August 23, 2023 - Coping

     I wrote this blog in my head while I was swimming last evening.
     I do two things while I am swimming.  I count the lengths.  You mean the laps?  No, I count the lengths.  88 sounds much better than 44.  Our above ground pool is 30’ long.  30 X 88 is 2640, a half a mile.
     I also do some thinking.
     As I was swimming, I thought a lot about the different ways that people handle life’s difficulties.  Each of us has our own way. 
     Some people isolate themselves, which I think is the worst way.  The enemy loves it when we are alone.
     I tend to internalize, which may be the second worst.  I have a feeling that part of my susceptibility to cancer is because I try to appear like I have things together, when at times I might be a mess.
     Teresa verbalizes.  Not necessarily only with me.  I think when she verbalizes it helps her deal with the reality.  She has a husband who has three different cancers.  And that’s not the only difficulty in her life.
     She verbalizes by texting and by talking on her phone.  She also verbalizes by being with others.
     I have told her that she has become a socialite the last few weeks.  Many of the days that she hasn’t been watching the grandkids, she has had lunch with someone.
     I’ve tried to analyze why she has chosen those with whom she has spent some time of late.
     I don’t think it is a conscious choice and I am not sure that it is even a subconscious thing.  But some of the people she has verbalized with are people who at some point in their lives have endured great heartaches.  They are people who understand pain.  And they would understand her pain.
     Yesterday she had lunch with a longtime friend.  I grew up with Kim in Cynthiana and Teresa got to know Kim and Will in Ashland when I was a youth pastor in the church where Will’s dad was the senior pastor.
     We moved to a church in Winchester, but we kept in touch.  While we were in Winchester we received the terrible news that their son, David, was diagnosed with a brain tumor on his first birthday.
     Not long after that we moved to Lexington to a third church.  Kim and Will moved to Lexington to get the best medical care for David.
     They attended the church I pastored.  We became close as we walked with them through the pain of dealing with a parent’s worst nightmare.
     Megan and David were only a month apart.  They had a relationship that is hard to explain, especially for three-year-olds.  David was way beyond his age in his faith.
     I have shared this story several times at funerals and likely will in the future, the Lord willing.   It’s a story that some of you have heard because I shared it when some parents were dealing with the loss of a child.
     It’s a story that is worth hearing more than once.  It’s also a story that I can’t tell, or even write, without the lump in my throat.
     The day that David was healed as we had prayed more times than we could ever count, we sat down with Caryn and Megan to tell them that David was now in heaven.
     Heaven is a difficult concept for adults, much less for an almost four-year-old.
     “Then where is David?” Megan asked.
     “Is he at home?”  “No, he isn’t at home.”
     “Is he at the hospital?"  “No, he isn’t at the hospital.”
     Thinking that heaven must have some relationship to the church, she asked, “Is he at church?”  “No, he isn’t at church.”
      Megan then said one of the most profound things I have ever heard from anyone, much less from a child her age.
     “But he is still in my heart.”
     That was over 30 years ago and David is still in Megan’s heart, in Teresa’s heart, and in my heart.
     And of course, in the heart of a mother and a father.  The pain is even now an open wound as Teresa could see yesterday. 
     What Teresa recognized as she and Kim poured out their hearts to each other was that Kim knew and understood.   Even more than just David, Kim had her own serious bouts with cancer several years ago.
      We have shared in these blogs the calling to bear one another’s burdens.  The ones who can best bear others’ burdens are the ones who have had someone help bear their burdens at some point when they walked through one of life’s heartaches.
     When the day that Jesus calls me home and a few folks gather to remember, if someone who is asked to speak has any insight at all, I would hope that someone might share Megan and David’s story.
     I guess that would only be appropriate if I am still in someone’s heart!
     Thanks for reading the blogs.  Writing them helps me move from internalizing the struggle to my own verbalization.  Believing that someone is reading them helps me cope.