Moving Mountains

Abigail’s story has sparked a lot of questions, in myself and from others. I’ve been asked by multiple people if I thought God has changed the course of Abigail’s life. Did she really start off with a cancerous tumor and He turned it into something low grade halfway through? I’ve wondered the same thing. If you research what they think this tumor is, a DIG, it sounds like that’s what it does… Starts out looking so much like a malignant tumor our oncologist said even pathology reports (had we done a biopsy at birth) could’ve come back falsely positive for a terrible cancerous tumor. And then it just stops. He said like a switch is flipped. It just stops growing. So is that what happened? Was it low grade all along, a DIG or something similar, or did God change the course of a bad cancerous tumor that would have killed her? Obviously I have no idea nor will I ever know. But I feel like we cannot twist Gods arm into doing things for us, even if they are awesome things like saving a child’s life. And if His arm could be twisted, the amount of faith and prayer put forth on our part would not be the thing to change his mind. This could get deeply theological and I’m not about that, talk to my husband if you want to debate, but I think if God acted based on how much faith we had or how much we prayed, we’d all be screwed. This turns God into a God of works – if I do this, God does that. And that totally negates the concept of grace, God does things because He is God not because we do anything to deserve it. As I’ve stated before, I’m not much of a “name it, claim it” person. And I didn’t pray a whole lot for Abigail’s tumor to go away. I mostly prayed for help to get through the hard stuff and for her not to suffer. I truly did not believe Abigail would “be healed” in the sense that we use the term. I thought God’s plan was to use her brief life here and take her to heaven. I had great faith, not that we’d get a miracle of tumor going away or being benign, but more faith that God is who He says He is, regardless of what happens. So with that confession, it doesn’t make sense that God would have healed Abigail based on my faith and prayers.

That’s not to say prayer and faith are not important. But the point of prayer isn’t to just ask God for things you want. That’s part of it, a huge part for most people, but not the purpose. I believe the purpose of prayer is to build relationship with God and change yourself. Prayer is simply talking to God. When you talk to your friends, you do that because you like them and you like hanging out and building your relationship. Not because you want them to do 1000 things for you at any given moment. If that’s the basis of your relationship, you won’t have that friend long. Prayer certainly changes things, it brings you closer to God, changes your heart. Helps you maybe understand things a little better, especially when He doesn’t answer that prayer in the way we desperately want Him to. And faith, I believe the foundation of faith is belief in God and our Jesus who sacrificed himself on a cross so we could be free. With that kind of faith, everything else falls into place. And you can indeed “move mountains”. But only if God needed to move that mountain to achieve what He wanted to achieve. The mountain doesn’t move just because. Abigail’s mountain was meant to move. I hope that makes sense. Again, this is what I think, you may disagree and that’s ok. That’s what makes life so colorful.

I also believe God knows the beginning from the end. We, as mere humans, do not. None of this was surprising to God, although it was very surprising to us. I don’t think He changed Abigail’s ending, he knew this was going to happen. I think this is just her story. This is her miracle. We all have miracles, every day. Some are just more dramatic than others. Last week, Abigail’s miracle was that they removed a tumor we all thought would kill her. Today’s miracle was that she stopped crying long enough for us to go outside for a bit. And I got to sit in the sun with her. Miracles. They come in all forms. Maybe you got a dramatic miracle like Abigail. Maybe you got an extra hour, day, week, month or year with a loved one that you didn’t think you’d have. Maybe you got out of bed today. Maybe you saw the sun rise, or a hummingbird, or a rainbow. They are all the same. All miracles, proof of God’s unconditional love for us.

So what happened with Abigail? We don’t know. I’m not even going to try to guess. It really doesn’t matter. All I know is that God is in her life no matter what the outcome is. And since we get to keep our daughter for now, I pray He helps us to be great stewards of her life so that souls come to Him through her. She is His mighty vessel here on this earth. And that I hope He opens our eyes to all those tiny miracles we so often take for granted.