What if I stumble? What if I fall?

Today's title is from one of my favorite D.C. Talk songs-

"What if I stumble, What if I fall -
What if I lose my step and I make fools of us all?
Will the love continue when my walk becomes a crawl?
What if I stumble - what if I fall?"

Several friends have asked me to keep writing this blog - I have to tell you that the reason I stopped is a bit uncomfortable, so I hope you'll understand. Shortly after my last post, Karen got very sick with stomach pain and fever - she wanted to wait it out overnight because she thought it might be the flu or food poisoning. At 6AM she woke me up and said she wanted to go to the hospital - and 8 hours later she was in surgery for an emergency appendectomy. So there we were again, back in the same hospital where we'd spent so much time over the past 7 years - and where our son died just one floor below in the oncology unit. People were great, but it was very hard - our pastor asked me how I was doing and I replied "Like Peter in the Garden - one way or another, tonight someone's going to loose an ear!" I was hurt, and angry at God for letting this happen to my wife after all we'd been through - and it was only 3 days before we were supposed to leave for a nice week at a house on the lake that we were going to share with some dear friends and their kids. (we did go, and it was a good week, even though my wife was hurting quite a bit and mostly had to sit in a chair and rest - on pain meds).

It's hard to say what happened to me exactly - it was a good week, and we mostly had fun - but when I got back, it was if satan just got a wicked, firm, deep foothold in my heart - and I just couldn't shake it. It was hard to talk about to anyone else, and I felt so cut-off and alienated from God that I couldn't get any comfort or relief in my soul. This is the part that is hard to talk about - and I hope you don't find this shocking or unsettling - but I've tried to be honest in this journal, and life isn't always bright and shiny....

At one point I was on the back deck - I love reading Job and reflecting on the story of his faith and the unseen battle that was swirling around him without his knowledge - but this time, I was pretty much at rock bottom. I looked up to heaven and (in so many unspoken words) told God I was through with this nonsense - that I was no saint, and there was no particular reason why I should be a 'target' - I was certainly no Job, and I wasn't particularly interested in 'maintaining my integrity'. I told Him, here's the deal - I'm throwing in with Job's wife - how about this - I will just curse you and die; perhaps then satan will just leave us alone - and in a childish way, I did - waiting for the lightning bolt that never came.

Pretty shockingly immature, eh? Well, as you can imagine, Job's wife was wrong about a lot of things - and He didn't strike me dead....but it's still pretty embarrassing to think about now - and frankly, a bit troubling. Although there's no comparison, I was struck by John McCain talking about breaking down under torture and giving a false 'confession' - and how he said everyone has a breaking point. Certainly, I found one of mine ..... not that it excuses me, but it is not a place I ever thought I'd find myself. And frankly, I now find it hard to forgive myself for that - even though I'm sure its yet another foothold satan has managed to find.

So there you have it - for all my encouraging words, I was laid low by the oldest trick in the book - I let my despair lead me to question God's love and care - and I doubted nearly everything I thought I knew about Him; even now, I'm still having a hard time making sense of things.

I thought this feeling of sorrow and despair over our son's death might get better with time, but it only seems to get worse - and all the more so when we try to clear out his things and make room to set up the room - the refuge - that he had always dreamed of having in our downstairs family room for visitors, strays, missionaries and others who needed a place of rest and comfort. Just picking up his things and holding them, trying to decide what to keep and what to give away is so incredibly hard and painful, it seems like we will never get it done.

Thankfully, a friend had a friend whose spouse is a Christian counselor - she moved things around in her already full schedule to accommodate us because of our friend's request - and now my wife and I have been doing grief counseling at her office once a week. It is helping - and while I have great respect for counselors and therapists, I can't imagine doing this with someone who was not a Christian and shared that foundation - so this is another small part of God's grace towards us in all of this.

As it says in 1 John 5:16 "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it."

I covet your prayers for me - and for both of us - and I promise to write more later