Season of Blessing (33 page)

C
HAPTER

Sixty-One

The meteor
shower that only occurred every thirtyfive years or so was scheduled to happen at the end of May. Brenda suspended school that day and let the kids sleep late, so they could stay up late enough to see the heavenly display. At ten o'clock they took blankets outside and went up to Lookout Point at the peak of Bright Mountain.

Stars shot across the sky, delighting the children as they lay on their backs, clapping and cheering for each burst of light.

Brenda lay next to David, praying that the beauty and majesty of the shower would cause him to acknowledge his Creator. But he had made his salvation so complicated that the doorway was not only narrow, as Jesus had warned, but it seemed locked and bolted shut.

Still, she prayed and hoped. With every star that flew across the sky, she asked the Lord to let this miracle be the one that opened David's eyes.

“Isn't God cool?” Joseph asked, his head pillowed on David's chest.

Brenda laughed. “Very cool.”

David's silence became his answer, but Joseph didn't let it lie.

“Dad, how could you not believe in God after you've seen this? It's just so obvious. All this stuff didn't happen by accident.”

David expelled a long sigh. “I'm just not the kind of person who can have faith in what I don't see, Joseph.”

Joseph sat up. “But you did just see it. It would take more faith
not
to believe than it does to believe.”

David didn't answer.

“Wish we could have videotaped this,” Daniel said from his place on the ground. “This is the most awesome thing I've ever seen.”

David nodded. “It is amazing.”

They lay quietly for a moment, listening to the music of the wind as it scored the spectacular showing in the sky. After a moment, Leah sat up and looked at her mother.

“Mom, is Miss Sylvia going to die?”

Brenda shivered. Forgetting the display overhead, she got up and went to snuggle between her twin daughters. “I don't think so, sweetie, but we're not sure yet.”

“Do you think she's scared?” Rachel asked.

“Nope,” Joseph said. “Not Miss Sylvia. She's not scared.”

“How do you know?” Daniel asked. “Did she tell you that?”

“She didn't have to,” Joseph said. “I just know, 'cause I was there once. How can you be scared when you know you're going to be with Jesus?”

Brenda met David's eyes, but he looked away. He slid his arm around his youngest son's shoulders and pulled him close. Once again she said a prayer for her husband to believe.

C
HAPTER

Sixty-Two

When Annie
called Sylvia to ask if she and Josh could come over to ride the horse, Sylvia welcomed the opportunity to spend time with the two kids she had chosen for each other. The horse needed riding, but her back ached too badly to ride today.

She met them out at the barn that afternoon and helped them saddle her and get her ready to ride. Josh had ridden for most of his life, so it all came easily to him.

They rode double on the horse, and headed off to the pasture beyond the trees. Sylvia sat on her swing and watched, smiling at how well things were working with them. She thought of herself and Harry, when they had first fallen in love. Every touch, every look, every smile had carried special significance. In so many ways, that hadn't changed today.

She thought of the way Harry had stood beside her during this illness, even though his own dreams had been interrupted. But she knew he would have it no other way. How blessed she was to have him.

Lord, whether it's Josh or someone else, bring Annie a soul mate like that. Someone to stand by her for her whole life. Someone like Harry
.

She heard footsteps and turned to see Cathy coming toward her. “Hi,” Cathy said.

“Hi yourself.”

She sat down next to Sylvia, making the chains creak. “How you feeling?”

“Not bad.”

Cathy got quiet. Sylvia knew she was keeping a respectful distance from the subject of Sylvia's cancer. It was clear that she tried hard to let Sylvia set the parameters of their conversations.

“Looks like Josh and Annie are getting along really well,” Sylvia said.

Cathy nodded. “Yeah. They don't need much help from us.”

“I just think they'd be a wonderful couple.”

“Well, don't rush them. You know Annie's still young.”

“I know,” Sylvia said, “but she's a precious young woman and she deserves the best.”

She looked at Cathy and saw tears misting her eyes. “You know, there was a time when I didn't hold out much hope for Annie being a spiritual person.”

