your word I will rely / I will wait for You, surely wait for You / Till my soul is satisfied"

If this moment feels like déjà vu, it should.

On February 3, when I had my first MRI and no one had yet put my name and the word 'cancer' together in the same sentence, the song "I Will Wait For You (Psalm 130)" by Shane & Shane was what played over the thumping of the machine.

Today, on April 15, when the word 'cancer' is now part of my family's daily vocabulary, and when I had another MRI this morning to map my tumor one final time before removing it, that same song played again. 

Same hospital.

Same machine.

Same tumor.

Same song.

Same tears.

Same God.

"So put Your hope in God alone / Take courage in His power to save / Completely and forever won / By Christ emerging from the grave"

Only the God who "is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8) would dare do so small a thing as to play one specific song at one specific moment in one specific place to remind me of his kindness and compassion toward me amid uncertainty and fear. No one has ever cared for me like Jesus. And in that moment this morning in the MRI machine, as seemingly insignificant as it might seem to outsiders, I was reminded of that fact. 

"Now He has come to make a way / And God Himself has paid the price / That all who trust in Him today / Find healing in His sacrifice / That all who trust in Him today / Find healing in His sacrifice"

All who trust in Him today will find healing in his sacrifice. My hope is that my body would find healing in the hands of a surgeon tomorrow and all the other doctors yet to come, but my heart and my soul have already found eternal healing through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. By his wounds, I am healed (Isaiah 53:5), spiritually in a way that no earthly doctor or modern medicine could ever heal me physically.

"I will wait for You, I will wait for You / Through the storm and through the night / I will wait for You, surely wait for You / For Your love is my delight"

Tomorrow morning I will trust that God will whisper to my soul yet again, "Put your hope in me alone. Take courage in my power to save. Find healing in my sacrifice, for I have completely and forever won. And trust that I will with be you through the storm and through the night for I have heard your cry for mercy. Wait for me." 

_________________

Functional updates

I'll try to carve out space in each post to provide updates on where I am in the process. So, if you're just here for the nuts and bolts, in the future you can slide straight here to the bottom and skip my idle wanderings above.

Well, here we are. I'm getting up with the roosters tomorrow so that I can have my skull cut open and bid Flash farewell. I keep replaying the scene from Argo in my head: "This is the best bad idea we have." Modern medicine has no doubt come a long way, and as a college friend noted, I'm "thankful we don't live in the time of leeches and blood-letting," but will we look back some day and wonder WTH we were doing cutting people's heads open? Probably. 

Surgery is at 7:30 am. We anticipate it lasting anywhere from two to four hours. A variety of variables will then determine how many nights I stay in the hospital.

As noted above, I had a fresh MRI scan this morning, which will help create a 3-D image of sorts of my brain so that the neurosurgeon knows where everything is. I also had a final pre-op appointment with the neurosurgeon himself. We went over both the basics and the details, some of which I had discussed with him before, but you can probably never hear these things too many times. 

Communication will be highly questionable in the coming days, so now it's your turn to wait.  😜

_________________

Reminder
If you haven't yet but would like to receive email notifications of when I post, you can sign up via this link.
_________________

Want to leave a comment? 
If you select "Anonymous" and if you're comfortable, would you mind including at least your first name and last initial directly in the body of your comment? That way I know who is commenting!