I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber. Psalm 121:1-3 (NASB)
I won't go into all the details of the conversation, but suffice it to say that there is an admonition here. When you face off with an illness, whether it is cancer or anything else with the power to completely shake your world, you have a choice. You have a choice to maintain the role of observer, as most of us do in our daily lives, or you have the opportunity to engage and take action.
I realize that we don't all live next to to a Cancer Treatment Center of America or some other hospital that espouses wholistic care. We don't all have the ability to move our entire life to the bedside of a loved one. But we all can take direct action. We don't have to be experts in nutrition or cancer treatments, or neuro-surgery. No, we don't even have to be able to pronounce the scientific name of an illness.
What we can do, what we must do, is know when to circle the wagons. We must know when to say, "We need all hands on deck!" Is there anything else we can do? Are there any other resources? Is everybody in the family that needs to be included already here? Do we need a social worker, a counselor, a pastor? Who can take charge at least of the medical and be the coordinating person?
Hopefully, we can have someone who can help us bring all the resources together. Hopefully we can be lead through the process. But, at the end of the day we need to have no regrets. Losing a loved one will hurt and haunt for years. But, that is without having a reason to regret something we should have done, steps we should have taken, questions we should have asked.
When I get on the bike and I know that I am accepting a certain level of risk, I also know that I never want to leave my family with any reason to be angry or hurt because I did something stupid, or selfish. I don't want my girls to remember me with hurt feelings because I took unnecessary chances. In the same way, if I am the one who comes down with a terminal illness, I can't leave them with the thought that I didn't fight or do everything possible.
Even the best medical professional is not part of our family. Even the best effort by the best doctor does not meet every need for everyone in the family. So how will those needs get met? How will we know that in six months or two years that we won't be wracked with guilt or anger? We can't. But we can get so much closer if we simply make sure that we are active participants.
Being an observer to our own lives is tragic enough when all is good. But it can plainly haunt us for the rest of our days when we need to be part of a wholistic approach to life or death.