“I know that. But God surprised you, didn't he?”

“Yes, he did.”

“That's the thing with God. He always has surprises for us. He has so many plans and so many layers, and they're so rich in our lives…if we just had enough faith to trust in them.” She'd said too much, she thought, and now they were back on the subject of her cancer. She wished she'd kept that thought to herself.

“You have enough faith, Sylvia.”

Sylvia frowned into the wind. “I don't know if I do or not. People tell me I'm brave, that they admire me for such a valiant effort, but the fact is, I don't have any choice. What do they think I'm going to do, just roll over and die?”

The wind was the only answer. It whispered through their hair and hung between them. Cathy looked down at her knees. “You're going to beat this, Sylvia. I know you are. So many people are praying for you.”

“I know they're praying, but I'm not sure if they should be praying for healing.”

“Why not?” Cathy asked. “Why would we pray for anything else?”

“Because it may not be God's will. He may have a whole different plan. And, you know, just because he takes one life and leaves another doesn't mean that one person is blessed over another, or that one person's prayers are more important to God. He's just got these ways that are so mysterious. Who can understand them?”

Her voice broke off and she looked up at the leaves over her head, focused on them as if she might find some answer there. “I just want to be faithful,” she went on. “When I get to heaven, whenever that day may be, I want to hear those words.”

Cathy smiled. She knew what those words were. “ ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.' You'll hear them, Sylvia. I know you will.”

“The thing is, it's easy to stop running the race. Sometimes I feel like just resting on the fact that I worked in Nicaragua, that I helped a lot of people there. I feel like if I just curl up in a closet somewhere, never to be heard from again, it won't really matter. But that's not what the Bible teaches, is it?”

Cathy just looked at her.

“The Bible teaches that we should run the race until the end. And I'm not at the end yet.”

Tears stung Cathy's eyes. She laid her head on Sylvia's shoulder. “Sylvia, how could you ever doubt that God is pleased with you?”

“Because I have all these conflicting emotions raging through my heart, and I don't feel very holy sometimes. I'm not the way I thought I would be if I ever faced a crisis like this.”

“God asks us to be holy,” Cathy said. “He doesn't ask us to be superhuman. Within your humanity, I think you're as holy as you can be. Don't forget that even Jesus prayed that the cup would be taken from him.”

Sylvia sat there for a moment, taking that in. “He did, didn't he?”

“Of course he did. He wept and he railed and he sweat great drops of blood.”

“I understand that,” Sylvia said. “I've been there myself.”

“If you're supposed to take this with all the stoicism of a statue, then why would God let us see the Gethsemane Jesus?”

Sylvia nodded as that truth became clear to her. “I guess he did it for me. Seems like I've been going through my Gethsemane for an awfully long time. Maybe I'll eventually come out on the other side and be able to do whatever it is God has for me to do.”

Even if it's to die
.

C
HAPTER

Sixty-Three

Sylvia's Gethsemane
didn't end for several weeks. During her times of serving others she managed to smile and laugh and get out of herself and forget those anguished pleas she sent up to heaven at night when she faced her illness head-on. But the pain intensifying in her back and hip told her the hormones weren't working. And when she started feeling pain where she knew her liver to be, fear overtook her again.

For several days she failed to tell anyone about it because she didn't want to be an alarmist. She had learned that when dealing with cancer, every pain had significance. If she got a headache, she assumed that the cancer had spread to her brain. If her wrist ached, she was certain it had gotten into that part of her bone. If her blood sugar was off, she was sure that it had advanced to her pancreas.

But finally when the pain grew more intense, she decided it was best to tell Harry. Harry didn't even respond. He went straight to the telephone and started to dial.

“Who are you calling?” she asked.

“I'm calling Dr. Thibodeaux.”

“It's night,” she said. “He's not at his office.”

“I'm calling him at home.”

“But, Harry, do you think it's anything?”

“It's probably not,” he said, “but there's no use taking any chances. I wish you'd told me the minute you started feeling it.”

She sat listening as he told the doctor what she felt, and the oncologist told them to be at his office first thing the next morning.

