Peace like a river
My friend Horatio, who goes by Harry, an attorney from Chicago, planned a family trip to England to see the sights and visit good friends. Business had not been kind to him the last few years, and he thought that perhaps a change of scenery would be a nice boost for all. Anna, his wife, made dinner reservations at the best restaurants in the area. She obsessively read travel blogs and googled tours, museums, and Ten Things You Must Do While Vacationing in England to create an itinerary for their family adventure.
Their four daughters, Annie (11), Maggie (9), Bessie (5), and Etta (2), could talk of nothing but the upcoming trip. They packed their best dresses for fine dining and walking shoes for the tours. It would be ten days of pure family togetherness and sightseeing… and none of the girls had ever been on a plane. What fun!
Then Harry received word from the office that he had a non-negotiable meeting with their VIP client scheduled for the morning of their departure, so they pivoted. He stayed back and would fly out the next day, meeting the rest of the family in London. No biggie—he’d only be a day behind.
He dropped all five of his best girls at the airport before his meeting and waved them off. See you tomorrow! he shouted from the curb, humming a tune as he walked back towards the car.
A few hours later, he had just finished up with his client when he got a phone call from an unknown number. He picked up to a living nightmare.
The plane had gone down in the middle of the ocean. All were lost. His family was dead, somewhere at the bottom of the sea on the other side of the world.
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Before you move on, it’s probably best to catch up by reading my last blog, as there was a critical health update. You can get the details there, but the overall news was bad. The cancer is back and has metastasized to my lungs and liver. I am now a Stage IV cancer patient, which is not where I want to be.
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In the days and weeks after this new diagnosis, I became unmoored. Emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually—I was exhausted in all possible ways.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. How does a dying person spend their days? I mean that in a literal sense: I’d wake up in the morning and think: What am I even supposed to do today?
Work, lunch with a friend, reading, going on a walk, shopping: it all seemed silly and frivolous. I told a friend I couldn’t imagine ever walking into another store and buying a cute dress again. The things that once brought delight were now purposeless and empty.
Apathy and lethargy settled in. I stayed in my pajamas. With no future here, everything seemed meaningless. I couldn’t go on with my regular programming as if nothing had changed when everything had changed. My whole soul had changed.
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My friend and neighbor texted me an excerpt from a book she was reading: Eugene Peterson’s Run with the Horses. I texted back: please copy that and print it out for me?
She photocopied the whole chapter and stuck it in my mailbox. I think I’ve read it 20 times since then. This chapter explores the prophet Jeremiah’s message to the Israelites who have been exiled to Babylon.
These people have been forcibly removed from their homeland. Everything that was once familiar to them—landscape, culture, religion, language, community—is all gone. They’ve been forced to travel and relocate to a new, strange, faraway, and unwelcoming place of their oppressors.
They do not want to be here. They didn’t choose this. Their enemy has won. They’ve lost everything, and they want to return to the way things were.
A few guys show up and start preaching good news: You’ll get to go home soon, they say. God is telling us that you won’t have to stay here… you’ll be delivered from this hellhole in no time! Back to Jerusalem you go—see how God is going to show up for you!
But this message was false. It was just people doing what people do: telling people what people want to hear. People, people, people… no God in it at all.
Peterson writes: False dreams interfere with honest living. As long as the people thought that they might be going home at any time, it made no sense to engage in committed, faithful work in Babylon. …There was no need to develop a life of richness, texture, and depth where they were.
Then a note from Jeremiah arrives with the real word from God.
Don’t listen to those liars preaching lies. Instead:
Build houses and make yourselves at home.
Put in gardens and eat what grows in that country.
Marry and have children.
Make yourselves at home there and work for the country’s welfare.
Pray for Babylon’s well-being.
In other words: get settled here. This situation isn’t changing any time soon.
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A few weeks after we returned from Houston with this new diagnosis, I texted a friend. We were both going to brunch with some other friends, a small group of my dear people. I was lying in bed, thinking about getting up and ready, but I couldn’t. Even this good thing with these close friends… felt daunting.
I can’t do it today, I wrote. I can’t make myself get out of bed and get dressed.
My phone dinged.
I’ll be right there, she said.
