Pain and Promise Over and Over

I know that I've already shared that the pairing of pain and promise is very poignant to me in this season, but truthfully, each day is touched with pain and promise and I can't help but see all of it.

In cancer-land, you make friends just like you do in normal-land, only it's totally different.  Everyone you meet is a friend on some level because you share this deep understanding and empathy of the pain the other person is walking through.  You speak the same language and share the same secret fears.  With some people though, you will more deeply enter their story, get to know their family, get to know their pain and promise.  It's weird though, because even in those relationships, you enter into the most vulnerable part of their story first and the relationship builds out.  You know their cancer story before you know their last name, before you know what teams they cheer for, what they do for work, what their hobbies are, ect.  All the normal things that friendships are built on come after you've become cancer friends.  In our cancer-land relationships, we've connected with 3 other brain tumor families with different tumor types.  This week has been filled with much pain for our friends.  One family lost their son, Ben, this week and Noah's family is expecting their final good-bye to be any day.  Both families are believers, and so there is promise amidst their pain, but there is much pain.

Even in the pain for us, there's promise too.  Jonah is having his best days ever.  He is starting to communicate with a clear and consistent thumbs up/down, he's counting with his fingers and using them to tell people how old he is.  He is eating multiple bites of applesauce, growling, laughing, smiling and blowing kisses at cowie.  He's playing with cause & effect toys, helping to turn pages in books and trying to sit up.  Our days are filled with so much hope and promise right now.

People often wonder how an individual can have faith in God when bad things happen to them.  I know some people wonder how we can trust God in our circumstances.  If I wasn't in this situation, maybe I'd wonder the same thing.  Here it is though, God is God, unchanging.  When "the sun is shining down on me and the world is as it should be" (Matt Redman) it's pretty easy to trust in God.  When "the road is marked with suffering" it's harder to trust.  What changed though?  The weather, not God.  God doesn't change, our circumstances do.  If we only trust in God in "the land that is plentiful, where streams of abundance flow" do we really trust God, or do we just feel good about Him?  God is the same God, even in "the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness".  God is God in the pain and the promise and because of that I am forever changed.