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.

As I looked back over the previous four months, I realized that God had taught me--and my family--a number of important lessons.

For one thing, I had learned to think more about my daily activities. If my time here on earth was to be cut short, what should I do with the useful time remaining? Should I write a "bucket list" and load my final months with self-indulgence, or should I do something else? Jesus said that the faithful and wise servant will be blessed if his Master returns to find him diligently at work (Matthew 24:44-46). I realized the best thing I could do under the circumstances was to continue doing what God has given me for this time - living out my testimony and faith in front of my family, and working hard at the business He has blessed us with. It's encouraged me, and really all of us, to think intentionally about the time we spend together as a family, and it's taught our children to consider that life is short and the immediate future may be uncertain--though God gives us hope for the eternity beyond!

I realized too that our testimony and faith had been strengthened by the difficulties we were facing. My wife and I often encourage other couples to keep on homeschooling even when times get tough. Since we started teaching at home, we've experienced times of job loss, relocation, and other challenges, but God's faithfulness allowed us to hang on to our convictions even when circumstances changed. This latest challenge has given a keener edge to our message, and God is using it to encourage His people to persevere and press on!

This journey has also reminded me of the value of a broad, general education. When I was a teenager planning to become an engineer, I didn't see much value in studying biology. Somehow I managed to avoid the subject altogether and still graduate, filling my science requirements with chemistry and physics. The past few months, though, I have had to overcome ignorance about organs and systems within my own body to understand what was going on! My wife Melanie, on the other hand, has a degree in biology and did her graduate study in pharmacy. She has not only served as my interpreter when we went to the oncologist, but has also been able to sort through a mountain of well-meaning if sometimes outrageous medical advice shared by friends, actually uncovering several beneficial ideas with research to support them. My quality of life while undergoing chemotherapy is good because my wife was a better student than I had been.

Most importantly, we have been able to experience and recognize God's daily care for us. His ministrations have included not just the sympathy and care extended to me and my family, but also pointed and specific features of my treatment. I have been on serious medication since January, taking drugs that could be crippling or even fatal if administered incorrectly, spending a full day every other week in treatment. I was told to expect major side effects - baldness, though I haven't lost my hair; nausea, though it's been minimal; and fatigue, though it hasn't been totally debilitating. I was warned of potential liver damage, though mine is apparently doing very well. I was told the kidneys could be affected, yet I'm told mine are healthy. I was also warned about pulmonary problems, but my lungs are better than they've been in years. I've had so few problems, I had to ask the doctor if I was getting enough medication!

Oh, the experience hasn't been totally without trouble. I have had down days. There are a couple of offbeat side effects that are more irritating than incapacitating. Maybe my beard is thinner than it was, and the steroids they gave me have actually put weight on. And of course there are huge expenses and plenty of inconvenience no matter how well you tolerate the treatment.

But I've been blessed with a skillful medical team, the love of my best friend, Melanie, and support from extended family and our church. They share our burden and thus fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). They are all gifts of God - because every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights (James 1:17). But recently God gave us another gift - the report from the second PET scan, which concluded, "No evidence of metabolically active lymphoma."

As I'm finishing my schedule of chemotherapy - I told the children it's like firemen hosing down the hot spots after the flames are gone - I hope God will firmly fix these lessons like these in my mind. Everyone doesn't face cancer, and hopefully it's done with me. But there will always be times of trial and testing, times when we will have to focus on our true and lasting priorities, times when we may need to make serious changes. With God's grace, I hope I will see the blessings that come through the troubles at hand, and always remember that the One who sends the trial is the One who leads us through.

Hal Young is the director of electronic marketing for Apologia. He and his wife Melanie are the parents of eight and the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys (Great Waters Press, 2010).