The Gospel and Suffering
The sound of Shannon wincing with every bump in the road became a metronome measuring the life already gone.
Two years earlier, we spent the day knocking out her son-do list. We converted a coat closet into a pantry, a sanctuary for the cases of diet root beer she hoarded. We fastened leaf guards to her gutters and rehung her front door so it would finally close without a fight. She moved with lightness then, laughing as we worked. Now, I lifted her legs into the car.
The oncologist answered Shannon's questions with measured optimism. She asked about the treatments that would follow. Delicate fiction draped in warm encouragement flowed from the doctor's response. "We'll talk about that once we see what's working."
I didn't need MRIs to know how the tumor responded. It carved away at her, piece by piece. Shannon's personality shifted; her mind became tangled in hallucinations.
We made a two-hour trip two, sometimes three times a week. The doctors looked at me knowingly and thanked me for coming. They were leading us to the edge of something, but the words had not yet been spoken.
The day came when, instead of the measured comfort, the doctor laid out three options.
The tumor sat deep within her brain. We could talk about surgery, but it would be difficult to find someone willing to perform it. We could try more radiation, doubling down on the treatment that failed. Or – hospice. The acknowledgment that we had done all that we could.
The doctor gave us three choices. We only had one. The next move was Shannon.
I gripped the steering wheel, glancing over at my mother-in-law. She was thinner than before. Her fingers curled as though she were holding onto something invisible. Her eyes stared straight ahead without focusing on anything in particular.
"So. . . more radiation, then?" She asked.
I swallowed. I caught my breath after loading the wheelchair. "That's one of the options. Is that what you want to do?"
Her silence stretched between us like the road ahead. Thirty minutes passed, enough time for me to pass the heavy traffic of northwest Arkansas and onto the pretty part of I-49 that stretches from Greenland to Alma.
"I can't leave my kids alone," she said barely above a whisper.
"How could you? You've lived your whole life for them."
My teeth began to hurt, my body telling me I was clenching my jaw.
"I just . . . " she hesitated, then sighed. I wanted to see them grow up, get married, have kids, and be here for them when life got hard."
I blinked hard against the sting in my eyes. I drooped my head to look over the water line at the road before us without letting the tears fall down my face.
She turned away from me, looking at the rolling hills of the untamed Ozark mountains. "But that's not my job anymore, is it?"
I shook my head. "No, mom. It's not."
The weight of our grief hung in the air. I could hear my heart pumping. I counted the seconds between each beat and the throb in my throat. Time slowed.
"I guess it never was my job. You'll be enough for them."
My response fell out without thinking, "I'll never be able to be like you, but I'll never give up on them, and I'll never abandon them. What's more important, even if something happened to me, God has them."
Shannon closed her eyes and reclined her seat. "Okay," she whispered. "I have to trust God with them."
For so long, we fought. We clung to life, and rightly so. Life is God's gift. Shannon endured treatments, sickness, and surgeries. We hoped for the days we would spend together.
The terror of admitting we will die - that our loved ones will die causes something in us to rebel. It's not supposed to be this way! Our hearts protest. Death is the enemy because we were created for life.
We must understand that the gospel declares that God has never been surprised by sin or its consequences. He created us for life. Jesus taught, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24).
God is not the author of evil. He cannot be thwarted by schemes of wickedness. Even in hardship and suffering, God has a plan. Even through death, God teaches us about surrender.
When we face our mortality, we have the privilege of dying to our self that we might live for Christ.
In Christ, death is not the end of life – it is the planting of a seed. We do not simply fade into the void; we are sown into eternity. The gospel does not deny the pain of death. The gospel reveals that we come to the doorway of life through dying. Through dying to the vain and passing things of this fleeting life, we have life in Jesus!
As you begin this week, take a moment to sit with the reality of your mortality. What fears rise? What grief still needs to be felt? Can you place those things before Jesus? How does His resurrection change the way you see your death?