Shifting hope

Apparently, my reputation for tenacity, especially as it relates to my children and their well-being, is well known.  A friend of mine was relating a conversation to me the other day where another person had referenced how we looked and fought for any treatment that might cure Ian's cancer.  Even in my current, slightly dysfunctional spiritual state, I recognize that all the miraculous things that happened while we were looking for a cure, came from God opening doors for us and making things happen that were, to say the least, unusual (i.e, a call from our insurance on a Sunday authorizing an experimental treatment - come on, how many times does that happen?, personally corresponding with the head doctor at the NIH who is researching treatment of Ian's particular kind of cancer, a friend who personally knows top people at pharmaceutical companies researching cures for Ian's type of cancer, the list goes on....).

I started to wonder, what were all those open doors for because none of them helped?  Were we being strung along, hoping for a cure that would never come?  Then it occurred to me - we were being given hope.  Hope is such a powerful thing, it can keep you going in spite of your circumstances, in spite of what may seem obvious to others around you, in spite of your own doubts....hope prevails. Hope gives you the strength to put one foot in front of the other, hope gives you the will to get out of bed in the morning and to keep fighting, hope allows you to close your eyes at night and wait for tomorrow.

All of those open doors that led to nowhere gave us something else; it left us with very few "what if's".  We know we pursued every avenue known to us to save Ian, and he saw us fighting, searching for that next drug to cure him. We fought as hard as we could, we didn't wait passively for death to take our son and he was a witness to how much we loved him.  At least we have that.  Ian ended his life knowing that we tried EVERYTHING to save him.

Now, our hope has shifted.  Our hope is in being reunited with Ian one day.  I'm reading a book called "90 minutes in heaven" by a pastor who was pronounced clinically dead for 90 minutes before being brought back to life.  He talks about being greeted at heaven's gate by friends and family and my hope is that is what awaited Ian.  That his great-grandparents were there to embrace him and welcome him 'home', that Joshua was there to greet him, that people who he may not have remembered but who knew him where there and he was surrounded by love.  My hope now is that Ian will be the first person greeting me.

"Few things sap the human spirit like lack of hope."  Don Piper