Trust Me

Last weekend my daughter ran her first marathon in Portland. She and her BFF training partner finished holding hands. It was amazing. But I didn’t get to see it.

On Friday last week, I went for a blood draw to see just what those ferocious chemo drugs had done. They had done their work. My neutrofils, one type of white blood cell that goes after and kills infection, were very low; which means the drugs were killing those rapidly dividing cells. This also meant that I was at high risk for infection.

Sitting there on the table listening to the physician’s assistant, I knew I could either hide that I was traveling to Portland on the weekend or I could tell him and get his recommendation. Somehow I knew what he would say. He was kind and said something like: I’m not going to tell you not to go, but I would not recommend it. I managed to hold my tears until we got to the parking lot. Then the flood came and came and came. I knew I had to choose to stay home.

In my tears was grief for the losses that cancer treatment can bring. But also in those tears there was self-pity and then a questioning of God’s plan. Why, God, can’t I see my daughter run this race?

As I prayed and sought the Lord on Saturday in my sadness, I remembered a blog post by Paul Tripp that I had read. He was writing about our reason to rest and used an illustration from parenting:

“I would kneel down in front of them at eye level and say, “Please look at Daddy’s face. Do you know how much I love you? Do you know that your Daddy is not a mean, bad man? Do you know that I would never ask you to do anything that would hurt you or make you sick? I am sorry that you can’t understand why Daddy is asking you to do this. I wish I could explain it to you, but you are too young to understand. So I am going to ask you to do something—trust Daddy.

God does the same thing with you, over and over again. He meets you in one of the difficult hallways of your life, kneels down before you in condescending love, and asks you to trust his loving and wise rule, even though you don’t have a clue what he is doing. (For just a few examples, see 1 Chronicles 29:11-12, Psalm 103:19, Psalm 115:3, Proverbs 21:1, Isaiah 46:9-10, Daniel 4:35, and Ephesians 1:11.)”
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/09/12/the-futility-of-control-and-your-reason-to-rest/

God calls himself the God of all comfort. Bringing to my mind this picture of him holding my face and saying you don’t understand, trust me was a great comfort to me.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
(2 Corinthians 1:3, 4)

His comfort also came to me through my precious family and dear friend who kept me in the loop with texts and phone calls.

jane