My Son's Leukemia and Checking out on God

I realize that I haven’t posted in a while, and I doubt this fact impacts too many people.  I do occasionally have folks ask, “What happened?  Why did you go silent?”  The truth is, when my son Bradley relapsed in his leukemia back in October of 2013, it rocked my world.  I tried to stay engaged with broader things around me for a while, but I basically just lost my voice as I turned more inward.  I no longer had anything to say.

I documented our original journey with Brad’s leukemia through a facebook group and later through facebook notes as literally tens of thousands of you prayed for Brad.  We were so thankful to get through his treatment in January of 2013 that we didn’t know what to do!  Life finally returned to normal with Brad starting his senior year of high school cancer-free.  I was still a bit uneasy, knowing cancer can be tenacious, but I had confidence from seeing how God had intervened in so many ways.

Things changed in September of 2013 when Brad began to experience some blurriness in his peripheral vision.  From a simple optometrist’s visit, we entered a whirlwind of testing that resulted in the diagnosis that Brad’s leukemia had returned in the fluid of his spinal column and brain.  We were devastated.  After all Brad had been through, and as clearly as we’d seen God move, we were now starting over with even worse odds.  We were facing another two and a half years of chemotherapy. The first eighteen months was going to be like nothing Brad had experienced so far – all beginning smack in the middle of his senior year.

As treatment progressed, it became clear that Brad (who still managed to graduate Valedictorian of his class and earn National Merit Scholar status) would not be able to start college as planned.  We have lived through the pain of the last year-and-a-half helplessly watching as Brad’s plans and dreams went on hold – if they were ever to be realized at all.  We experienced the repeated life-threatening septic infections when the chemo drove his immunity down to nothing.  I have personally spent thirty nights or so in the hospital since Brad’s relapse, as he has been admitted for more than sixty days during this time.  We now experientially understand why only fifty percent of patients survive this phase of relapse treatment.

I never lost faith in God during this time.  I never got angry with God.  I never lost hope for Brad’s healing.    I was, however, horribly disappointed that Brad was having to go through this again.  I knew in my head that God works things according to his will and purposes - that he was concerned and had a plan through all of this.  But my heart grew weary of the fog of God’s intentions, and I came to a point where I could no longer bear to ask for healing only to be denied again.

I lost sight of all the ways God had shown his love to us.  At times, I failed to practice the very thing I teach about – falling back on God’s past faithfulness when the present seems dark.  I think this is a common failure for many of us when we face ongoing trials.  I have come to understand that God even uses these times of spiritual weariness to grow us.  At one particularly low point, God powerfully used others to remind me of all the ways he has worked in our lives.  I began to once again draw peace from the fact that God was working all along.

Skeptics may view me as simple-minded and blinded by a faith of indoctrination to see the God I’ve been trained to see.  Some will say, “Your son has leukemia for crying out loud – where is God in that?  How can you believe in a God who would allow (or worse yet cause) such a thing for an innocent young man?”  Many people struggle to understand how a good God can allow evil and pain in his world.  Human suffering and the goodness of God are not mutually exclusive.  God can and does use very difficult pain to show himself to us.  He has once again done it for me.

I use this occasion – the completion of Phase 1 of Brad’s relapse treatment protocol – as the catalyst to write this post.  For the first time since Brad was diagnosed, he has been labeled as “low risk” of relapse.  He still has some radiation and another year of maintenance chemo to go, but things look good.  Regardless, we are still thankful for God’s mercy in our lives.  We are thankful that he allows us to know him through faith and forgiveness in Christ, and we look forward to the days ahead.