The Long Walk I Don't Remember... Finally Continued
Now that no one is reading this blog I though it was time to continue... sort of :)
I think I'll hop off the previous train of thought and reach for another. I have little doubt they'll intersect somewhere down the line. (train metaphor anyone?)
In my previous post, which a lot of people read, I talked about the loss of my friend, Tom. My friend's untimely (to me and most everyone else) death has not been easy to sleep on. Or to be awake with, now that I think about it. It is not at all that I am unfamiliar with death. I have been present with a large number of people who have lost loved ones. I have been present with a fair number of people as they made the journey to the other side. Some of those people, in both the former and the latter, have been my own loved ones. In each case I have felt that I was intruding.
For example; I once waited outside a hospital room with a dozen other friends. Inside the room was our childhood friend with his wife and 10 year old son. His beautiful boy was battling leukemia. Just that morning we had gathered by his bedside and held hands to pray. A suitable donor match for a marrow transplant had been found and was ready to proceed that day. But our young friend had developed a fever and this stopped the whole process. Months of waiting and planning for this day had been ground to a halt by some insipid little infection somewhere in his already struggling body.
So we gathered to pray. We were earnest. We were sincere. There was weeping and there was laughter as we considered what God could do. I remember being pissed off at one person who was there. I didn't even know who he was, and I don't think the family was familiar with him either. He had attached himself to some good people in our church and had convinced them he was a person of great faith. Someone had thought it a good idea to ask him to come to pray. He prayed long and loudly. He proclaimed that the boy was already healed.
(Later, he was found to be a business fraud, a liar and a cheat. So... not so different than me, I suppose. Or than all of us in some way or another.)
I was angry because he kept touching the boy's forehead like a saliva spitting "faith healer" I once met. He shouted at the demon of cancer, growled at the spirit of fever and laughed at the specter of death. I wanted to punch him in the mouth to make him shutup. Partly because I could see that he was hurting this boy everytime he touched him. Sometimes people who are very ill have such heightened sense of touch that the smallest contact can be painful. I've made this mistake twice and I wish I could take them both back. It's a natural response on our part to want to comfort, but at certain times our touch may not be comforting at all.
However, I'm aware that I was angry because, whether he was a charlatan or not, he was expressing an idea of faith that I did not possess at that moment. While we stood together and prayed for healing, begged for a miracle I was like a man split right down the middle. Part of me wanted to believe that healing would come and part of me was sure the boy was going to die.
Later, when I sat against the corridir wall outside his room with a dozen other people that's just what he did. He died. I had rushed back to the hospital after a church event of some kind. I was the music and youth pastor and I must have been at some bible study or choir practice. I had been back to the vigil for about ten minute when I heard the most senstational and wrenching sound I'd ever heard. At first I didn't know what it was. I felt as if my brain had twisted a bit in my head and that everything around me was just a little bit... off.
In almost the same instant my bleary brain made the connection. It was wailing. My childhood friend who had played basketball at the church every night of the summer; had gone fishing with me; sat through countless bible studies; had fought with my brother and then made up with my brother; who had worked alongside us in ministry as a grown man; who had come from hellish beginnings to beautiful life in Christ was wailing. It was the moment he lost his son to childhood cancer. And we all wept while he cried.
to be continued
I think I'll hop off the previous train of thought and reach for another. I have little doubt they'll intersect somewhere down the line. (train metaphor anyone?)
In my previous post, which a lot of people read, I talked about the loss of my friend, Tom. My friend's untimely (to me and most everyone else) death has not been easy to sleep on. Or to be awake with, now that I think about it. It is not at all that I am unfamiliar with death. I have been present with a large number of people who have lost loved ones. I have been present with a fair number of people as they made the journey to the other side. Some of those people, in both the former and the latter, have been my own loved ones. In each case I have felt that I was intruding.
For example; I once waited outside a hospital room with a dozen other friends. Inside the room was our childhood friend with his wife and 10 year old son. His beautiful boy was battling leukemia. Just that morning we had gathered by his bedside and held hands to pray. A suitable donor match for a marrow transplant had been found and was ready to proceed that day. But our young friend had developed a fever and this stopped the whole process. Months of waiting and planning for this day had been ground to a halt by some insipid little infection somewhere in his already struggling body.
So we gathered to pray. We were earnest. We were sincere. There was weeping and there was laughter as we considered what God could do. I remember being pissed off at one person who was there. I didn't even know who he was, and I don't think the family was familiar with him either. He had attached himself to some good people in our church and had convinced them he was a person of great faith. Someone had thought it a good idea to ask him to come to pray. He prayed long and loudly. He proclaimed that the boy was already healed.
(Later, he was found to be a business fraud, a liar and a cheat. So... not so different than me, I suppose. Or than all of us in some way or another.)
I was angry because he kept touching the boy's forehead like a saliva spitting "faith healer" I once met. He shouted at the demon of cancer, growled at the spirit of fever and laughed at the specter of death. I wanted to punch him in the mouth to make him shutup. Partly because I could see that he was hurting this boy everytime he touched him. Sometimes people who are very ill have such heightened sense of touch that the smallest contact can be painful. I've made this mistake twice and I wish I could take them both back. It's a natural response on our part to want to comfort, but at certain times our touch may not be comforting at all.
However, I'm aware that I was angry because, whether he was a charlatan or not, he was expressing an idea of faith that I did not possess at that moment. While we stood together and prayed for healing, begged for a miracle I was like a man split right down the middle. Part of me wanted to believe that healing would come and part of me was sure the boy was going to die.
Later, when I sat against the corridir wall outside his room with a dozen other people that's just what he did. He died. I had rushed back to the hospital after a church event of some kind. I was the music and youth pastor and I must have been at some bible study or choir practice. I had been back to the vigil for about ten minute when I heard the most senstational and wrenching sound I'd ever heard. At first I didn't know what it was. I felt as if my brain had twisted a bit in my head and that everything around me was just a little bit... off.
In almost the same instant my bleary brain made the connection. It was wailing. My childhood friend who had played basketball at the church every night of the summer; had gone fishing with me; sat through countless bible studies; had fought with my brother and then made up with my brother; who had worked alongside us in ministry as a grown man; who had come from hellish beginnings to beautiful life in Christ was wailing. It was the moment he lost his son to childhood cancer. And we all wept while he cried.
to be continued
posted by Anonymous at
10:57 PM
1 Comments:
You are being read! I sometimes fail to comment, though.
This was a painful one to read. I can't imagine how your friend must've felt.
I will be looking for the rest of the story for some resolution and how you reconciled the unanswered prayer in your mind. These topics always make me very uncomfortable.
If I were to be totally honest, I'd have to say that i don't believe anyone can be healed supernaturally. For me, admitting that God could heal someone is also admitting that he won't heal someone else, and the whole thing is too painful and confusing for me to go there.
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