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MUSINGS OVER A DARK PROVIDENCE

So what do you say to people (and I hear this all the time) who say, “Everything happens for a reason”?

—Bill Maher

I say, this was not the coffee that I ordered.

—Seth MacFarlane

Have you ever found yourself traveling down the road of life thinking, “This is perfect! Life just couldn’t get any better!”? As you were saying that, were you hit with a tragedy that seems too great to bear? That very thing happened to my wife, Lillian, and me.

In May 1999, Lillian and I discovered that she was pregnant. Most couples want to wait a few weeks, or even months, before letting people know. Not us! Lillian immediately began calling everyone she knew to announce the great news. Near the end of the month we left Philadelphia, where I was working on my PhD in theology, and went back to our original home in Dallas to visit with family and friends. Everyone was so happy for us. Things just couldn’t have been better! In one year I would be finished with my coursework for the program and we would have a newborn baby, and so I looked forward to the summer of 2000 as the time when I would start my career and grow my family.

When we arrived back at our small apartment in Pennsylvania, we did what most people did back in the 1990s—we checked our answering machine. One message would change our lives forever. The doctor’s office asked Lillian to call back to schedule more blood tests, as something didn’t look right. The following day she called the office and was informed that her white blood cell count had reached thirty thousand. For one full month we spent most of our time ruling out possibilities. In July 1999 Lillian was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

I really can’t describe in words the depth of despair both of us sank into at that moment. My mother died of cancer when I was eight years old. I just figured, via some twisted sense of logic, that I had had my share of loss. Surely God would not allow my child to be raised without his mother since, after all, I had endured that already! Why would God bring a brand-new life into this world, only to snuff it out of existence? Why allow a child to grow up without a mother?

The total irrationality of the diagnosis was compounded even further when we learned just how “impossible” it was for a person like Lillian to haveCLL. You see, there are three kinds of people who are rarely diagnosed with this form of leukemia: people under thirty, women, and Asians. Lillian was all three!

As you might imagine, I immediately began learning all I could aboutCLL. I learned that there are several kinds of leukemia. Acute leukemias are far more aggressive and so need immediate treatment. Had Lillian had an acute form of leukemia, she would have required immediate chemotherapy, in which case we would have surely lost our child. With a disease likeCLL, one can potentially go years without treatment. So we began the process of month-to-month monitoring of her condition. Our hope was that she could at least give birth to our child before enduring chemotherapy.

Our prayers were answered when, in January of 2000, our beautiful baby boy, Evan, was born. And yet, as happy as I was about this wonderful gift, a certain foreboding sense of an imminent tragedy remained in my mind. Such fears were confirmed when one morning in February I awoke and, to my horror, saw very swollen lymph nodes around Lillian’s neck. Due to Lillian’s condition, I