Finding Blessing in the Difficulties

A few months ago, our home went to full-alert, all-hands-on-deck mode when Dad came home from the hospital with a diagnosis of stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma. I'm the dad in question, the patient with the biopsy, but I was just the center of a whirlwind that swept up the entire family. What does this mean for us? we all wondered. How will our daily life change? Will we be able to continue our normal routines, or will our house become a nursing home? Will the leader of our family lose all his hair, lose weight, or maybe even lose his life?

We braced ourselves for a ride into the unknown. Thankfully, we serve a merciful, loving, and all-knowing God. We had already seen how He gently cares for His sick and wounded ones; our youngest, Katie, was born with a heart defect and spent the first month of her life in an ICU, followed by constant monitoring and medication. But she had grown and flourished despite her illness. We had also nursed my wife Melanie through difficult pregnancies so we knew how to manage patients with long-term conditions.

This was different, though -- Dad isn't supposed to be sick.

After four months of intensive chemotherapy, I was scheduled for a PET scan that would evaluate the progress of my treatment so far. The week before the scan I found myself evaluating many other things besides my health. One of the benefits of enduring a life-threatening illness is that it encourages reflection.