She went through another round of CT scans and blood tests, then endured another season of waiting. Her Gethsemane continued.

They returned to the doctor's office the next day to get the results. Sick of the place, she wished she could change the curtains and reorganize the furniture. Better yet, she wished the doctor would meet her and Harry in a restaurant that was crowded and bustling with activity and life, instead of in these offices full of other cancer patients waiting for bad news.

Dr. Thibodeaux had that look on his face again, the one that made her want to put her hands over her ears. “It's spread to your liver,” he said.

Sylvia had expected crushing despair, but instead she just felt numb. The pain in her back had already convinced her that the treatment strategy was failing. The doctor was only confirming it.

He looked up at her, his eyes tired. She wondered if he'd been at the hospital late last night or early today. Oncologists carried such burdens. For the first time, she felt sorry for him.

“I'm so sorry, Sylvia,” he said, “but this means that we have to change our approach. We have to get more aggressive.”

Sylvia swallowed. “That would be because the liver
is
a vital organ as opposed to the skeleton. Am I right?”

“That's right.”

She looked at Harry. The blood seemed to have drained from his face.

She forced herself to speak. “But what does more aggressive therapy mean? Chemo again?”

The truth was, more chemo was one of her greatest fears. Her dark night of suffering had finally come to an end. The thought of reentering it was more than she could bear.

“Yes.” His voice was low, steady. She wondered how often each day he had to deliver this kind of news. “We'll have to put you on a more aggressive chemo this time,” he said, “and you'll have to have tests after every three cycles. If it's not working, then we'll change the drug.”

There it was, the crushing despair…the feeling that she had been kicked in the kidney.

“How long will you do this?” Harry asked.

The doctor cleared his throat, shifted in his chair. He met Harry's eyes across the table. “This time the treatment has to last until the cancer is gone.”

She stared at him for a moment, dissecting his words. “You mean I could be on chemotherapy for another six months or a year…or two years?”

“We'll fight it as long as we have to.”

She looked at Harry. His head was slumped down, and he stared at his feet. “You mean I could be on it until the day I die?”

“I'm not going to lie to you,” the doctor said. “Liver cancer can be fatal. When the disease has metastasized this much, we're dealing with a lot bigger challenge than we've had before.”

Harry took her hand. His was as cold as hers. Her breath was shallow, inadequate.
Breathe
, she told herself.
Just breathe
.

“Okay,” she said. “Given this new development, what are my chances?”

He shook his head. “You know I don't do percentages, Sylvia. There's no point in that.”

Her voice got louder. “But how many people die when they have what I have?”

“Some of them,” he said. “But some of them live. And you believe in miracles, don't you?”

“Are you telling me it's going to take a
miracle
to pull me through this?”

His eyes looked almost as forlorn as Harry's. “A miracle would help,” he said. “I'm telling you that we have good drugs and they work. It's going to be a struggle, but you're strong enough to take it. I know you are.”

It sounded hopeful, even gentle, but Sylvia knew he'd just given her a death sentence.

Harry reached for her, but she sat stiff, unable to respond. “Harry, I don't know if I can go through with this.”

“You can. Honey, you can. I'll help you.”

She started to cry, and turned back to the doctor. “Will my hair fall out again?”

The doctor turned his compassionate eyes to her. “Probably. The side effects might be worse than they were before, but it's the best treatment we have. And, Sylvia, it often does work.”

She wiped her nose and got up, looking helplessly for a Kleenex. Why didn't he have a Kleenex? “How long?” Sylvia asked. “How long do I have? I want to know.”

He shook his head again. “I don't do that, Sylvia. I'm not going to tell you you have six months or a year.”

“Six months or a year?” she asked. “Is that what I have?”

“I don't
know
what you have. You might have twenty years.”

“Worst-case scenario?” she said. “If the chemo doesn't stop this cancer and it keeps spreading at the rate it has been, how long do I have to live?” She leaned over his desk, her hands balled into fists. “I need to know!”

He didn't answer, so finally, she turned and headed for the door.

“Sylvia, we still need to talk.”

