Just When You Think You Know…

“So, Chase’s counts are back… Are you sitting down?”

The moment of silence stretched out as the sick feeling in my stomach took firm root…she realized where my mind had gone and quickly filled the gap: “In a good way!  It’s a good thing!“

Chase’s Thursday labs came back higher and better than they’ve been in weeks…dare I even say months?  They were in fact so high, that his team wondered if I’d forgotten to take him off his daily cell regeneration injections (which cause a false high in the counts) because his white count alone was truly remarkable.

After expressing my shock and joy, I had to ask: “But, how?  How is this even possible?  …when he’s this far and his body is so depleted ...how is it possible to have counts this high?”

She laughed and said that she didn’t know what to tell me.  Maybe it was that these last chemo rounds weren’t as harsh as the induction last Fall, or maybe it was because he’s healthy (with no colds or line infections) but truly, there was “no medical explanation” for his current numbers.

I got off the call with the phrase “no nedical explanation” ringing in my ears.  Of course.  Why not?  That sounded right up Chase’s alley… This is why we so often say “It’s Chase“: because we frequently see his team and hospital staff confounded by Chase’s stubborn tenacity and well being in the face of what they know this cancer can and should look like in a small child.

But this particular day…this phrase…this was different.   This was a reminder tailored for my heart.

You see, the end of treatment is incredibly scary.  We leave our secure second home and walk back into the light of day.  We face post-chemo therapies which will several-times-a-week remind us of huge obstacles Chase has to overcome in order to function.  We stop being an active cancer family and start being a passive one living in a world where the majority of people we know assume life goes “back to normal” when chemo ends.

Facing this upcoming change is a middle-of-the-night fear.  Terminal cancer and rushing to the hospital and walking around with a crash kit and never being in one place long enough to make eye contact with life have all become so second nature to me that I hardly remember what living was like before now.

And then the news of Chase’s inexplicably good counts…

Quietly, in my heart, Job 40-42 replayed – God’s challenge to Job in the face of what Job thinks he understands about life.  Similiarly, Chase’s counts burst into the middle of my Thursday afternoon filled with quiet worry… The challenge: “You think you know what his counts should look like now?  You think you know what lies ahead?”

All I could do was marvel as all my pre-concieved vanished like mist in the face of Grace and respond:

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”  Job 42:2

Moment by moment.