Echo Holy

I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since 10pm last night. I should be eating right now, but I can’t. I’m in too much shock and I keep thinking about how this was supposed to be an irrational fear. Only now it’s reality. So I’m sitting here crying, waiting to hear back from my doctor, and listening to “Echo Holy” by Red Rocks Worship on repeat. Reminding myself that my God is worthy of my echoing “holy, holy, holy” at all times. The easy and the hard. The calm and the scary. The peaceful and the traumatic.

I was talking with Him last night, telling Him about how I was nervous for this ultrasound today. After watching my dad fight a cancer that didn’t originate from, but was originally contained in, his liver, I was worried that my abdominal ultrasound would show a problem with my liver. I told Him I knew it was an irrational fear. After all, the scan was ordered to check on my gallbladder. But the fear was there and I needed help walking through it. Fast forward to today and, by His grace, I was calmer. Still nervous, but calmer. And then the radiologist walked into the room to discuss the results of the scan. My gallbladder looked fine aside from a polyp that they’ll check on again in a few months. But there was a small mass found in my liver. He told me benign masses have been seen in the livers of young adults and that it doesn’t look too worrisome right now, but he wants to prove it’s harmless. So I’m sitting here waiting to hear back from my doctor about scheduling an MRI. Sitting here trying to process this news.

It was supposed to be an irrational fear.

While he said this could very well be benign, the presence of this mass is an emotional trigger bringing to the surface all of the emotions I thought I had worked through after my dad died. The fear. The terror. The grief. The sadness. Flashbacks to memories forgotten. Memories like one very long surgical procedure in New York City. A woman waking my mom, sister, and I in the dark hours of the morning by banging on our hotel room door and yelling in Spanish. A day one week before Christmas of 2013 when we were told dad was cancer free. A girl crumpled on the floor of the lobby outside her office after hearing doctors had found a spot on her father’s lung four years later, knowing in that moment that he wouldn’t win this time. A family sitting in an oncologist’s office being told that their loved one had stage 4 cancer. Treatments that didn’t work. Hospital monitors beeping. Drops of blood on the floor of a hospital room. The sound of agonal breathing. The pattern of a heart attack on a heart monitor.

It was supposed to be an irrational fear.

I wrote once about Memory Lane and the joy that can be found in walking down it. Soft music plays as you walk down the peaceful, tree-lined lane. The path, bathed in the warm glow of sunshine, is beautiful. Photographs hang from the branches of the trees as they arch gracefully over the road. The memories contained in them are filled with joy and peace. But there are also dark paths that veer off the lane. Paths where the pictures are black and white, the lack of color signifying the pain in those captured moments. The news I received today has forcefully flung me down those dark paths. Paths I had hoped I wouldn’t walk down again. Memories of pain I had hoped to leave behind. And it’s discouraging. But I’m finding that these dark paths have changed over the past three and a half years. Glimpses of light now push through the dark branches. Glimpses of hope. Because in the time that has passed since I last visited these memories, the Holy Spirit has changed my heart.

In the book of Zechariah, it is prophesied of Israel,

“And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are My people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’” – Zechariah 13:9

I feel like I’ve been walking through the fire in the last four and a half years. I watched my dad fight and lose his battle with cancer. I grieved his loss. I’ve been monitored for breast cancer. And I’ve searched and searched for answers to the mystery of my nerve disease. The past four and a half years have been the hardest of my life. But I’m strangely thankful for them. Don’t get me wrong, if I was given the option to have my dad back, I’d take it without hesitation. My health? Maybe not. Because lessons have been learned that can only be learned in the fire. First Peter 1:3-9 says,

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefined, and unfolding, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Never in my life have I been more grateful for the truth in these verses than in the last four and a half years. Every trial in a Christian’s life is meant to test our faith (that is more precious than gold). It is meant to bring about praise and glory and honor for the Lord. It is meant to grow our love for Him. It is meant to grow our hope in Him. And these trials will only last “a little while”.

I often wonder how people walk through life without the hope that comes from Jesus when there are days it feels like I can barely make it through WITH that hope. When it feels like the trials of life are huge and insurmountable. And on those days, I’m thankful for the truth found in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 which says,

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

My outer self is wasting away. Even if I didn’t have a weird, undiagnosable (as of yet) disease, and an unknown mass in my liver, my body would be wasting away as time passes. But through the trials of life, my inner self is being renewed. And I’m thankful for the reminder that those trials that seem so huge and insurmountable are simply “light and momentary” when compared with the eternal weight of glory yet to come in eternity with my Lord and Savior. And so I find myself resonating with the apostle Paul when he wrote the verses immediately following 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage.” – 2 Corinthians 5:1-6a

So we are always of good courage.

It was supposed to be an irrational fear.

But now it’s not. And that’s okay. Because my God is in control. Whether or not this mass is benign, this will be a light and momentary affliction because of the hope I have in Jesus Christ. Because of the hope I have for eternity. The hope found in knowing that, just as He did with Israel, He calls me His own. The hope in saying, “The LORD is my God”. The hope that I will one day echo “holy, holy, holy is the Lord” with the angels.

Do you have this hope? I pray you do. And if you don’t, please reach out to me. I’d love to share it with you.

“A million angels fall

Face down on the floor

All to echo, ‘Holy is the Lord’

My heart can’t help but sing

With all of Heaven roar

Forever echo, ‘Holy is the Lord.’” – Echo Holy by Red Rocks Worship

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” – Psalm 42:11