(Written March 28, 2018)
“I can’t”
I wonder how often I’ve uttered those words to the Lord over the course of these last 4 years. It’s sure to be more than I’d care to admit, and still, the thought likely invaded my mind thousands of times before the phrase ever left my lips. I distinctly remember uttering them as I pleaded with the Lord on the couch that Mike and I had purchased as newlyweds only three years prior. He was just having a pre-op appointment regarding a hernia that needed to be treated when I received the unexpected phone call from an anxious husband. Naturally, when your other half is worried, you try your best to maintain your calm; So, there on the couch I sat quietly listening, searching for any encouragement I could offer as my beloved explained that what was supposed to be a simple hernia had become a question mark. It was the first time the “what if” of cancer entered our thoughts. Despite advising Mike over the phone not to assume the worst about the ominous knot in his abdomen, I found myself privately crying out, “Oh Lord, please don’t let it be cancer! This can’t be cancer! Please Lord, I can’t bear the possibility of losing my husband! Our little ones can’t lose their daddy! Please Lord, I can’t handle it if this is cancer!” Perhaps this was the moment that marked the beginning of our sincere understanding that life is fragile.
After roughly two months of testing, a biopsy revealed that our most feared “what if” scenario was in fact our reality. We had grown accustom to living as though tomorrow was promised to us, that there were still many years ahead of us, but in facing our fiercest battle, we could not help but be confronted by our own frailty. We realized that Mike’s life was not hanging on the skill and expertise of the nation’s finest doctors, though God opened the doors for us to be seen by them, nor was it hanging on alkaline water, eliminating sugar, and following a raw vegan diet, as he had done while his body tolerated it, but rather, every breath hung on the very mercy and will of God. Faithfully, over the course of Mike’s 2-1/2 year battle with cancer we found His mercy in every breath, even Mike’s last breath.
We do not tend to value frailty, do we? It is often something we strive to conceal. How curious that David, who slayed lions, bears, and giants, would cry out to God:
4 “Lord, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am.
5 Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths,
And my age is as nothing before You;
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor. Selah
Psalm 39:4-5
Truly, there is value in understanding the brevity and fragility of life. For Mike and I, time spent together became all the sweeter, prioritizing became easier, conflicts resolved more quickly, and our purpose in life became clearer. Together, we saw the Lord on the throne, exalted. We realized how critically we needed Him, how little we had actually been depending upon Him, how faithful He had been to us, even when we did not understand or recognize all that His hand was doing, and how He had an answer for every one of our fears, though they were not always given until the precise moment they were needed. No, He did not remove the cancer from Mike’s earthly tent, nor did He spare our little family from the pain and difficulties that came with saying “goodbye” for now, but He made a way for us to make it through what was once insurmountable.
While I have said to the Lord, “I can’t,” many times over these past four years, I have learned that He can handle my frailty; in fact, He knows it far better than I do. He is not surprised by this fragile frame of mine.
“My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”
Psalm 139:15
♦
“For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.”
Psalm 103:14
Surely, the God who knows and designed our frame also knows the journey that these fragile frames must brave. I found that oft times He is patiently waiting for me to stop striving to prove my own strength and my own intelligence and to humbly present Him with my “I can’t,” because that is the very moment that “He can” – He can enter into my insufficiency and supply all that I am lacking: the strength, the fortitude, the wisdom, the hope, the courage, the grace, the rest, the joy and the Way.
After crying out, “I can’t” many times over, He never left me there, but, as I submitted to Him, lovingly and powerfully stepped in and enabled me to do what I could not do on my own. Come to think of it, was this not the same point at which this beautiful relationship began? “Lord, I can’t – I can’t, by my own merit, get to Heaven. I confess that I have not lived blamelessly according to Your holy, righteous standard and I can’t wash away the stain of my sin.” Was that not the very same point at which He declared “By Me, you can. I am your Way. I am the One who can cleanse you and forgive you of your sin. I AM, I stepped down from heaven, endured the cross, and overcame the grave.”
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Romans 3:23
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“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6:23
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“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6
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If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
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“if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 10:9
Thank You Lord, that while much is impossible for us, nothing is impossible with You! Thank You for all You have done to answer our greatest “I can’t” cry, making a way of salvation for us! Oh how perfectly You know these fragile frames, nothing is hidden from You! May we learn how to fully depend upon You rather than rely on our own strength and intellect. There is none like You, no other who is Holy, no other rock like You, God!