Reflections on Parenting A Child With Leukemia

My friend Michael Kelley posts some reflections on having a son with leukemia. I found these very encouraging today.

1. God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. I once heard Harry Reeder say this, and it’s proven to be true. I think it expresses the confidence that God has a clear purpose and direction in mind though the pathway is crooked. It’s difficult. Faith is trusting in the one holding the stick, not in the apparent circumstances of the drawing.

2. Real community bears each other’s burdens. As heavy as leukemia is, we look around us and see the shoulders of our friends and family drooping under its weight as well. They don’t turn it on and off either; the carry it with us.

3. There’s nothing like a plastic sword to help out a kid. Joshua and I bought a sword for 50 cents at a garage sale, and many a tough day has been made better by fighting off imaginary dragons in our living room.

4. Everybody medicates their pain somehow; some forms of medication are just more obvious. There’s alcohol, drugs, and other substances we use to try and take us away from reality, but then there’s also movies, music, and, yes, even church. These are all things we can lose ourselves in, all as a part of an effort to not face up to the reality of our circumstances.

5. I think people during moments of crisis come to church, but I don’t think they come there looking for answers necessarily. Maybe this is where we go wrong sometimes. Instead, I think they come looking for an acknowledgment of struggle, that life is difficult and not quite as cut and dry as we might think.

6. In some ways, I think waiting rooms are the closest representations to heaven there is, simply because there are no petty divisions in waiting rooms. There’s no black or white, rich or poor. There is only a group of people with a common linking that bonds them together. Such is the case with heaven. People aren’t divided along racial or economic lines; they instead are bound together by one common thing—a pair of wooden beams nailed together.

7. Control is a myth. We strive and strive for it, but the reality is we are one moment away from life turning upside down. Insurance, 401K’s, burglar alarms, seat belts - they’re all fine things, so long as we don’t fool ourselves into thinking we are really controlling anything.

8. There are alot of unsung heroes at the hospital, people like the care partners who take temperatures and change diapers with such skill that they don’t even wake you up at night. Or the nurses who are willing to play in a pick up baseball game in the hallway. Those folks are rarely recognized but are vital for putting one foot in front of the other in this journey.

9. Those who walk deeply with the Lord are also those who have wrestled with Him. Indeed, I think a big part of our spiritual development and growth is our ability to process and embrace the pain that all of us have in our lives.

10. That being the case, most of us never do. We never think too much about it because it hurts, and so we find ourselves outwardly moving forward but inwardly stalled in the middle of our pain, resentment, and bitterness.

11. It’s okay to acknowledge the difficulties we have with God; it’s not okay to live there. At some point you’ve got to move forward in faith. That’s what the psalmist did; so many of the psalms have a section of complaint against the Lord, but they don’t end like that. They end with the psalmist making the choice to believe and to have hope. And it is a choice.

12. Is there a greater blessing from the Lord than kids? Don’t think so - at least not today.

13. God is more interested in who we are than what we do. I have alot of questions about the future. Where will we go? What will I do? I know those questions are important, and I know God cares about answering them. But I think He cares more what’s going on inside of me, knowing that the work in me will lead to work through me.

14. God is mysterious. That’s all I have to say about that.

15. Faith is work. Some have argued throughout history that Christianity is a crutch for the weak-minded, for those who cannot accept that the universe hands out disease and blessing completely at random. I disagree. In the last 2 years if would have been much easier many days to stop believing. It’s harder to believe, because believing means wrestling with the truths of God.

16. Finally this - I am convinced that the Lord loves us deeply. He’s not mad at us. And He wants to walk with us intimately. That’s good news.