Roping the Wind

When I was growing up I remember that I had a storybook of American folk tales. Honestly, I don't remember anything about that book except for one picture. It is an image that, for whatever reason, is burned indelibly in my brain. A rugged cowboy stood in the middle of the classic old west main street, his hair blowing wildly in the wind. Across from him was his adversary, a mighty tornado. This image was made stranger by the fact that this cowboy had somehow roped this cyclone and was wresting control from it. I remember nothing of the story that accompanied this picture (some of you might know it). All I remember is how much this image appealed to me. It is a little known fact that I am terrified of tornados... perhaps one too many viewings of The Wizard of Oz when I was very young... and the idea that someone could take such a chaotic force of nature, face it, and become its master was something that made a lasting impression on me.

I say all this because this image has come back to mind in recent days as we've been preparing for the second round of chemo. We are living right now just on the edge of that eye I spoke of a few days ago and the shadow of chaos has been growing in my mind like the distant sound of an approaching twister. What has defined the boundaries of this twister for me the last two days has been watching my son's hair fall out. Monday afternoon it began, the fateful leaving behind of wispy blond locks on every pillow, shirt collar, and shoulder his head touches. I wasn't prepared for this new reminder of Andrews condition. Of course I knew it was going to happen but we had been told to expect it after the second cycle. Suddenly the reality that we're dealing with a disease, side-effects of treatment, and frankly a world that is completely outside of our control. The tornado arrived and apparently I forgot my lasso.

I'm not sure I can really give justice to the maelstrom of emotions that run through your heart when you watch this happen to your child. I have a beautiful son... simply beautiful... and I am watching part of that beauty taken from him. I have a wonderfully active son and in a few days that will also be taken from him as the "medicine" does its work. I have a family that finally seems to be adjusting back to life and we have to turn everything upside down again to go into the hospital for the next treatment. At the core of my heart is the striking sense of powerlessness, the bitter taste of my finitude, and my sadness at the rebellion going on in Andrew's body. What comes to the surface though is none of these things. Since I saw the first fine blond hairs left behind on a pillow I've just been angry. Anger doesn't really cover it. Anger doesn't explain my ridiculous screaming at 7:30am at a car seat that wouldn't go in right. Anger doesn't quite flesh out the annoyance at every interruption or the coldness that I've shown towards every innocent question.

I'm sure I've said this before but it bears repeating, the rage that I feel is not only rage at what is going on, but rage at my own helplessness. I hate it! I hate that I can't do anything but watch this. I hate that have to witness my son's slow deterioration. I hate that I can't preserve this period of peace. I hate that soon our trips into public will be marked with stares full of question and pity (though honestly we have gotten those before just being a family with four kids from five down). I hate that there can be no explanation of why no matter how much I might want it.

I suppose that isn't all that different from the anger of Job... perhaps only in degree. He had lost everything, his kids, his livelihood, his health even though even God had declared him to be the best of the best. That book is one long attempt by both Job and his friends to find some answer to his suffering. In the end he never received an answer. Job wanted to find a simple equation, do this and you will get this; this he never received. God's only answer to Job was, "Things are more complicated than you know." In the end Job received not answers but a presence, the presence of God. In a way Job's search for answers, for an explanation, like our own searches, is just another attempt to lasso the whirlwind. The hard truth is that I was not created to be able to rope the cyclone, measure the grains of sand on the shore, or will that hair should fall from my son's head. I was created to be dependent on the One who can do all these things. The beauty of Christian faith in this is that, through Jesus, I am offered something so much stronger than answers... I am offered Him. Because all hell broke loose on him on the Cross he can be truly present with me when it breaks loose in my life, knowing what it is like to ask questions for which your only answer is deafening silence. More than that though the real beauty is not found only in Jesus suffering, but in his resurrection. When all hell broke loose on Jesus it did break him, but it didn't win. When Jesus rose from the dead he declared that chaos would not have the last word, that suffering would not have the final say. The silence of Friday afternoon was overcome by the shouts of Sunday morning. Thus the Christian Gospel proclaims to me even in my anger that chaos and brokenness and sin won't win, that Jesus will do for the world what he did in his own body, remake it without futility, grief, pain, and chaos.

Honestly though, that doesn't take away my anger or my tears. A future hope is just that, a hope of the future. Today I still have to deal with watching my boy lose his hair... something I didn't anticipate would be this hard. I don't do it alone though. In the midst of my rage and my fear, and my weakness there comes a nail-scarred hand on my shoulder and around my waist, holding me up, and a voice saying,

"I do know that this is hard but it won't win... I am with you and I've lassoed the cyclone."