Sometimes, you need to grieve. Sometimes, you need to cry, wallow, and make space for sorrow.
And sometimes, you need someone to link arms with you, get you out of bed, and help you put one foot in front of the other in this new place you find yourself.
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Back to the exiles: they’re where they don’t want to be. This script isn’t what they would have written for themselves, but they are being instructed to settle in and seek the good in where they are.
Peterson notes that well-being and welfare can be translated to shalom, one of my favorite words, indicating whole-life flourishing.
Peterson writes: Seek the shalom {here} and pray for it. Throw yourself into the place in which you find yourself, but not on its terms, on God’s terms. Pray. Search for that center in which God’s will is being worked out (which is what we do when we pray) and work from that center.
Jeremiah’s letter is a rebuke and a challenge. Quit sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible—to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love. …Don’t just get along, waiting for some miraculous intervention.
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m still asking you to pray for a miracle. I want the miracle. As you pray, we wait and see. At every turn, cancer seems like a moving target in my body. I’m not confident we’ll ever have all of the solid answers and information we want. Even so, can I find peace, joy and whole-hearted shalom without knowing what the future holds? Without knowing what God is doing or not doing? Without the answers?
Peterson ends with words that haunt me, convict me, and encourage me all at once:
The only place you have to be human is where you are right now. The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day.
I mean, all you and I have is one day at a time.
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I suppose it’s time to tell you that Harry isn’t my friend at all.
Horatio Spafford was indeed an American lawyer whose family died, not on a plane but in a shipwreck in November of 1873, crossing the Atlantic. His wife Anna survived, but all four of his daughters died at sea in the tragedy.
Anna was saved by clinging to a piece of driftwood, and her last memory is her 18-month-old daughter, Tenetta, slipping out of her hands as she fell unconscious in the water.
Upon rescue, she is quoted as saying, God gave me four daughters. They have been taken.
One day I shall understand why. One day I will understand why.
I’m doubtful that the answer came this side of heaven.
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Still roiling from the news of the deaths of his daughters, Horatio boarded another ship headed to England so that he could join his bereaved and grieving wife as they figured out what was next. As he crossed the same waters that claimed the lives of his little girls, he penned these famous words:
When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul
We still sing this today.
But is it true? Is it possible? Is peace like a river possible when we’re drowning?
When we find ourselves in a place that we hate: a place of trauma, grieving, and loss… can we hold the reality of our heartache in one hand and hold peace, belief, and faith in the other?
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Where do you find yourself in exile today?
Perhaps it is simply a job change with people you don’t particularly like. A sudden financial change may force you to live differently than you did before. You may be an outsider, rejected by a group of people you used to call friends.
But it might be much heavier. You’ve lost a loved one, or you’re losing a loved one. The divorce was just finalized. You got a phone call that turned your world upside down. Or the cancer is back.
It’s more than uncomfortable— It’s painful. You don’t want to be here, yet here you are. Very well. Settle in. Make yourself at home. Peace is available in this place. God is at work, even here.
Especially here.
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Thanks to a friend who lent us her house, we went on a family trip to Hilton Head. It was too cold for the beach, but we played games, made bracelets, and enjoyed a laid-back week together.
My teenagers wanted to go shopping. While we popped in and out of a few Island boutiques, I spied a dress on the sale rack that caught my eye. I waffled. Did I want to try on a dress? Was I ready to try on a dress? Somehow this felt like a thing, like crossing a risky bridge. Would it hold me? Could I do something normal for me, the girl that might have no future?
Guess what? I brought a new dress home.
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I’m back at work a couple of days a week, and it feels good. And when I’m home, I at least get out of my pajamas. As far as cancer goes, we have more questions than answers right now. I have more tests and scans soon, and I’m hoping for solid information to guide treatment decisions and clarify the future.
But in the meantime, we make ourselves at home right here, right now, with the information we have. I breathe in the air of this new place—this Stage IV cancer place—hoping for miraculous transportation back to my much more comfortable position of NED (No Evidence of Disease). I like that place much better.
For now, I hug my children. I stay up late when my teenagers are in the mood for talking, soaking it up. I go on a weekend getaway with Ty. I pray for a miracle. And I buy a dress. Because this is where we are, and God is at work in more ways than one.
