Dear Friends,

The summer is moving fast, faster than any summer of a life of summers. As July blazes into August, the oncologist brings his somber word — “You need to make the most of this summer, because it is going to be your last on this earth.”

That is it – the truth, and nothing but the truth.

The oncologist didn’t need to say it. Melissa, an accomplished physician herself, knew it anyway to the core of her aching bones. She knew it enough in June to take the risk between chemo cycles 12 and 13 to fly to Italy to see her talented son Scott play his trombone one more time in concert. A mother’s love must have protected her depressed immune system from all that yucky airline air. She made it back OK.

In July, Melissa traveled across the country to sit by a lake for a week with family enjoying the gentle lapping of the water and the warm sun on her back. She watched her eleven-year-old daughter Katie play and laugh with her brother and cousins. The girl is so like her mother, super-smart and strong-willed, with flashing dark eyes, compact athleticism, and abundant musical talent.

It is unimaginable that mother and daughter be separated. “I am the best mother for my daughter!” she tells herself fiercely as she has every day since the diagnosis slugged her in the gut the week after Christmas – “inoperable stage four pancreatic cancer metastasized to the liver.” She knew the medical literature and the prognosis. Studying it again told her nothing new.

Melissa returned from Italy to more chemo – industrial-strength, toxic chemicals, poured into her veins to attack the tumor, growing so deep in her that it escaped detection far too long.

The cycles of chemo began shortly after diagnosis. They’ve continued until they now number 17 – more chemo by far than most cancer patients endure. Just six months into treatment, Melissa’s life expectancy already exceeded the published research on her disease progression. Since then she’s been left with the best judgment of her oncologists and her own educated instincts.

Toxins from the chemo build up in her body. Melissa is getting sicker. The nausea is bad some days.

But her faith is strong, and so is the loving support of family and friends. Prayers and food, cards and letters, books and flowers have poured in. Melissa invited prayer from the moment she heard the diagnosis. From earliest memory she has heard and believed that God can make a difference, if not now, in eternity. She is blessed with friends who believe the same thing.

I am one of those friends. I send Melissa a prayer of intercession and encouragement by text every night illustrated by a beautiful nature photograph. From the moment I heard of the diagnosis, I vowed to fight for her with prayer and not quit.

One of these night prayers summarizes her journey so far –

Lord,

I would not choose this journey — neither the route nor the means of travel. I wasn’t asked.

But here I am, making my way through the night in uncharted waters. Somehow you keep me underway and send light to guide me.

Strengthen me in these calm night passages for the heat and challenges of the days ahead. Bless those who love and help me navigate and let them know how much they are loved. Thank You for the kindness of your companionship and that I know you better now than ever before.

I don’t know what is next or even how to pray, but my hope is in you. Everyone I love, and everything I have is yours and I am resting in your arms which are proving stronger than I would ever know but for this journey. So let’s keep going! Amen.

Lying awake at night, Melissa wonders what will come next; wonders what will happen to her family. She has made her peace with God. What concerns her is what will her children think? Will they blame the kind and loving God she knows? He has come closer to her now than ever before, but it would be tragic were he to be blamed by her children for the loss of their mother.

Melissa has learned through devastation that when life is stripped to nothing, God is everything. She wants her daughter to know this — really know this — in her heart as well as her mind, but how will she learn this if her mother is gone?

An idea forms and persists — “a bee in her bonnet,” Melissa calls it. “I need to take Katie to see the Old Faithful Geyser. I need to show her myself what God’s faithfulness looks like.” Her parents had taken Melissa and her sister there long ago. She never forgot the sparkling rhythms of God’s artesian love when the water erupted 150 feet in the air at regular intervals.

The problem is that Yellowstone National Park is nearly 1,000 miles away and a fourteen-hour drive at least. Post-chemo nausea does not bode well for a long drive in a rocking motor home. And her husband, Larry, is away, traveling.

Besides, it is the middle of August, the height of vacation season at national parks, and she has made no reservations. On top of that the trip would occur over Monday, August 21, the date of the total eclipse of the sun and Yellowstone lies near the path of “totality.”

Melissa is determined to go with the fierce compulsion of a mother’s love. She must show her daughter, “Old Faithful.” Katie must understand that through all the suffering and any loss, God will love her . . . guide her . . . hold her . . . and won’t let go. This is the most important lesson Melissa believes she can teach her daughter.

Scott brings the motor home from storage. They pack it up with clothes and camping supplies. Melissa’s parents, sister, Minnie, and niece, Nicole, agree to make the trip too. With little advance preparation, they convoy out across the deserts of California, Nevada, Utah on into Idaho and Wyoming to Yellowstone.

