For those of you not connected to me through Facebook, David and I are thrilled to share that I'm pregnant! I'm currently 18 weeks along, with a due date on Aug 19. It's been really neat to share this experience together thus far. While it's my third child, it's his first biological child. So, as I tell him what to expect (as far as I know!), and he sees me go through various symptoms, I get to experience the process, in a way, for the first time through his eyes. It's pretty cool.
We're so thankful for the way in which the Lord has provided for us -- not only settling us in Chilliwack, which we're still very much enjoying -- but also how he has provided the father my children need, the husband I was praying for, and the family David longed for. No, of course things aren't perfect and we all deal with life's issues and our own sinfulness, but God's incredible redeeming power and provision are truly wondrous. And we watch in wonder as we get to see that every day.
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| Shortly after Daniel passed away, a friend gave me this orchid. Now after three years, it is finally blooming again. |
Now, you may be wondering why I included "false hope" in my blog title. To start, it's totally unrelated to our previous announcement. That is just the concept I've been contemplating for a very long time -- for at least three years actually! Let me bring you up to speed...
While I've been thinking on this theme in more generalities, and still processing things that happened during Daniel's illness, I haven't really been able to solidify in my mind how to share it with you. And even now, I'm sure I am liable to be unclear. But I'll do my best, so here goes.
What helped me understand what I wanted to say is a conversation I had about a month ago with a dear man from my church (incidentally, he had been reading my blog several years ago but didn't know me, and he never thought he would actually meet me.). His wife is dying from pancreatic cancer. I hadn't gotten a chance to get to know them before that previous Sunday, and I shared with his wife about my story with Daniel's cancer. So her husband wanted to talk with me too.
We had a wonderfully uplifting conversation, especially considering what he was currently going through, supporting his beloved wife. While much of the conversation revolved around the more practical aspects of caring for his wife and navigating the medical landscape, one thing we discussed has stood out to me most -- something this couple has been faced with, and so were Daniel and I:
False hopes are all too common when we are suffering.
Perhaps you think this is quite an obvious observation given our fallen world. Perhaps. But what I've been reflecting on for the past three years off and on is where these false hopes came from and how subtle they sometimes were.
Let me share what some of those false hopes were, so that hopefully you will be better equipped to identify them in your own life, given whatever situation you're in.
False Hopes in the Medical World:
While our doctors were usually fairly guarded in their promises, sometimes the hope of healing was presented to us to drive us to make a certain decision. After the regular type of chemo wasn't working, our oncologist gave us an option to take part in an experimental study that may or may not have worked. Even the shred of hope she implied could easily have been enough to persuade us to just try it. God later gave us wisdom to not apply, as at least for Daniel's case, chemo was not a good option after he tried it for a few rounds and he felt it was killing him.
Our naturopath, however, was not so guarded. He presented his tinctures as near miracles and boldly claimed Daniel would be healed in five or six months! I'm sure it sounds preposterous to take that kind of claim seriously, and we did meet it with much skepticism. But if you haven't been in such a dire situation like lethal cancer, you may not realize that one can barely escape that desperation to find something to cling to to give you hope. The temptation is so incredibly strong. So while we didn't put much if any faith in his claim, it is something we had to fight.
The next false hope we faced might surprise you. I haven't mentioned it ever on this blog because, frankly, it's controversial and that's not what this blog is about. I will mention it now, however, only in the context of the essential facts.
Daniel took medical cannabis oil* for his pain, based on the recommendation and advising of our Christian doctor. The false hope was that we were to some degree hoping it would also fight the cancer and cure him. Why? Because it was actually working. At least until he had that hyper-calcemia crisis (caused directly by the cancer) at the end of August 2014 or so. He had been on the oil for about six weeks, and not only had it almost completely replaced his high doses of pain medications and fixed all of the side effects from them, but it also appeared to have gotten rid of the countless cancerous lesions the doctors found in his lungs in the PET scan in April, several months before. The new CT scan caused the doctor to officially report there were no more lesions and no other cancer other than the main tumor. And even the tongue cancer was receding, he was gaining his nerve movement back very slowly, and pieces of dead tumor were literally sloughing off before my eyes and the doctor's.
The very next day after all of this progress, Daniel nearly died from that missed pamidronate dose (totally unrelated to the cannabis oil). Because hyper-calcemia causes hallucinations, Daniel had to be physically restrained from pulling out his tracheotomy and suffocating. So, they had to sedate him for two weeks. During that time, he couldn't take the oil orally effectively, and that is when the tumor overtook our efforts to control it and it was too much for the oil to combat after that. Too little, too late essentially.
I tell you all of that to explain another temptation we faced to hope in something other than Christ. While we did acknowledge at the time through the whole process that it was up to God whether He allowed it to work, I know for myself (as I don't know Daniel's exact thoughts because he couldn't talk and never wrote about it) that I still struggled with truly trusting only God. Especially after seeing the evidence of it battling the cancer and the light in Daniel's eyes as he experienced it working, it was a source of false hope. Not because God can't use it to cure cancer, but because it can so easily tempt us to think we're in control and we can provide our own solution.
With any treatment for any disease, it is God and God alone Who determines its effectiveness.
