For just such a time as this

¹⁴ For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
(Esther 4:14, New King James Version)

Through my ordeal with my neuroendocrine cancer, I have befriended another man who also has the same type of cancer. The main difference is that his developed in his lungs not his bones. He had to have radical surgery to remove one of the lobes of his lungs but was doing very well. When we last spoke in December, he was very upbeat about his prognosis with the cancer and encouraging me that all would be well.

The last month or so has been hectic and we lost touch. I felt the Lord strongly urge me to call him today, so I looked him up and gave him a call. I was not prepared for what he told me.

He said shortly after we talked in December, he started to develop what he thought was pneumonia. The doctors prescribed antibiotics, but nothing seemed to help. He finally contacted Moffitt and the same doctor's office I am going to, and they ordered a new octreatide scan, as they were concerned that the cancer may have recurred and spread. He had the scans last week and the preliminary results do not look good. He still has some follow up, but he and the doctors fear the worse. He said the doctors have prepared him for the prospect that the cancer has spread and that he may not have much time left.

This was such a shock. How quickly things changed. A few months ago, he was doing better and looking forward to the future. Today, he is facing death and trying his best just to keep his head above water. He is a Christian and has been praying for me daily. He has assured me of his eternity with the Lord, so that is not a concernI felt very guilty that, although I have prayed for him, it has not been as regularly as it should have been.

He has the assurance of eternity as I do, so he is not sad. I admire his strength. Personally, this news hit me like a ton of bricks. My pastor often speaks of something happening that drains all the joy out of you, as though someone unscrewed your big toe and all the joy ran out. That's how I suddenly felt. I was so dumbstruck that I didn't say much in return. I fumbled and said a few encouraging things, but unfortunately, I was thinking mostly of myself. The last thing my friend said to me was, "Well, we know that the long-term prognosis of this type of cancer is not very good." I know that. I've done my internet research, and I know that medically, the options are limited. I am not in denial; I have simply been reckoning on a higher reality than medicine and doctors. I have staked my faith on the Great Physician -- the Lord God Almighty. Still, this was a hard pill to swallow.

I had looked to my friend as an inspiration regarding my healing. Now I feel that slipping away, and it scares me to think of my own prognosis, so far as the world is concerned. This hit me hard and my faith faltered. I moped around most of the afternoon and evening and couldn't pull my head out of the fog. This dredged up all the doubts and fears that always linger just below the surface. It calls into question so many of the questions I have had about God's healing -- questions that I still can't reconcile in my own mind. I think of several friends that I have lost to cancer, one friend in particular that I have never been able to understand. I prayed and prayed for her, fasted for her, cried out to God for her healing, as so many many others did, and yet she still died, leaving a grieving husband and a young son behind. Yes, God was good to her husband and son and provided a great lady for them. I'm selfish though. I don't want someone else to be my wife's husband! I don't want someone else to raise my children! Me, me, me! Is that selfish enough?

I have sensed so strongly that God has promised me 40+ more years on this earth. He has work for me to do here and He knows that Cindy and the girls need me, yet I grapple with so many questions. God is no respector of persons, so I no more "deserve" healing than anyone else does. It is like salvation -- a gift that came through the shed blood of Jesus (see previous posts). By that, I rest on that promise, yet I ask myself, "Who am I to claim MY healing, when others who did the same died?" Am I being selfish? Am I being foolish? These are questions I'm struggling to understand.

Cindy and I had a long talk about it tonight. It was a difficult talk with a lot of tears and things said that would not befit a man of faith. This has been the most difficult thing I have ever faced, yet Cindy spoke the Lord's words to stop looking at myself and to realize that God had me call my friend today KNOWING that I would learn this news. Why? I don't fully know, but I know partly that it is because I need to step up my prayers for him, prayers for healing. Prayers for a good report. Prayers for hope and not despair. My friend needs me now more than ever to stand with him. If the worst comes to pass, then I need to be there for him all the more even to the end. I know this, yet it is difficult, because in facing his mortality, I also face my own. I am not afraid to die. I know where I am going. Yet I struggle with what would happen to Cindy....my children. That is my failing, in not trusting the Lord enough to know that they are in His hands regardless of what happens.

I want to run away from this. It seems more than I can bear, yet perhaps, as Mordecai told Esther, it may be that I have been brought into this "for just such a time as this", to put aside my own fears and selfish desires and look outward to the needs and hurts around me, particularly my new friend. God, give me the strength to face these things, and forgive me for allowing my faith to falter. Forgive me for any selfish desires I have. Cleanse my heart, O God. Cleanse my heart of every hurtful way and every impure motive that keeps me from serving You and serving others with all my heart, above all else including my own life. Amen!