what would God have me do?

As I look back on the 52 years I’ve been at my profession, I have tried to respond to life’s situations asking, “What would God have me do?”  Sometimes that direction has come quickly.  Sometimes it has taken longer.

One night I was called to a home where the husband had shot his wife and then himself, killing both.  Their nine year old son was in the police squad when I arrived.  My direction was to search with the boy for a relative, teacher, friend — anyone with whom he was familiar, who could be with him when I shared the news of what had happened in that house.

Early one evening I was called to a home where a domestic dispute was re-erupting.  I went to the home, knocked on the door and heard, “Come in!”  I entered and observed a man holding a gun on his wife and then stating to me, “As long as I’m going to shoot one I might as well shoot two.”  The direction I felt at that moment was “talk fast.”  And I did.

One day a man, separated from his wife, took his two children to his parent’s house and then went home and killed himself.  I was asked to go with the children’s mother and two police officers to help put the children in the mother’s custody and then tell the parents what their son had done.  We had a plan for approach.  As soon as the grandmother saw her daughter-in-law at the door, everything disrupted.  We all discarded the plan and took care of the children’s safety and informing the grandparents, as seemed best to do.

Then last year around Christmas, I was at the hospital when the oncologist said to me, “Your daughter has stage four cancer.  She is the youngest patient I have ever had with this type of cancer.  I usually find it in 65+ year old men, and I give them a year to live.”  I didn’t have a plan for his one.  “God, what would you have me do?”  Nope, that wasn’t the first question that came.  It was more like, “How can this be?”  And of course, I didn’t believe it.

I had been with parents whose children had become seriously ill many times.  I had been with families whose teen children and younger had lost their life to drugs, accidents, other illnesses.  But this was my own daughter, my own flesh and blood, my own child — my goodness.  “How can this be?”

When such news comes I know there is an emotional process.  But I also know everyone proceeds through that process in their own individual way.  I started with denial.  My wife and I exchanged thoughts, emotions, fears, expressions of our faith and more, giving strength to each other every day.  My extended family, the church and this community have been enormously supportive.

But do you know what has been the most helpful?  It is that 34 year old daughter who has stage four cancer.  She is absolutely amazing.  She sees the good that God has brought forth in so many ways from this situation.  She believes “In all things God works together for good with those who love Him.”  And she does love Him.  She has not missed her work teaching at school except for days I have taken her to the Iowa City Cancer Center for chemotherapy.  She continues to give the children’s sermon in worship once a month.  She gets her eight year old daughter to dance lessons and her six year old son to baseball.  She has a setback for a few days following the chemo, but she endures it with an unbelievable attitude.  Truly this young lady is an extraordinary inspiration to me, her mother, her family, her school, her church and this entire community.

This time when I asked, “What would God have me do?” He answered through Nicole.

Respectfully…

Bob