Like Those Mountains, God Will Always Be There

“Are the girls close by?”

These words appeared on my screen, and my stomach dropped to the floor. My 41-year-old, perfectly healthy husband was getting an MRI for an abnormality that appeared on a routine retinal scan at the optometrist. 

“The radiologist wants to talk to us together. They won’t take out my IV line. He needs you to drive me to the hospital.”

What unfolded over the next two hours, and then in the eight months that followed, would change so much about our family dynamic, while we gripped tightly to the faith we took for granted in the first 24 years of our relationship. There was a tumor, so large that it was pressing one hemisphere of his brain to the other side. The damage was significant. How he remained without symptoms will plague me for the rest of my days.

We waited in the emergency department, where the neurosurgery team decided we were safe enough to send home, but only for the short run, as they planned to remove the tumor in the coming days. My mind quickly flashed back to this same space, twenty years earlier, as we were beginning our last year of college. We were in the same seats; him on the stretcher, waiting for a prognosis report after a head injury. Me, curled up on a chair, watching our hopes swirl in a vortex. What did this mean for us, for our future? Where was God amid this pain, confusion, and heartache?

Now, the vortex swirls again, but this time, with the weight of four beautiful souls who call him Dad. 

The original surgery took eight hours. I brought my tattered Book of Common Prayer to keep me company while I waited. I remembered my grandmother doing the exact same thing when my grandfather had a tumor removed in the early 1990s. While my Gran read over the Ministration to the Sick, my eyes fell on Psalm 121. These eight verses sustained me during the eight hour surgery and became a constant companion over the coming  months.  Because of where we live, the NIV translation particularly resonated with me.

¹   I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
²  My help comes from the LORD,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.
³  He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴  indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.
⁵  The LORD watches over you—
    the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
⁶  the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.
⁷  The LORD will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
⁸  the LORD will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

The tumor resection was followed a few months later with a craniotomy repair, given the significant damage the tumor caused his skull. Recovery after each of these surgeries involved gradually longer walks through our neighborhood, which sits at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Central Virginia. For weeks, my eyes never left my husband, since every move needed careful monitoring. As our walks grew longer and the days grew hotter, I shifted my gaze up to the mountains.

Half the time, I couldn’t see them. The mountains were blocked by fog. It felt like a fitting metaphor for this moment, when God felt hard to see. 

The fog wasn’t all that was clouding my vision or making faith hard to find. When your profession requires you to anticipate risk and mitigate disaster (as mine does), but then you miss it when it’s happening to your favorite person, what does that say about your ability to live out your purpose? Did I miss the signs? Appointments with oncology confirmed our suspicion that this tumor would likely regrow one day, making fear our constant companion. 

I knew God was there–in the surgical waiting room, in the oncology suite, on every walk, in every panicked moment when grief came out sideways. On those walks when I couldn’t see the mountains, or when my view was partially obstructed, I didn’t have to look far to realize God was still present.

There was no shortage of people in our lives offering guidance when we couldn’t think of anything but laundry, follow-up appointments, and basketball practice. God’s presence looked like the wise council around our farm table, when our most trusted friends asked the tough questions, signed the paperwork, and, without missing a beat, played with our kids like a normal Sunday afternoon. We knew God was close in the grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors who stepped into the lives of four busy adolescents with food, prayers, and distracting outings. The true foretaste of Heaven came as we witnessed our daughters grow in their own knowledge and love of God, trusting that there is faith to find, even in the midst of fear.

My husband and I still walk every day. He is slowly regaining strength, and our dogs join us as we add on miles. I gaze West out our front door, up to the mountains, each morning as we prepare to walk. There are some days when the fog is too heavy to see the mountains and some days when the sky is crystal clear, abundant with fall leaves. 

Like those mountains, God will always be there.