Time to Face Facts

As I mentioned in my previous health update, I recently had to submit my current FMLA paperwork to my HR department a month or so ago. When I got the completed forms back from my doctor, I noticed the answer to the question of how long they estimated my "condition" to last and the answer was simple and blunt: "Lifelong, non-curable." 

Well, then.

Welcome to life on Planet Earth, Courtney, in case in the course of the last year you lost track on which planet and in which body you dwell.

How do we move through life being confronted by things such as lifelong, non-curable conditions, and yet still have faith that the story could go another way?

We respond by following in the footsteps of Abraham, a man whom God had promised would become the father of many nations, despite having no children:

Without weakening in his faith, [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised (Romans 4:19-21, NIV).

I can face the fact that I have a lifelong, non-curable form of cancer. I can acknowledge it, I can talk about it, I can accept that as my reality. I have cancer. Period. End of sentence. It doesn't need to be followed by any other statements. It can just hang there. No ribbons. No bows. No nice, tidy packaging. As we like to say around here, "Ain't no use trying to put lipstick on a pig."

I have cancer. It is incurable, and I will have it until I die.

Facing that fact doesn't weaken my faith or make me less of a Christian. There can be the temptation in certain theological camps among us that if we admit to a limitation of the body, we, by extension, admit a limitation of God, as if the one precludes the other. For example, some might say that someone isn't healed of something because that person didn't have enough faith to be healed. But if I think about that long enough, I can’t help but wonder if the twisted underbelly of that statement is, “You admitted defeat and that just isn't something with which God is willing to work.”

People who make such statements, believing my volume of faith, or lack thereof, is directly tied to my healing cause my blood pressure to instantly rise.

Facing reality does not mean my faith simultaneously vaporizes. This is not a zero-sum game.  

There are some of you that can face the fact that doctors have told you you’ll never bear children. There are some of you that can face the fact that you are in a wheelchair and will be for the rest of your days. And you can face those facts without weakening in your faith, just as Abraham faced facts about his body, which was "as good as dead." 

"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God..."

Yet he did not waver.

We can face the realities and limitations of this body in which we dwell, and yet not waver in the belief the God who made this body can work miracles.  I can trust a limitless God who can do the unimaginable with my limited body and limited imagination. 

I can face the fact that I have a life-long, incurable form of cancer.

And yet, and yet, still not waver in my belief in God and his promises, or that he can pluck this tumor from my brain and make me cancer-free.

We can face the limitations of who we are while also trusting in a limitless God.

I love how Romans 4:18 frames it, "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.'"

We have permission to hope against all hope, against all science, against all doctors, against all medications, all of it, but that hope still has to be rightly placed. Disappointment - and anything along its continuum - is always attached to misguided hope, 100 percent of the time. 

Next to a section in Romans 5 in my Bible, I scribbled a note years ago, sandwiched between other notes that says, "Misguided and misplaced hope always results in disappointment."

It's a comment on verses 3-5: "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that our suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (NIV).

That family member of yours go and do something you didn’t agree with and you’re disappointed? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you hoped they would be something more than human and less than sinful. 

You thought you’d get that scholarship for school but didn’t and now you’re discouraged? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you thought life would always go your way and the path would be easy. 

You thought the person you voted for President would win but didn’t and now you feel this sense of impending disaster? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you thought your fate and the fate of a nation was tied to a singular human. 

You thought you’d marry that woman that was everything you’d always dreamed of but now there will be no wedding bells and you're disillusioned? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you made her - or the idea of marriage - your idol. 

You thought your adult child would be home for the holidays but couldn’t because they went to their in-laws instead and your dissatisfied? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you thought people would bend to your will like you wanted. 

Dare I even say it's possible to have a misplaced hope in God himself? 

You thought he’d protect you from pain but didn’t and now you are disenchanted with the notion of him? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you thought God was a genie in a bottle whose primary job was to never let you or anyone you love suffer. 

