Cancer Screenings and Good Friday

“If you or anyone in your family has had any of these types of cancers, write down the age at diagnosis.”

I check the box labeled “YOU” and write 38.

And I’m in tears in the waiting room ahead of a non-cancer related appointment, all because of one now standard cancer screening form.

This is grief folks.

It sneaks up and backs me into a corner with memories I’d rather forget. Fear and frustration are its foot soldiers.

But today also happens to be Good Friday.

And it’s got me thinking a lot about tension.

The tension between the now and the not yet. Between what we have and what we long for. Between what was and what might have been.

The dictionary defines tension as the act of stretching or straining. As a verb, it means to subject to tension, especially for a specific purpose.

There’s a tension between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That first Saturday was shrouded in sadness and confusion - mourning what was lost and wondering what was next.

But wait. We call that Friday good.

Not the day Jesus rose and rolled the stone away and buried death forever, but the day that he was tortured and torn to shreds.

The day that appeared to collapse the future is the one called good.

But I bet it wasn’t called good the day after, and it definitely didn’t feel good to the people Jesus left behind.

It was eventually called good.

Because of what came from it. Because of what was accomplished through it. Because God breathes life into what the world has reduced to dust. Because He doesn’t waste anything and this was no random sacrifice.

I’m two-and-a-half years out from a cancer diagnosis that collapsed my life. I will never call it good.

But I live in the tension.

Between what I know of God, and what I can’t begin to comprehend. Between what I can feel and sense and what’s just behind the veil. Between what His word says and what I see in my life.

I’m willing to accept the fact that I don’t know where this new road I find myself on will lead me.

But maybe - if I submit myself to the stretching, if I subject myself to the tension, knowing His purpose will ultimately prevail - just maybe, I will see the good He intended to come from it all along.