Joys and Sorrows

To be honest, I can’t hardly figure it out. Life is precious. Life is difficult. Life is both things at the same time nearly constantly. Why we cling to life ourselves in the face of extreme pain and tragedy is an instinct in all of us that is remarkable. It must come from God.

My Son, Jonny, bless his heart. He’s twenty and he’s had a rough three or four years. Just this past 12 months, he ended a three year incarceration (when most kids his age are in highschool).But while he was away, he got his GED and he’s been going to school full time. He's been living in a city on his own. He now works full time, and he and his girlfriend are going to have a baby. And his father, me, was diagnosed with state 4 colon cancer. While I know I have my own trials, it is hard for me to imagine difficulties like Jonny’s at age 20.

He called late last night, crying. He said that Chelsea, the mother of his uborn child was on her way to the hospital; the baby, Carter Andrew, had not been moving for the past few days. Well, his concern was contagious – and seeing this young Son of mine in such despair for his unborn child, my grandson, was, in a word, heart wrenching.

Once at the hospital, it was determine that Carter Andrew was safe and sound in Chelsea’s belly, and the air raid sirens were turned off. But trying to help navigate my Son through the excruciating uncertainty of it all was something I had never experienced. Oh sure, I get the occasional call when he is worried about things, and I try to help him figure things out, but this was totally different. It was totally uncharted territory for me. We all know how the concern for our own children can be overwhelming and even debilitating. Well to see this for the first time in my own Son for his unborn Son touched me deeply and in a way that I had never been touched before.

I tried to explain to him, when we were thinking the worst, we have to accept life on life’s terms. We have to turn everything over to God. From behind his pitiful tears, he asked how he could possibly do that…. I asked him “what other choice to we have in situations like this?”

I suppose the 29 extra years I have over my Son, not that I am stoic, but perhaps have lent themselves to me with a deeper sense of it. The ability to endure in the face of almost unthinkable pain, grief, anxiety and depression flows from God – it truly must; where upon we are delivered to the portions of our life, the times when our joys our weigh our sorrows.