Annette and John Tibbet and their family made their home in a larger city of the Deep South. Theywere prosperous leaders in the community and regularly attended a local church. Their oldest son Wesley was turning 13 and had planned to enter junior high that fall. But all of the family’s plans were put on hold when 10-year-old Darren was diagnosed with leukemia. His outlook was very poor and the local hospitals held out no hope. TheTibbets determined that our hospital was their best hope for beating this disease. So the family dropped everything and came to the distant north for a very risky bone marrow transplant. As a hospital chaplain, I visited them nearly every weekday for the next six months and there was never a day when the whole family was not at Darren’s side for at least an hour or two.
Weeks turned into months and Darren, whose treatment showed some initial promise, was becoming exhausted and beaten.
Annette, a very forceful woman, made it clear that God’s job was to cure Darren and there was no other option. Darren’s job, and the job of everyone who was admitted to the family circle, was to believe that God would cure him without doubt or question. She chided me when my prayers were not positive enough. Prayer was never to entertain any suggestion that God’s will might include anything other than Darren’s victory over this disease. Doubting this was considered a weakness that would lead to defeat. I was in the room one day when in frustration Annette snapped at Darren’s tears of exhaustion and pain saying, “Stop crying! Jesus can’t help a crybaby.”
It is easy to be righteously appalled at such words when I have not spent six months watching my
youngest child be swallowed slowly by some awful disease. Annette was doing the best she could to coach Darren, me and God to life and recovery. True, I had seen kids draw back from the brink of death and recover. But I had seen so many more die after a hard and seemingly endless struggle. I dreaded the coming days. I knew what would probably happen and how unprepared everyone would be when it did.
I was sitting with Annette in the waiting room the last time Darren was “coded” over the paging system. No name was mentioned but both Annette and I knew whom it was for. The pediatric resuscitation team raced by with a crash cart to forcibly resurrect that tired little body yet again. No one in the Tibbet camp had been allowed to speak of death or even the possibility of death. There had been no searching prayer of faith asking God to reconcile them to His will. They made no preparation for their hearts in the event that God’s will and their will didn’t match up. Sitting next to Annette in that moment was like standing next to a deserted hotel or apartment building just as it is being imploded with dynamite. There is a sudden shudder and then the whole structure collapses in on itself, leaving nothing but empty space and dust.
Just before the end the family came around with expressions of love, caring and encouragement for each other and especially for Darren. But it was said and done when Darren was no longer capable of responding.
I do not believe that faith is a crowbar by which we pry blessings from the clenched fist of God. At its simplest, faith believes that God exists and that he blesses those who persistently seek him. On the one hand, we must be bold and bring our desire before God without reservations or qualifications. Don’t pray, “God’s Will be done” if you mean it as a polite loophole to allow God and our faith room to retreat. Be honest about all that your heart holds. Be courageous in hope. I have seen miraculous and otherwise inexplicable answers to prayer.
On the other hand, we do not pray to a cosmic force but to a living personality… one with purposes and perspectives that may be unknown to us. If God persists in taking our lives in directions we would rather not go, at some point, we need to stop
telling
God what to do and start asking
him to give us insight and courage to walk a path that may be dark and unknown. God walks with all who call on him even through dark places. I have been there. I have seen it.
God says, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.” God is not a force to be harnessed. He is a Person to be found!
Each month a member of the
Cook County Ministerium will
offer Spiritual Reflections. For
April, our contributor is Pastor
Dave Harvey, who has served
as pastor of Grand Marais
Evangelical Free Church since
February of 2008.
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