At the end of your life there is a 100% chance that you will die. But some of us die several times before that. I have died at least twice already. The most recent time was six years ago.
This is the story of dying and living, and of the Time Redeemer and what He has done in my life.
College was not good to me. I spent most of my freshman year asleep. I was sick with an illness that refused to show itself in my blood, and a lump growing out of the side of my neck that doctors refused to take seriously.
We finally got the diagnosis in the summer of 2006. Turns out that lump was cancer.
After a summer of tests and radiation treatments, I had no voice, half my hair, and burned, red, flaky skin on the lower part of my face. And this is how I returned for my sophomore year of college. Because I hadn’t made many friends the year before, very few people knew what I had been through that summer. I felt like a freak. I was taken from an environment where it felt like the whole town was praying for me and supporting me, and plunged into a place where most people were only focusing on the next time they could get drunk. I had always struggled to relate to people my own age, and now it was almost impossible.
Parts of me died during this time. The plans I had made for how my life was supposed to go. What I thought I knew about life. The naïve parts of me. Certainly any ideas of great college was supposed to be. All dead. I know that sounds dramatic. But a cancer diagnosis is one of those events that draw a clear line in a person’s life, between the before and the after. And often a person is changed so drastically that if the before and after ever met, they would not even recognize each other.
And so I mourned. Because that’s what you do when something dies. For years I mourned. And no matter how hard I tried, how hard I reached, I couldn’t find my old self. Because things that die aren’t often brought back to life. And sometimes it’s better that way. But it took me a while to figure that out.
Five years after remission I found myself in a Bible study on Ruth. If you haven’t read Ruth I’m going to recommend that you stop reading this blog right now and go read some Ruth instead, because it is so good. Seriously. Do it.
God used one simple section to change my life. Before Ruth heads down to the threshing floor to meet Boaz, Naomi tells her to put on her best clothes. The author of the Bible study said that because Ruth was a widow, she was probably still in her mourning clothes. She had to take off those in order to put on new clothes and step into the amazing plans God had for her.
And that’s when it hit me. I was still wearing my mourning clothes. And it was going to be pretty dang hard to put on the new clothes God wanted to offer me until I took those off. You can’t put one outfit on over the top of the other. You’ll just look silly. And if you’ve been wearing your old outfit for a while you’re still going to smell bad even if you’ve got something new on top of it.
That day God told me it was time to take off my mourning clothes. And I listened. In my mind I took them off, and instead of hanging them up in my closet for a rainy day I cut them into pieces and burned them in a heap. They don’t exist anymore. And I put on the brilliant new outfit that God had waiting for me.
And that new set of clothes ended up being the World Race.
The ladies in my Bible study knew how terrible college had been for me. How challenging it was physically, mentally, and emotionally. And when I started talking about the World Race one of them said, “You know, I think God is going to redeem that time.”
Sometimes I amaze myself with my small mindedness. So much of my bitterness had been tied to the fact that I lost a section of my life that I thought I was entitled to. I didn’t even stop to remember that God works outside of the timelines that humans set up for themselves. It never dawned on me that I would at some point get that time back.
It never entered into my mind, not even once, that God could and would redeem time.
This month we’ve been working with college students a lot. We’re living in a dorm. A few nights ago two of my teammates and I sat in our dorm room and watched movies and ate junk food until four in the morning. It was seriously like I was in college again, but college like I had wanted it to be. I’ve gotten to have so much fun this month, like rocking out to an awesome cover band on my birthday, watching a local soccer game, or eating my way through the night markets. And most importantly, I’ve gotten to do all of this with awesome people who I’ve come to love over the last three months. Friends I had been craving.
Can we just talk about God’s goodness for a bit? About His faithfulness? And oh, yeah, how about His extreme patience with me? There are things in my heart that I can’t even begin to explain to you. About how ridiculously good He has been to me. About how good He has ALWAYS been to me. Even in those difficult times. And even though I was a baby, He still chose to give me this.
I know that my Redeemer lives. (Job 19:25a)
But He has not just redeemed my life from the death I deserve because of my sin.
He has also redeemed time.
Yes, I serve a God who can redeem anything.
Anything. Even time.
