Dealing With the Hard Stuff

Tonight I went to a benefit concert/dinner/auction for a man at my church who has brain cancer. He had brain surgery to remove the tumor, but his condition is getting worse. Nobody is sure how much longer he is going to live. He went on a mission trip annually for the past several years to Haiti, which automatically puts him in a special place in my heart. After he was diagnosed with the cancer, he came up to me one Sunday night at church. Apparently, someone had been telling him about my love for Brasil, and my passion for mission work/my interest in becoming a long-term missionary one day. I'll never forget what he said to me: "I heard you've got that mission blood in your veins. I know all about that. When I'm on that mountain in Haiti, there is no place I'd rather be. I wish I could wake up there everyday." I have prayed and prayed and prayed that God would allow him to go back to Haiti just one more time before he passed away, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. It absolutely breaks my heart because I know what it's like to long for a place that you have truly fallen in love with. I do have faith that God can heal him at any point if it is His will; but I also know that not everyone who is diagnosed with cancer is healed. As I watched the man being wheeled around in a wheelchair tonight, I saw the condition he is in. At one point, the people singing asked if he wanted to say anything, and he just shook his head. I almost cried right then, because this is a man that in the past, if you asked him if he wanted to say anything...before you could finish your sentence, he was standing up, talking about what God had done in his life. This has become a difficult time for everyone involved, but especially his family. Please keep him, his family, and all of his friends in your thoughts and prayers.