The Mind is a Funny Thing

It is strange how the human mind works sometimes. Well, my human mind, anyway, is bizarre. Most of you already know that. What I mean is that there are things that happen in life that remind you of other things, and before you know it, your mind is spinning 100 miles an hour thinking about some past event because of some insignificant trigger. A smell can transport you back to your first date, or it can transport you to when you got stuck in the campground outhouse when you were five. The human mind is a funny thing.

I was at a meeting the other night, an advisory board meeting for the school that our children attend. If I am honest, I had some anxiety about this particular meeting and was praying that it would go well. I walked into the room where the meeting was to be held, where I was expected to lead it, and something strange happened. The anxiety that I felt before walking into that room was replaced with something else. I am not sure how to explain it, I guess it was anxiety, but for a different reason. I am not sure that is the best way to explain it, but what I felt leading up to that moment changed. All of a sudden, my mind was transported back to a previous Advisory board meeting, one that had happened a few months before this one. On that day, Gage and I went to the doctor about our concerns with Gage's eyes. Our doctor, in my mind at least, is the epitome of "calm, cool, and collected." When Will (our firstborn) was born, the umbilical cord was around his neck as he was coming out, and I remember our doctor's face during it all because I was laser-focused on him. I remember Will coming out, and the doctor, in one smooth move, slipped the cord from around his neck.

I was amazed and said something to that effect. Our doctor smiled and said, "This isn't my first rodeo." I will never forget that. The same doctor delivered our next three children, and things were pretty smooth, but what was reinforced in my mind is how calm, cool, and collected our doctor is. When Gage and I visited him that day to address our concerns about his eyes, I knew that we would most likely be referred elsewhere. I understood that our doctor might not know immediately what was wrong with him. I understood that what was wrong with Gage might be extremely serious and that there would need to be more tests. I knew that whatever our doctor saw or thought, he would be cool as a cucumber. And he was. That day, though I thought I knew all these things, I saw something in the doctor's face as he looked at Gage that alarmed me. I am unsure if I saw something in his face or that the reality of what I knew in the recesses of my soul became a reality my heart didn't want to believe. That day, everything changed. I can't explain it, but one's heart coming to terms with the fact that your child has something serious and unknown wrong with him is life-altering. I don't know how to explain it, but I compare it to having the foundation of your life shift a few feet. I am a pastor and understand the ramifications of that statement. What shifted would have to be put back into place and aligned again around the chief cornerstone (1 Peter 2:4-7). Some of you have had a similar experience where the foundation of your life shifted, and I pray that in some way, that foundation is aligned to the cornerstone - to Jesus. Even though these things shake our foundation in the moment, what we should realize as time goes on is that Jesus is the only way we will get through all of this intact.

I walked into the advisory board meeting room, the room that I was expected to lead a meeting in just a few minutes, and all of this came flooding back. I would never have guessed that an advisory board meeting would trigger some of these thoughts. It did. The mind is a funny thing that way. If I am honest, even though that meeting was some sort of trigger and my mind was transported back a few months, my mind had been in a starkly different place the past few weeks.

We met with our doctor the other day over Zoom. Gage gets his blood drawn locally, and then we meet with the doctor virtually and discuss how Gage is doing. We are very grateful that Gage seems to be handling the targeted chemo pill like a champ. Gage's blood looks pretty good, and the doctor isn't concerned about anything so far. Next month, we will go back to Rochester, and they will do scans, and we will see how the chemo pill is affecting the lesions around his eyes and on the bones of his body, and pray that the disease hasn't impacted other parts of his body. In our conversation with the doctor, I must have mentioned anxiety, and she asked how Desirae and I were doing with all of this. Our experience at Mayo has been that people there genuinely care about Gage. Desirae has said a few times that it seems like our doctor treats Gage like her own child. It isn't unusual for our doctor to ask how we are doing.

Ever since Gage was diagnosed with ECD, I have taken an interest in the disease and tried to learn about it. I have found a support group on social media, met several very nice people, and heard their life stories with ECD. The last time we were in Rochester, our doctor mentioned a study done a year ago about kids with ECD, and I asked if I could read it. She printed it off for me and told me that if there was ever anything that I wanted to read that I didn't have access to, she could get it for me. Knowledge, for me, was something that helped me cope. Lately, what used to be carthartic has become a source of anxiety. I used to read through the stories and things on Facebook and learn and find encouragement, but lately I haven't found these things to be good for my soul. Even the articles that others post about medical research and advancements that are being made haven't proved to be as helpful as they had been. I told our doctor this, and she said that it was common for her parents to get to a point where they just had to step away for a while. I'll be honest, I haven't written anything for a while, partly because I have been trying (without much success) to focus and think about other things.

I have been thinking about how interesting the human mind is. What used to be so helpful isn't helpful, and the events of a few months ago, that I haven't thought about, came flooding back at one of the most inopportune times. So what is the solution? The answer is to go back to the foundation of our faith. When the foundation of our life seems to be moving or cracked or however else you want to understand it, we need to move it back or repair it. How else would one ever expect to move forward and navigate the circumstances of life with an unsure foundation? Foundation rocking events happen in our lives that shake us to the core, like having a child diagnosed with cancer. Many of you have had events in your lives in one way or another that have rattled your foundation and made you question what you had always taken for granted as certain. Then, just as we think we are getting things figured out and settling into a new normal, our minds revert to the past, and what used to bring us encouragement becomes a source of anxiety, and we are focused once again on going to our foundation.

At the start of Gage's journey with ECD, I spent hours and hours in the scriptures and talking with God, and as time went on, some of that time was replaced with reading articles and listening to stories. These things are not bad in and of themselves (and I could make the case they are necessary), but when they become the foundation of our hope, we have a problem, and we are asking for the Lord to bring us back to what foundationally matters. My hope (and Gage's) rests in Jesus. The hope of a bodily resurrection, that one day our frail bodies will be made new and be free from sickness, is found in Jesus. It is alright to be interested in medical advancements, what is working for others, and the stories of encouragement from others. However, we must remember that Jesus is the foundation on which all of this makes any lasting sense.