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11/08/2016

The House of Mourning

I went on a date with the hubs Sunday night to watch Doctor Strange. I am a huge Marvel fan, and an even bigger Benedict Cumberbatch fan, so I was really excited about the merge of both. I was not expecting to leave the movie theater with a lesson on life and death. I mean, it's a Marvel movie, for crying out loud. Most people will overlook the lesson or not grasp it completely, but my current situation makes me more attune with these themes.
Today I am specially sensitive to these topics. Today I found out the little four year old girl I've been desperately praying for, Kinsley, is probably not going to survive her liver cancer. The third and last chemotherapy had no effect on her tumor, and she can no longer receive radiotherapy.
I had not cried for her thoroughly until I was in the radiation machine getting my fifth session. I remembered her mom posting how scared Kinsley felt all alone in the radiation machine that she needed to be sedated. This time around, her cancer had spread to her lungs and sedation was not an option. She was so brave learning to stay still alone in there at such a young age. I should know, I am aware of how Emmalee would act having to be left alone and immobile in such a position and place. Radiation greatly reduced her tumor between her lung and heart making her heart rate and breathing normal again allowing her to sleep. This will allow her to make a make-a-wish trip feeling strong and healthy. She will recover from the side effects of her treatment before her tumors overtake her health and later her life.
I tried not to move during my session while the tears made my eyes itch and my breathing became uneven. I sobbed soft "please Jesus, in your name, please" as I prayed for her cancer cells to just die. It happens. Cancer cells have figure out a way to outlive cellular expiration, but there have been cases where the cell just autodestroys. Doctors can't explain those cases. I thought of writing to her parents asking if they could do immunotherapy. Then I thought of my own cancer and how everyone keeps suggesting treatments like I haven't researched everything possible I can do. These parents most definitely have researched everything they can do to try to save their baby girl.
"Why? She is just 4."
I couldn't help it. I questioned.
I recently learned from my study of the book of Job that Job questioned God and even after that God affirms that Job did not sin.
I found it strange finding my mind going back to Doctor Strange. (Ha! strange, Strange)
Spoiler alert! Don't keep reading if you haven't watched the movie and don't wish to know anything that happens.

Here is Team Kinsley's photo. 
The Ancient One has taught Doctor Strange many lessons on the multiverse, astral projection, teleportation, opening portals, using the force and what-not. He reads a whole library on mysticism that would be hard to understand for pretty much everyone. At the end, the Ancient One explains the arrogant and brilliant Doctor Strange he has yet to learn the most important and simplest lesson of them all:
"It is not about you."

Life on this Earth is not about us.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
It probably means something different to all of us.
I do know one thing: it is true.
And she ties it with the reality that is everyone's inevitable end: we all die.
And somehow, she asserts this is what gives meaning to life.
I'll come back to this.

Everyone likes to think of destiny when thinking of finding their spouse or making that dream trip.
However the truth is we are destined to die.
Not only are we destined to die, but the day has been set.
The Bible says our days are numbered.
How can death give us meaning?
And how can we make this inevitable event a part of our life?
This brings me to the book of Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 7
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
...
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider this: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.

I often wondered about this passage.
How can it be better to be in the house of mourning? 
We have been thoroughly studying the gospel of John in our home church,
I've read the words "Whatever you ask in my name you will receive" many times. 
My father-in-law reminds us that verse has second part "if we ask according to His will."
I pulled a Gideon on God. 
I came to my room and asked God to prove Himself to me, prove that verse is true and we shall receive what we ask in His name.
I prayed, asked, begged with all my heart "In Jesus' name, give Kinsley a miracle. Make this last chemo work."
How could this not be in His will?
I thanked Him because it seemed He had answered. 
And now it turns out He hadn't. 
Only radiotherapy worked and thus only her tumors on the left shrunk while the tumors on the right side grew. Now she has reached the permitted amount of radiotherapy and has been sent home to live peacefully until her tumors grow again. 
Why? How is this better than the house of mirth?

I go to the only answer I have for everything that happens; I give thanks. 
Gratitude and peace are not exempt from tears. 
I think of Giana and Bailey, who are forever with me and a part of my heart. 
They wouldn't be had they not been called home. 
They changed me. Their lives changed mine forever. 
Thousand miles apart and never having met, two girls changed my life for the better. 
They make me appreciate each day, pray with passion, remember them with joy, stay in awe of how they were able to touch my life and the repercussions they will have on those that surround me, on how I view and treat my daughters and my husband.
I was in their house of mourning and took them with me forever. 
I think of my own journey. 
It astounds me that so many women are praying for me passionately never having met me and how many are touched by my story transforming their own, making us one. 
That is the way death has meaning. 
It joins us. 
It is part of all of us. 

My favorite verses from John this time around were these:

John 17
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one,Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

It makes me sick to my stomach how this is not true amongst my brothers and sisters in Christ.
I'm sick of seeing the division between us.
These are from Great Commission Church, these are from Impacto Church. 
These are from Hernan, and these are from Home church.
These celebrate Halloween, these are against tattoos and dating. 
Ugh, it's revolting. 
I want to see unity in the body of Christ. 
I love that Christ has merged my heart with Giana and her dad, Bailey, and now Kinsley and her aunt and the many ladies in my Mundane Faithfulness Community. 
There is so much mourning in that community I sometimes can't bare it. 
My pain is but drop in some of their never ending oceans. 
My heart breaks so many times praying for these women I will probably never meet. 
Yet God has joined us because of our pain and suffering. 
He has made us part of each other because our suffering has opened our hearts to so much compassion. 
I am grateful Kinsley is feeling better and will have a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas. 
I will pray for her and believe for her the same way I have decided to pray and believe for myself: I will pray and beg and cry out to the Lord for healing and a miracle and believe He is able and will answer until the day comes when or if He says no and calls us home. 
I am so glad her life can have so much meaning and worldwide impact even though she is just four. 
Our days were numbered. 
Some have less days and are leaving a greater footprint on this earth than some who live to old age. 
Some had purpose and gave God glory with their little numbers than others did in a whole lifetime. 
What are my numbered days on earth compared to eternity?
I leave you with this poem;

I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And not a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
Robert Browning Hamilton