Happy Birthday!

Today would have been Melissa’s 38th birthday. There’s too much to say, but let me share with you some of what I have been thinking about after going through some memories of her.

What do you do when you think God has let you down?

It feels like He has let you down?

It sure looks like He has let you down?

What do you do?

What do you do when it seems like everyone is, could be, or should be thinking He let you down and yet you still believe and trust?

Are you a fool?

About 5 years ago, me, John, Joseph and Melissa started praying that we could be “preachers together.” We did not mean that in any really definite way—we just thought that as families worked together on the farm that we could be at work in the fields of the Lord. Well, that came to a pretty abrupt halt almost 6 months after we started praying the prayer: Melissa was diagnosed with cancer. About 18 months after we started praying that prayer, things were really grim: bone marrow transplant, graft vs. host disease, lots of weakness. But one day, she had enough strength to go visiting with me and the boys. We were living about 35 miles from the church in those days, so we piled in the car and came down. We visited a particular family, the Mapiganos, refugees from Congo. It was a great day—our boys playing with their boys, Melissa and Noella visiting and really forming a friendship that would have been deep and lasting. And all that day and for many days after, we praised God that we were getting to be “preachers together.” Surely, this was how it was meant to be! She would recover! We would never get back to normal, because we did not want to get back there! Every day would be precious!

Within six months, Sissy was dead. So where was all the preachers together stuff? What to do with two heartbroken boys? How to pick up the pieces? A man asked me, “And after all this, you still believe in God?”

What do you do?

How do I explain that my faith never wavered? That I never thought to myself that God had let us down? How do I explain it when it seems so clear that there is no purpose, no God?

First, Melissa never wavered in her faith. She never asked “why me?” She believed, rightly, that if God healed her, what a testimony. And that if He did not and she died in peace, joy, and victory, then what a testimony. Let me tell you about her resolve. A month or so before she died, it really looked like she was turning a corner, going to make it, all that jazz. But we knew that she was going to be weak, really weak for a long time. And in the end, we knew enough to know that too many things had gone wrong that we needed to go right, and so, in spite of appearances, she might not make it.

One way or the other, I told her, I think maybe I need to leave off preaching for a while. Get a regular job with nights and weekends free, to take care of her and have real time for the boys. If she made it I would be there to help. If she did not, then I would have the long blocks of time for the little guys. She was adamant that this was a stupid idea. “You wouldn’t be happy.” And then she said, “If I don’t make it, I don’t want the boys to see that there was anything that could stop you.”

When you live with someone with that kind of faith, it builds up your own faith. And when the person who is suffering all the things that cause the worldly mind to doubt, and that person does not doubt, then a lot of walls are beat down, strongholds are destroyed, arguments are demolished, and thoughts are taken captive. So the second reason I keep believing, and believe more deeply, is because who am I to question God about how He dealt with Melissa when she never did?

Third, I start to wonder—what are the options if I reject God? There is no God? Trust fate? A universe that is haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent? Regardless of what anyone might say, no one believes that.

Finally, and here is the part where you can call Eastern State and have me committed: He has never let me down. I don’t mean that I have some carefully constructed theology to deal with all contingencies. I don’t mean that grief, pain, and suffering are not real. I don’t mean, finally, that the Cross makes it alright—although it does! I mean that I saw and see clearly and feel intensely that this world will break your heart and strip away everything you have. And if you live in this world, that’s it. But I saw, see, and feel, that even when everything was taken away, everything, I still had Jesus and had more than I ever had.

It’s not that God is absent, doesn’t care, or doesn’t know. He knows it all for what it is. We would curse Him and deny Him—and rightly so-- if He gave us a kingdom and riches that were of this world.

In the end, I could tell you all kinds of things about Melissa—about how pretty, kind, sweet, generous, loving, smart she was—but I have found that in comparison to her faith none of them matter.