Our job is to be diligent in making wise choices with the treatments that are available to us, leaving the result completely and truly up to God, even if it means accepting the very real possibility we or our loved one will die. We are to submit our wills to His.
False Hopes within the Church:
The other main source of false hope came from what one would think is an unexpected place -- the church. But, you may say, isn't that where our true source comes from? Not quite. Our hope is in Christ, the Author and Head of the church, not fallible human beings who make up its body. Big difference. I'd like to share a few stories of occasions when we were faced with false hopes by undoubtedly very well-meaning people.
An older lady who attended a Bible study I was in tentatively shared with me a word she believed she had received from the Lord. A few months into Daniel's illness when it was becoming clear how serious it was, she said that as she was reading John 11, the account of Lazarus, she said God pointed out the part when Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death..." and told her it applied to Daniel. She meant it to comfort and encourage me, I know that. But in treating the Bible this way, she utterly abused it, and I knew it right then. The Bible isn't something we use as a magical talisman, cherry-picking personal words that make us feel better. It is an improper hermeneutic to rip a portion of Scripture out of context and insist that it applies to you when a plain reading would show you it isn't. She equated her desire and wishful thinking as a word from God. We simply cannot do that and still be faithful to His Word.
Another well-meaning person from my old church texted me and asked my permission to go and pray for Daniel -- so that he could heal him. He said he "felt led" to do that so strongly, he was willing to drive over an hour to the hospital. While I didn't deny him his request, I also knew that there was something wrong with the way he was going about it. If you've read my blogs during that time, you'll know I was and still am fully aware that God can and does heal today. I asked for your prayers to that end. This person, however, gave me the impression that he was trusting more in himself than in God. Lacking a true attitude of humility, he inadvertently communicated false hope -- that his "word from God" was to be trusted more than God Himself.
Furthermore, a good friend of ours told us one day that a man he knew from somewhere in the States had said something quite peculiar to him. This man was apparently considered somewhat like a "prophet" and who received visions and words from God. He told our friend that he had had a dream in which a person with a tongue disease would be healed. But he didn't know anyone with such a rare disease. When our friend heard this, he told the "prophet" that he knew exactly who the dream was about. When he told us about this, he was excited and seemed to be putting his hope in this dream. Again, both people were extremely well-meaning, and our friend was (is) a godly man. But both he and his friend had a very erroneous view of God's revelation. The Bible claims of itself that it is sufficient for all of life and godliness (1 Tim. 3:15-17; Jude 1:3). Christ (the ultimate Author of the Bible) closed the New Testament canon in Rev. 22:18-19 by expressly warning us through John's pen to not add or take away from the revealed Word. Thus, we do not require any further special revelation to lead a God-honouring life. So, when someone claims they received a word from God or a vision or dream, it cannot be considered a new, special revelation from God and therefore does not hold any authority. We must measure any "truth" against the revealed Truth in the Bible. It is our sole standard.
Lastly, an acquaintance of mine implied another type of false hope in how she viewed the Bible. One day from his hospital bed, Daniel shared a verse on Facebook that he was taking comfort in:
Psalm 73:26 -- "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is
the strength of my heart and my portion forever."
This lady commented back, taking offense it seemed at Daniel's sharing of this. She exclaimed that he mustn't even admit to the possibility of his heart and flesh failing -- that he needed to declare himself healed, claim his healing, and it would be so! The implication is that if you spoke negatively about your situation, then you would reap suffering and not healing. This is the word of faith heresy, the Christian version of "The Secret," if you remember that awful book. It is not a Christian view of the Bible but a man-worshipping scam. It basically implies that God is our servant and we are in control. If we just say the right things, then we have the power to manipulate God to do what we want. The false hope, of course, is that you're in charge of your destiny. The flip-side is that if you're suffering it's all your fault because you aren't exercising your power to decree and declare prosperity over your life. Do you see not only how heretical that view is, but also how downright offensive it is? Her comment was implying that his suffering was all his fault -- that isn't something she would admit to, but it is the natural conclusion, nonetheless. Daniel and I stared at her response in disbelief, wondering if she even realized the implications of her statement.
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One of the many ways suffering sanctifies believers in Christ is it weans you from trusting anything or anyone else instead of Jesus. This is what I saw in my own life, and it surprised me. I thought I was a Christian who trusted God fairly thoroughly, but I was utterly humbled during that time (and it's still an ongoing process today). By God's grace, He allowed me to see what and whom I was relying upon instead of Him, as well as the false hopes with which others were trying to comfort us. The process of submitting our wills to God's will is a life-long process, but one that is vital to our maturing in our faith and walk with the Lord.
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*A clarification of the medical cannabis Daniel was taking: with the large of amounts of misinformation and stigma associated with cannabis, I thought it would be wise to just mention a few things. After our doctor suggested Daniel start taking the oil -- a tar-like concentrate (not smoking it, because that's not a wise way of administering the medicine), I did a huge amount of research on it to become comfortable with the idea. Our doctor advised us, sent us to a reputable source that treated it like medicine, and we were very diligent in administering it. When used for pain and other research-based treatments, it can be very effective. The recreational use of cannabis in any form is utterly foolish and ill-advised, and adds a shameful stigma to an otherwise helpful plant God has created when it is treated as a medicine with wisdom and knowledge.
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