Spiritual Giant Part l
“My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26
Six years ago, my dad weighed 110 pounds before the breath of his life slipped away from his already fragile frame.
To put things into perspective, that’s how much I weighed – a scrawny seventeen year old runner. He hadn’t always been that way. Before the journey began, he weighed a hundred pounds more. He was a man who loved grilling burgers and always kept a place in his heart (and stomach) for his mama’s desserts. We used to make buckeyes (chocolate-covered peanut butter goodness) during the holidays and rename them “belly-bombers” because they always added a few pounds around his waist – it only made him more of the big, strong Papa bear that he always was to me.
Then cancer happened.
I remember the day my dad sat me down and told me of his diagnosis. I couldn’t quite wrap my adolescent mind around what that meant. My only perception of that daunting word was that it was a vicious killer, and so it was.
However, this isn’t a post about my dad’s battle with cancer. Instead, I want this to be about my dad’s journey with the Lord through it. I could tell you what he endured physically, but I’d rather share a little bit about what my dad endured spiritually. I didn’t know it then, but those four years of cancer were the most crucial of his life. He had come face to face with death, and death has a way of giving a man a lot to think about.
My dad passed away on March 10, 2013 – six years ago today. Twenty-three years of living, and six years out from my father’s death and I think I may be finally coming to understand some things about life and death. Give me a few years, though, and I’ll probably say I knew nothing as I look back at what I learn in the years to come. Life is beautiful like that though – drawing us in with the ecstasy of knowing while keeping us on the shores of wonder, reckoning with the mystery of it all.
So, I found two of my dad’s journals from before he passed away. He was never much of a writer, but he had been encouraged to start in his last few months of life in hopes of processing what was coming. It also functioned as a means of communication after having much of his tongue removed from the cancer (I hope that’s not too much information). Finding those journals was like finding the most precious of treasure that I had always hoped truly existed.
This year, in honor of my dad, I am going to celebrate his life with three days of blog posts, so be on the look out for those. For today, I want to share a glimpse of what I’ve learned through my dad’s journals. My dad gave his life to Jesus after he was diagnosed with cancer, and I could see that he was a changed man because of it. What I didn’t know was that he was laying a foundation, a legacy really, for me to walk in. I didn’t know the depth of the relationship he had built with God in his final years and months, and it was the sweetest of gifts to look inside those pages and find out.
The most beautiful thing I recognized was that, contrary to his body weakening, he was becoming a spiritual giant. On the outside, his body was wasting away, but on the inside, his heart and spirit only grew larger and stronger. I was undone by that spiritual truth. Though he couldn’t chew real food and could only gain nutrition through a tube going directly into his stomach, he had found the True food that nourished him.
This is what I have learned… about life… about death… we are far more spiritual than we have ever imagined. Though our earthly bodies waste away slowly, there is another reality that we can tap into and it is secure. It is eternal. And it cannot be threatened by cancer.
My dad lost one hundred pounds in the course of four years of illness, inadequate nutrition, and countless procedures and rounds of radiation. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t an absolute horror watching my strong hero of a dad slim down to skin and bones. My last day spent with him, we sat on the couch and held hands as he dozed in and out of painful and drugged sleep. I studied every detail, taking it all in, knowing he might not have much longer. I stared at our interlocked fingers, shocked at how unrecognizable they were, save a stubborn wart he had on his left thumb for so long. The wart did it for me. This was still him. He was still in that frame – somewhere.
What I have learned is that somewhere in that ever expanding space between life and death lies another realm entirely. When we find ourselves lay bare, unraveled, and facing death, we know we were made for more. I have learned that life may actually not be found in the place we always thought it would be after all. It is not found in the skin on our bones or the blood pumping through our beating heart. It is not found in the food we consume or the experiences we tally up for ourselves by the end of our days on earth.
It can only be found in a realm that is unshaken by death. It is found in the breath of God’s Spirit and in the nourishment of his Word washing over us.
And it was found by my dad as his earthly body wasted away, overcome by unrelenting cancerous cells. If only I knew on my last visit with him, my eyes fixed on the details of his enduring face, I was holding hands with a giant.
Body shrinking as cancer consumed, yet spirit growing strong within. A key to life my dad laid in the lap of my inheritance. May I take hold of this truth and learn, just as he had, to grow more fully into my life as the sand in the hourglass fall through to the other side. Even as I age, and someday stand at the doorsteps of my own death, may I see that I only draw nearer to life eternal along the way.
If only we had the eyes to see our spiritual reality – it’s the only reality truly worth living for.
My eyes were opened to it as I read through my dad’s thoughts of his final months. As I read, I instantly was taken back to my last day with him, and instead of seeing my sick dad wasting away on the couch, I saw him for who he truly was, and is – a spiritual giant indeed.