DAYS
OF
GRACE
APRIL FOOL'S DAY
LIGHT
UP THE NIGHT
The morning of April first was everything you could want from a spring day. The bright sky was dappled with playful clouds. Deciduous trees were dressed in their delicate spring finery. The warm breeze spoke quietly of flowering jasmine...
Our life was so like the morning. We had just moved into a house twice the size of the one we had just sold. Larry had recently started a job paying twice what the old one did. After nine months of living six hundred miles apart, as he worked in one place and I and the kids worked elsewhere on getting the house sold, we were finally reunited and living under the same happy roof. We were eagerly making plans to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary.
And then, in
the space of a terse, professional phonecall, April first became
April Fool's Day....But absolutely no one laughs at the joke
when the punchline is 'stage IV malignant polypoid melanoma with
spindle cells, disseminated to lymph nodes and lungs.' Fire ants
gnawed at my brain and I silently willed myself to keep breathing
as the doctor said merciless things like 'particularly aggressive,'
'inoperable,' and 'terminal.' The words, like a relentless scalpel,
systematically cut out every last shred of hope. And then the
doctor
pronounced the death sentence over my precious husband...'a year
and a half, maybe two years...go home and put your affairs in
order.'
What followed
has been a staggering tempest-at-sea of scans, programs, treatment
protocols, chemotherapy, immunotherapy. A merciless rollercoaster
of hopes and despairs. Our only anchor has been faith in the
God Who loves us more than we can even hope to imagine. I have
wept, laughed, raged, muttered curses, lain wide-eyed through
sleepless nights. I have run away. I have stood trembling and
fierce to face this invincible Goliath. Chafed at my futility.
Put all that I cherish on the altar of sacrifice with hesitant,
shaking hands. Wished I could wake up from the nightmare, or
that I could fix everything with the world's biggest hug....Been
to all these extremes and every place in between on the long
journey to this place of quiet trust in the One Who sees when
sparrows fall.
God is so gracious. In April of '97 he was given 'a year and
a half to two years to live.' Well, here we stand, two years
later. Not only is he not dead, he suffers little or no impairment
due to the cancer itself. (the treatments can be
a real ordeal, though)) And he still chooses
to reverence and glorify God, regardless of the cancer AND the
often ugly therapy protocols...The cancer has put his testimony
of faith in places we never would have dreamed of. The constant
love and faithful prayers of those whom God has surrounded us
with have been no less than astounding. A true eben-ezer. We
are
stronger, deeper, more sure than ever of the Shepherd we follow
through this shadowy
valley. Jesus wins and the devil loses...no matter what the final
outcome of the cancer is.
If Larry lives another seventy years and we sit together on the
beach bouncing great
grandchildren on our ancient knees, we will look into their young
exuberant faces and tell them of His love for them. If the cancer
is his Homegoing, he will spend his last breath declaring God's
goodness to all within earshot.
In April of '97, Larry was given two years to live. In April of '99, he's living in the days of grace.
More days, more grace
Air bags are yellow. They have white powder (probably residue from the propellant) in them. And they're a lot smaller than you think they are. I know these things because I've seen them. Up close.
November 12,
1998. It was a dark, new moon kind of night. My sister and I
were in her dimensionally transcendental blue convertible mustang,
heading down the South Carolina coast towards Savannah. My mind
was enjoying the music and anticipating the genteel southern
comforts of Savannah and the possibility of a nighttime stroll
along the riverfront...They say that your entire life passes
before your eyes at times like this. I can only say that's not
what happened to me. Maybe there just wasn't time. All I saw
was the longest flatbed logging truck in the world. Parked. No
lights. No reflectors.
Straddling the highway. Right in front of us. As my mind struggled
to grasp the surreality of the situation, two thoughts formed
almost simultaneously: We're going to hit it. We're going to
be okay.
The next thing
I know, the windshield is spiderwebbed with mosaic fractures,
smoke is
filling the car, and there's a yellow air bag in my lap. My sister
is yelling at me to get out of the car. It seems to take forever
to find the door handle. (I think it was behind
the glove box.)) I get out and start
pulling things out of the blazing car as fast as I can. The phone,
most of the CD's, the laptop, assorted bags and boxes. There's
a lot I didn't get, but it's too late. The fire has moved back
from the engine to the seats now. The once-dark night is now
filled with light...emergency flares, firetruck high beams, and
police car lightbars...and, of course, firelight.
We spend our
time in that bizarre state of hyperconsciousness and mental fog,
otherwise
known as shock. We wander around answering questions, telling
all the amazed bystanders how good God is, and gathering what
we were able to save into a soggy, smoke-scented pile. I indulge
my shocky sense of humor by taking pictures of the burnt out
car as the firecrew works on cleaning it out. Eventually, we
and our surviving belongings catch a ride to a seedy motel in
the nearest town. (Did you know that there
are no door latches in the back of a police car?))
Several months have passed. I can still see it, smell it, taste it, hear it like it was yesterday. Things are getting easier now. The scratch on my chin and the bruise on my knee are both long gone. I don't startle and try to crawl under the dashboard at the sight of trucks anymore. (but I still notice immediately and automatically whether or not they have reflectors) I'm not afraid to drive at night anymore. I've been able to replace many of my scorched possessions. The flow of passing time has rounded the jagged edges of my panic. I'm okay now.
But the more
I analyze and discuss the accident, the stranger it seems. It
is an absurdly
preposterous situation to begin with...a truck parked so as to
completely block a state highway. The trucker, though he was
at the scene and spoke with the police, never once bothered to
check on us. If we had been knocked unconscious, we would have
burned by the time the firetrucks arrived. According to a woman
who lives in the area, there was a similar accident a year or
so before. Seven people died. According to a friend who is an
insurance agent, air bags are really only effective at speeds
of 25 to 45 mph. We were doing 60 when we hit. I have spent hours
looking at the pictures of the wreck. The car, by all rights,
should have slid under the flatbed, either decapitating us or
trapping us in the flames. I have shown the pictures to other
people. Most of them marvel to hear that we not only survived,
we walked away with only minor scratches and bruises...
Over and over again the same conclusion...I should have died, I should have died, I should have died on that dark November night. But the sovereign God, Who holds all of my days in His loving hand, kept me safe under His wings. Like Larry, I am living in the days of grace.
