Last Friday I published a Daily Sprout wondering if I was alone in my belief of “miraculous things can happen when they are asked for” mentality. The good news to me was that it was validated that I am NOT ALONE in my belief of miracles, or even that miracles are not miracles if they come from a God who has no limits.
Now, here we are heading into Monday, and the purpose for my discussion on Friday, the healing of Sabina, is now a moot point because she is gone from this natural place. Sunday morning at 3AM roughly, she passed from this earth into permanent residence with her true father. I hate this for all of the people who will miss her on this Earth. I hate this even though there is a part of me that believes without hesitation that she is in a better place, and that she will have no sorrow. I hate this for her kids, Eliana, Ethan and Matthew, Three great kids that deserve soooo much more than this, they deserve their mother. But the world view and the supernatural view don’t see eye to eye on this necessarily. Bur for how we feel right now, well… crap.
Hence this is a broken world.
Broken.
But not by God, as so many would like to believe in this moment, this is not His fault.
“How could there be a God if this can happen?” Well, the broken world makes anything possible. The reality is that when it all fell apart (enter Adam and Eve at that silly tree), the opportunity for every future plan of ours to go awry was heightened, significantly. That disobedience to our creator turned the world upside down, and this fallen world is rich with pain and suffering.
So now, because of it, I am sitting here wondering “could I have done more? Why wasn’t her prayer answered to be renewed? Should I have prayed harder, prayed more, sooner, longer? But it is a broken world, do my prayers even matter? I understand these questions, I have them all the time around these situations. Those moments of “what did I miss?”
You may have read other references to these types of battles in my Daily Sprouts. I have had hundreds of cancer patients, and have had to do this discussion in the past. It is not odd that what I have to offer doesn’t work for so many people, to this extent that I find myself wondering what else I could have done. The reason why it is not odd, is because in MOST of my cases, the person I have been working on is already stage IV when we begin. Those odds aren’t good… but as far as we could tell, we would think Sabina was not that far along. Once again, bringing me back to wondering, If I could have done more.
Which then brings me back once again, to the brokenness of this world. I am sure I could write about the science of why, and how… the physics of all of it. But the reality is that I have come to accept that this world is broken. That horrible things happen to incredibly awesome people, and this is one of those times. I am going to feel broken this Christmas… a very happy and blessed form of broken. I lost my father in law last Christmas on the 23rd, same day my Grandfather passed about a decade and a half earlier. Now Sabina on the 17th, which really makes for a rough Christmas season when you sit around the tree thinking about the absence of these people from our daily life.
But I have to admit, the point of me writing this tonight, is to point you in the direction of the only healing you will ever find to be fully complete for the brokenness that you will have to endure. And that is the solution for brokenness, and that means Christmas will always be happy… even in the broken form it will take. Because celebrating the birth of love, the birth of Christ, is enough cause to stop and celebrate no matter what.
The reality is that if you haven’t gotten there in your life yet, you will still get there soon. You will get to the place where you will wonder what is next. How do you pick up the pieces, and what in the world does it mean. I only want to say that the pursuit of Christ is fulfilling. Whether you have already decided that you will never be duped by that, or whether you think of yourself as a sold out Christian. In either case, pursuit of His knowledge will give you peace.
Sure I have been here before and I will be back here again I imagine… saying goodbye to a patient who should be here with us still. But, I will also be in this same place. Identifying our time on earth as an almost insignificant speck of time relative to all eternity, and I will be grateful for this promise of a new future. I am in a broken, blessed and peaceful state, and I hope you are too.
Be well and Be blessed! – Dr. E