The Resurrection Life

Mom called in the middle of my coffee date at Goldberry. Figuring things were fine, I let it go to voicemail. I talk to my mom nearly every day ever since she was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer.

We live far enough apart that it’s hard to get together regularly, what with my three kids and husband and job, but I try to see her once a week. Intentions sometimes slip away and one week becomes two, maybe three if things get too busy. Then, I remember the incurability of stage four kidney cancer, the five years or so that had been given to her seven years ago, and we make plans.

My coffee date ended. I had to write an article. Normally, I’d head home to work, but the article was short, and I still had coffee to drink, so I stayed, forgetting my mom until the phone rang again.

“Hi, Mom! How’s it going?”

*

Everyone knows the story of Lazarus. Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus—The one you love very much is sick—but Jesus didn’t bother to rush to His friend’s side until He heard the news that Lazarus died. If only you had been here, Mary sobbed, My brother would not have died. You can hear the unspoken accusation, Where were You? Didn’t You hear me? Why didn’t You do something?

*

When things go badly, we ask, “Why me?” Sometimes when things go well, we ask it too.

But I’ve found “why me” to be useless. In all the times I’ve asked it, all it has done is whirled me into a frenzy of self-pity, anger, rage, resentment, and sadness. “Why me” sees nothing except me. In its attempt to make sense of the world, all it sees is the self as somehow special—either spared or damned—compared to everyone else. “Why me” makes me stare at my own guts in grief. 

Why not me?

*

“Oh, I’m good. I’m just on my way home from the doctor’s office. Are you sitting down?”

*

All the mourners thought He was crazy when Jesus asked them to roll away the stone, but Jesus only cared what His Father thought, and His Father thought that Lazarus should live, even if it seemed insane, to think a dead man could live again. Plenty of people had begged Jesus to heal their bodies. Some even thought their people were already dead, but Jesus said they were just asleep and told them to get up. 

Some dared to expect a miracle. I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.

“Lazarus, come out!”

*

Before my mother’s cancer diagnosis, it never occurred to me that she might die. Oh, sure, someday, but not soon. I had taken her presence for granted. She is here. How could there be a time when she was not?

We talk about time like it’s currency, like we have so many seconds tucked into a savings deposit box somewhere. Spent time. Wasted time. Bought time. Lost time. Living on borrowed time. When the bank statement arrives and the doctor says it’s stage four, all we desperately want is more time. So we plead for a miracle.

But what if the miracle isn’t being given more time. What if the miracle is in the revelation of our mortality? More time would be nice, but what about the time right in front of us, the time we’re just spending without seeing its holiness, coasting along with no regard for its nearing end, how each moment is charged with the miracle of being?

If we lean into this awareness, we fall into the pool of grace and climb out into resurrected life. We die to the old rules about time as currency, and we live with a new rule, that time is filled with every measure of love, waiting for us to engage it, waiting for us to celebrate the miracle of every moment, interconnected and glorious and now.

*

“The doctor went over my scans from last week,” my mom told me. “He said the cancer is gone.”

“You’re kidding.” I sat down. “That’s amazing!” I stood up. I said, “That’s unbelievable!” I paced around the small room adjacent to the main coffee shop. A college student was working on a computer with earbuds in as if the whole world hadn’t just been born again. She wasn’t paying attention. 

Pay attention! I wanted to shout. Everything living right now is alive! 

“This is amazing!” I couldn’t stop saying it. “I never thought we would hear this news.”

We talked for a few more minutes, about the unbelieving, the wonders. This is a miracle! We didn’t believe the cancer could just go away, and here it is, the cancer went away!

“The doctor did say I’ll probably have to go back on Inlyta again, someday,” Mom said. “They’ll do scans again at eight weeks, and then twelve, to make sure it isn’t coming back. But I can stop taking it for now.”

“Wow,” I said. I tucked away that small reality, someday shoved off to the far horizon of our lives, and asked instead, “So, what now?”

*

Lazarus was one of a few people given a taste of the resurrected life before Jesus himself died and rose again. Others were healed of paralysis. Others were freed from chains that bound them. Others were born again, dead to the life they had been living, alive to the miracle of love in front of them. When Jesus ascended into heaven, He left behind the apostles. The angels told them, What are you standing around for? Go!

This is just a moment to catch our breath. You will have to go back onto the cancer medication someday. Rejoice, you have been given the vision to see the fullness of time, how brief, how lasting. 

What do we do now?

*

Mom and I said goodbye, and I set the phone down on the table. The college student continued studying, not paying attention. Goldberry is the sort of place that usually has a number of people who matter a lot to me hanging around. I walked out into the main area of the shop. No one I knew very well was there. I walked back toward my booth, at a loss for how to behave in a moment like this (Can you believe this is happening?), then pivoted again. Who cares if I don’t know these people that well? People need to know!

“My mom’s cancer is gone!” I shouted, laughing, raising my arms to the ceiling. Doug, the owner of the coffee shop who also leads worship at our church, came out to see what was going on. He gave me a hug.

“We thought she’d have five years,” I sobbed into his shoulder. “It’s been seven. It’s gone! This is amazing! I never thought I’d hear this news.”

“Praise God!” Doug said.

The baristas all stood grinning and weeping, watching me laugh and wipe my eyes and not know what to do with myself. “I guess I’ll go home now.” I gathered up my computer and my empty mug.

Everyone watched me leave. I got into the car, as if it was just another day.

*

I learned the next day that a beloved faculty member at the local university had just passed away from cancer. It had happened quickly, his turn from relatively good health to death so hard, so sudden. Some of the folks in the coffee shop were close to him. We waited to tell the news to other friends who were waiting on a report from their physician. I held my breath, then burst out with this God-news in front of people I knew had lost parents to cancer. How is it possible to celebrate this unearned gift in the face of such unearned grief?

But this happens every day. This is why Paul doesn’t waste time telling his readers what to do in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” You need to do both at once—sometimes on the same day—you need to make space for both of these sacred moments. I spent years lamenting my mom’s diagnosis. How dare I fail to rejoice publicly in the face of this gift? How dare I rob my friends and family of the glory of Easter morning after so many years holding space for the sorrow of Good Friday?

Good news. Bad news. What now? What now, what now, what now?

*

Maybe it seems obvious that we’re all going to die. The tragedy is that we forget it. Today I am standing and rejoicing in the unbelievable miracle of this healing, but tomorrow? Will I forget the beautiful deep time the awareness of my mom’s mortality gave us and return to going through the motions?

Resurrection life stubbornly demands otherwise. It demands that we live in Christ’s light, rooted in Him, strengthened by Him, overflowing with thankfulness, living as Jesus did, fully present to what was happening around Him and in Him, seeing the image of God in everything and loving it fiercely. 

How dare we return to how we lived before the great awakening.

*

Out came Lazarus. 

All the family and friends gathered around must not have known what to do. Dance? Laugh? Stand up? Sit down? Hug? Jump around?

I think I have an idea.

–Written by Sarah M. Wells. Used by permission from the author. Click here to connect with Sarah.