Dear Church Family

I’m sitting here today, 2,000 miles away from my youngest daughter, 23 years old, one year out of college, beautiful, intelligent, pursuing her first career-job on her own, as an investigator in the State Attorney General’s Office (State of Ohio). We recently visited her lovely private office with leather and walnut furniture, heard about the cases she has been investigating, and were duly impressed.

Today, I am bombarded with scenarios and bits of information… a routine physical examination; a lump found in a lymph gland; a needle biopsy in which the doctor slipped and pierced the brachial nerve, sending her into convulsions; a Catscan; and NOW the call for surgery which could result in a diagnosis of lymphoma cancer or who knows what else?

Does this test my faith? Yes. I find myself questioning the rationale in praying for MY desired outcome when I recognize my incomplete knowledge of God’s Will, and yet find myself calling my mother in California to ask her to pray for her granddaughter. I resist

publicly asking for the congregation’s prayers on Sunday, yet come home to pray in private for Beth’s healing, and for the ability to let go and trust the process, no matter what the outcome. I yearn to give Beth assurances on the phone, but due to the honest relationship that we have already established, we find ourselves discussing those who have “had the faith”, and yet died.

My struggle now is not with philosophical concepts, but with my longing to know, my need for answers… flooded with tears and overwhelmed with fears. How is it different for those who believe? Or is it?

Easy answers fade and platitudes have a hollow ring when you are dealing with your own. Is there a faith that is strong enough to survive, no matter what the outcome of the surgery, the tests, the prognosis?

If not, then what?

If so, what?

I pray for the faith to believe…

And for sustenance in my unbelief.

With love, Joyce