You thought he’d grant you a life with every longing fulfilled but here you are, still longing, still unfulfilled and now very much discontented? Perhaps at the root is a misplaced hope because you thought your life was going to work out in a very linear fashion, thankyouverymuch. 

You show me the depths to which you are disappointed with man or God, and I will show you the depths to which your hope was misguided or misplaced. I’m not saying we should be unfazed or unmoved by the world and our experiences, that we become unfeeling robots. And I’m not saying we can’t hope for things or expect people to act in a certain way. And I’m not saying we can’t ever be disappointed. Disappointment in and of itself is not sinful. 

What I am saying, though, is that when we are disappointed, disillusioned, devastated, dissatisfied, etc., we need to take stock of what that disappointment indicates and pause long enough to consider whether our hope was pointed to something or someone that it shouldn't have been. There has to be something much greater and much stronger than broken man and a broken world that holds our hope together. Because when we look to incomplete, broken things to complete us, that’s a lot of pressure on something that was never designed for such a load. When we hope in broken things and we find they don’t do what we thought they’d do, the end result is that they will break us.  

There's a line in the movie Paper Towns I have come back to often over the years to check my own roots of disappointment, “It’s a dangerous thing to believe a person is more than a person,” meaning it's dangerous to believe that the people around us are something other than what they are, that they are what idealize or romanticize them, or dare I say, idolize them to be. I haven't fully thought this through so maybe I’m off,  but my guess is that Jesus never experienced disappointment, and not as a result of being perfect, though he was, but as a result of always properly placing his hope where it belonged, chiefly in his Father. It says in John 2:24-25: "During the time [Jesus] was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them" (The Message).

Jesus was no fool. He knew those people had a misguided and misplaced hope, a hope placed not in Jesus himself, but merely in the signs he performed. But Jesus knew where his hope needed to be, and it wasn't in men or the world around him. He knew of what men were made and that they were not designed to bear the weight of his hope. They would soon be nailing him to a cross. So, no, he knew not to put his hope in them. His hope was in his Father.

He put the right hope, in the right place, and he was not disappointed. He was instead "exalted to the right hand of the Father..." (Acts 2:33), a place where nothing is misplaced or misguided.

I can face the fact I have a lifelong, non curable form of cancer without it breaking me because my hope is in something greater than this broken body. 

It is in Jesus. 

___________________________

Comment on comments:

I had an epiphany at 4:26 am this morning while my heart and mind were on fire with this post and I was frantically texting words and thoughts into my phone, willing my fingers to keep up with the pace of my brain. (Remember the days when it took me an HOUR to type out a single post?? Praise God that is no longer the case, as this post probably would have taken me something like 36 hours to punch out!) 

I had historically asked people to include at least their first name, but I realized requesting people to include their name or their initials in the comments was perhaps inhibiting folks. The request was born out of my own curiosity and desire to know who was sitting on the other side of a post. One-sided conversations can only last for so long. (Thank you, though, to those regular commenters! I have read everything you have posted and find them helpful and encouraging!)  But I also know there are plenty of passive observers out there who are quite content to be unknown but still have thoughts on what I write and would maybe like to share. (Or maybe you just want to say "Hey, can you make your font bigger or the layout different on your mobile version?" I'm also open to hearing things that would help the reading experience better/easier.)

Time to fling the doors open wide. 

Let’s hear it from all you anonymous folks in the back and the balcony! 

You’re under no obligation to include your name (not that you ever were, technically, but I know peer pressure is a powerful thing). Since I’ve restricted the ability for the site to be crawled by search engines, I know the only way you’re reading this is if you got the direct link somehow. You either know me or know somebody who knows me, or are somehow my kindergarten teacher’s second cousin by marriage. However the six degrees of separation may work, comment away if you so desire!  Maybe we’ve never even met in real life but you faithfully read; I’d love to hear from you, namelessness and all. 

Now, you declare your undying love for me and ask me for my address without sharing your name, I’m going to regret opening this door, and somehow wish I did know your name so I could file a restraining order against you. You can be anonymous but don’t be creepy anonymous. Deal?