Sylvia turned back to the doctor. “Set everything up with Harry. I have to get out of here.”

Then she ran up the hall, past the bookkeeper, out into the waiting room. She hurried out to the car and got in, and screamed out her rage, grief, and anguish. She could have torn the steering wheel off and slammed it through the windshield, broken glass all the way around, started the car and rammed it into a wall.

But she sat in the passenger seat, doubled over with her hands over her face…

My children
, she thought.
How will I tell my children?

It would shake their faith. It would shake everyone's faith. So many were praying for her. They all believed she would be healed. Why would God let them all down?

She had said it was a gift—this cancer, this archenemy that occupied her body. She had even believed it, when chemo was a temporary torture and the cancer hadn't found another home in her body.

But now…

The peace and joy she had once known had been banished, and stark fear took its place.

Where are you, God? Where's the victory in this?

She heard Harry at the car door and sat up, wiped her face. The sobs kept hiccuping from her throat, but she tried to get control.

He got in with several papers and the appointment for her first chemo treatment, twisted, and set them on the backseat. He looked at her, assessing her condition. She patted his hand, reassuring him that she had not completely fallen apart. But Harry looked old, frail…

They were quiet as they rode home, and when they were back in their driveway, Sylvia got out of the car. “I have to go ride.”

She started around the house and headed for the barn. Harry followed her. “Sylvia.”

“You don't have to come with me,” she called. “I can do this by myself. I need to be alone.”

“But I don't!” Harry cried. “I don't want to be alone. I want to be with you!”

He followed her into the dark stable, and she opened her horse's stall. Going in, she slid down the wall onto the hay and covered her face with both hands. The horse dipped his head and nudged her.

“I won't survive the treatments, Harry,” she cried. “They'll kill me faster than the cancer. If I'm going to die, I want to do it with dignity, not with nausea and fatigue and sores and a bald head and yellow skin and all my joints aching like I'm a ninety-year-old woman.”

Harry sat down next to her in the hay. “Honey, I know it's a lot to ask. I know you don't want to go through this again, and right now you probably don't even feel that bad, just a little pain in your side and back. But, honey, that pain is your enemy, and it's
my
enemy, and I want you to live. I want you to do the chemo because there's a chance that you'll beat it. I don't think God's finished with you yet. There's still hope. I haven't ever asked you for much, have I?”

She shook her head. “No, not much. The last time you asked for something really important, you wanted me to leave all my memories behind and traipse off to Nicaragua to save the world.”

“And you did, valiantly. You gave it all up, and the next thing I knew you were more passionate about doing our work there than I was. And there's so much more for us to do yet. I want us to go back to León together. I want us to see the children again. I want to take care of those people who depend on me,” he said, “but I can't do it without you. I need for you to fight. I need for you to go through this chemo. I need for you to suffer a little longer just for hope of the good outcome. Please, Sylvia. Don't reject the chemo. I'm begging you.”

Her face softened as she looked at her husband and realized this was the most important request he had ever made of her, even more important than forsaking everything and heading off to the mission field. This was life or death. Her life. Her death. And she owed it to Harry to fight.

She reached for him and pulled him against her, stroked the back of his head and breathed in the scent of him. She loved him so dearly. She would do anything for him. Even this.

Finally she pulled back and looked into his face. “All right,” she said. “I'll give it the fight of my life. For you. And for whatever fruit is left in me to bear.”

That night she fell exhausted into bed and drifted into a shallow sleep. Harry lay next to her for a long time, but sleep didn't come for him. Finally, he slipped out of bed, quietly got on his clothes, and headed out to the barn. Once there, he got down on his knees, face to the ground.

“Please don't take her,” he cried to God. “I've never asked you that much before. I've been very accepting of the things you've wanted for us. I've given you our lives and I've been obedient, and so has she. I'm begging you now, Lord, please don't take her. She's my helpmeet, my soul mate. You chose her for me. I'm begging you, Lord. I know that death has to come at some point in our lives, but not now. Please not now. Please, God, answer this prayer. Give us a miracle. Save her life.”