Night by night they find spots to stay in campgrounds just outside the park despite full bookings. They go into the park by day and are fortunate to see a mother bear at play with her cubs in a meadow, an experience of a lifetime. They see other wildlife.

The family hikes. Melissa stays behind and waits. She is too weak for hiking at altitude, but she is happy just to be there. They make it to the observation point for Old Faithful and it doesn’t disappoint them.

Mother and daughter stand close together to watch in delight as the sparkling water spouts up against the blue mountain sky. Melissa explains to Katie that the Geyser has erupted on a regular schedule for thousands of years testifying to the faithfulness of God’s love for his creation.

Generations have come and gone and will continue to do so. But God’s faithfulness will continue forever and the Old Faithful will testify of this until Jesus comes back to take his children to the earth made new.

Melissa tells Katie the old story with conviction born of a faith now tested in suffering and trial and she believes that her girl “get’s it!”

After several days the little convoy heads back home through Idaho, pulling over by a rural roadside café, to see the eclipse. It is another lifetime moment as the dark comes on and the temperature plunges, and the family watches together.

Melissa tells me the story in her characteristic matter-of-fact style in her dining room when I bring her a gift of orchard-fresh peaches. She is tired at the end of a long week. She is frail and wan, but her 1,000 watt smile still flashes with a heartening brilliance at times.

I knew she had gone camping in Wyoming and I thought that was a very strenuous undertaking in her condition, but I hadn’t counted on the energy of the unconditional love of a godly mother. I underestimated the fierce devotion of Melissa to her God and to her family.

Her story brings to my mind one of my favorite verses from Isaiah.
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

Now she tells me, “My reserves of physical strength are mostly gone. I am living on faith and prayer now.”
I nod. I told her some time ago, “I will never talk to you in refrigerator magnet clichés and bumper sticker platitudes. I respect you too much for that.” We speak honestly of her treatments, pain and nausea and the relief from neuropathy experienced from a remarkable physical therapy technique.

Katie comes in to the house, followed by her son Scott, then Melissa’s husband, Larry. I get up to greet them and leave.

Melissa accompanies me to the door which gives me a twinge of guilt since her exhaustion is obvious. I pray for her standing in the doorway. I pray in gratitude for the God that has sustained her so far, who gifts her with the love of family and friends, and who won’t quit on her. I thank him for Old Faithful and a mother’s fierce love. I ask him for the mercies of healing and comfort because I haven’t given up either. And I pray in thanks for the blessing of Sabbath rest which we both have known all our lives as a respite from worry, care and work.

Melissa and I both know that “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:16). We both believe that his love will never quit for those who believe in his Son who God gave to us for eternal life (John 3:16).
Melissa and I say goodbye and I drive west towards a glorious Southern California sunset. I want my friend to live. I know beyond doubt that even if it is beyond the golden sunset, she will live. That’s why I am smiling tonight despite the hot tears welling up from my heart.

. . .

I wrote the first part of the message last summer. It is now February in an unusually warm winter. Melissa has completed another 13 arduous cycles of chemotherapy for a staggering total of 28. Yet, she is still smiling and still has her own beautiful wavy brunette hair.

After our conversation on that hot August Friday evening, she endured three difficult hospital stays and an infection. She came through it all, and, despite serious neuropathy threatening to deny feeling in her hands, she played her viola in the Loma Linda University Church orchestra during the Christmas season.

The cancer has not spread. In fact it the metastasis to her liver has subsided and disappeared. Her leading tumor marker, once terminally high has now dropped to normal, though another creeps slowly up as a shadow that’s closely monitored. Overall the oncologists and Melissa are greatly encouraged.

Melissa can now have the life-prolonging surgery that was unthinkable fourteen months ago at diagnosis. She has arrived at this point on a vast tide of prayer and positive and encouraging relationships with family, friends, and praying strangers around the world.

Even as her body has responded to therapy, Melissa’s faith is strengthened. She is, as she says, “a walking miracle.”

Melissa and I have discussed how faith calls for specific prayer for healing. I have never been of the school of prayer that would tell God what he has to do. Melissa’s progress and the Holy Spirit have never said, “No,” so I continue to pray for the “Yes!” of healing for Melissa every night and morning.

It is a good God to whom we pray. Melissa traveled 1,000 miles while exhausted with illness to introduce her daughter to his faithful love.

He does not disappoint. He keeps his word on earth and in eternity. “We know that for those who love God, God works in all things (even cancer) for the good of those who are called according to his purpose. . . Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:28, 39). Amen.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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