Siding With the Underdog

Michelle sent me a three word email today.


"Liver is worse".
Just so we're all up to speed and on the same page:

1. Shane got diagnosed with Colon Cancer that is metastatic and has spread to his liver.
2. Shane needed chemotherapy right away if he was to have any chance of prolonging his life
3. After a single dose of chemo his colon ruptured
4. Shane went into emergency surgery to have a portion of his colon removed.
5. Shane had to stop taking the chemo because it will stop the surgery from healing.
6. Shane needs to eat to get nutrition but his digestive system is broken
7. Shane can't heal without nutrition.
8. Shane can't be fed interveinously because his liver would have to process the nutrition (did we mention his liver is sick from the cancer?)
9. If they don't restart the chemo the cancer will destroy his liver.
10. They can't restart the chemo until he heals.
11.  Continue this list from #6 above...

Perhaps the surgery saved him from the cancer (time will tell).  It has occured to me that he won't die of cancer if he starves to death first.

In my last post (Vaccine?) I said that lots of people try to encourage me by telling me God has promised he will never give us more than we can handle.


I may have believed that before but lately it has seemed to me that such a statement is complete crap. Finally, I went bible mining to find the context of such a thing.

What I found was that I didn't find it. I found a place in first Corinthians 10 where we are told God doesn't do entrapment, i.e. we can handle any temptations that come along (1 Corithians 10:13 specifically) but that passage doesn't speak to my ability to handle this mess my little boy is suffering through.

My little daughter is really struggling with this thing and it might be so big that she can't handle it. I'm clear in my belief that Michelle can't handle it. For me, I think I got a vaccine that leaves me better prepared but I am in no way under the illusion that I can handle this thing either.

Oddly though, this dark place isn't where the three word email took me. 

It took me to Judges 6 and 7 where Isreal was getting beat up over and over by a kingdom called Midian.  God asked a guy named Gideon to be the vessel to solve the problem.  Gideon recruited 33,000 guys to help fight the battle but God, apparently thinking the odds were not impossible enough, told him to let everyone who was afraid of the fight to leave. 

22,000 folks booked and Gideon had 10,000 left.  God still didn't like the odds and put together another test (based on how the remaining folks drink water) and whittled Gideon's fighting force down to 300.

Spoiler Alert - If you are going to read the book or see the movie you might want to skip this next paragraph:

Long story short, after trimming Gideon's fighting force down to 9/10th of 1 percent of what it was, God give Isreal the victory in the fight.

I wonder if there was a point in time when Gideon had something he couldn't handle on his hands?

The email took me to 1 Kings 18:25 where this guy named Elijah was in a "my God's better than your God" kind of a thing with the servants of a false God called Baal.  The priests of Baal were trying to get their God to accept a sacrafice without their help (they failed miserably). 

Anyway, Elijah and his helper dudes put some wood out and prepared an ox to be sacraficed to our God (the one I'm pleading with regarding my little guy).  Then he had his helpers pour four pitchers of water on the wood, then four more, then four more.  Then when the wood was so wet that it flowed out of the alter and even filled a trench around the alter, he prayed for God to accept the offering.

Fire came down from heaven and consumed the offering...and the wood...and the water in the trench...and even the rocks.

I wonder if, after everything was soaked but before the fire came down from heaven, Elijah could handle that task?

Bottom line here is God has given me something I really can't handle but that works because although it's massive for me, it's tiny for a God who doesn't need good odds.

I can't handle it so I'm not even trying.

I accept the solution might be he makes the situation completely abysmal and impossible then goes "TaDa!" and Shane gets to see Devin play the mushroom in the 2nd grade play.

I also accept that God's answer might be "Hey, this really sucks for Shane so I'm going to bring him up here where things are pretty freakin cool" and if that's his answer I'm going to be glad for Shane just like I was when he got his NBA Championship ring because that second solution would be better for Shane than the ring was.  And I'll comfort his mother and I'll comfort his sister and we'll rebuild our lives just like the folks in Isreal had to rebuild the rock alter that God vaporized.

And if we're lucky we'll be like those guys, telling stories of how awsome this whole crazy thing was for Shane and how we can't wait for our turn to make our loved ones cry.