The Big Plan

My daddy is sick. He has cancer. We found out in February, but Leroy had probably been around for a few months before that. Since then, it's been a lot of crying, laughing, worrying about if that girl next to me in class is dying of some rare form of a cold or it's just allergies... and dodging church greeters (DON'T look them in the eye. They need no encouragement).

All in all, it's been okay. Once my daddy started treatment and he started to get better things started to turn around. My daddy and I joke about pulling the "cancer card" (it is a little known fact that once a person gets cancer or a member of a person's immediate family gets cancer you get a little card to carry around. It gets you free stuff and also gets people to do stuff for you when they don't always feel like it. We can't show you unless we're actually going to use it. it's kind of like in babylon 5 with the dagger thingy that the narns carry. If they pull it out, they gotta draw blood. If I pull out my cancer card, it has to be used... I used it to get out of a summer class.) Of course, my dad has taken to an attempt on ventriloquism. With a sock puppet.

Anyway. My bestest friend said something along the lines of "maybe your dad having cancer is God's plan because his faith and attitude have been so strong.... and it's been such an inspiration for so many people!" While I don't doubt that many people are inspired. I love my dad and I love that he's been so upbeat and so strong (at least, when i've seen him. I know he's had his hard times). I don't agree that it was "God's Plan". Maybe i'm being one of those wacky people when I say this- but I believe that God causes good things. Not the bad. I know that he told us we'd have bad things. But just because He tells us something doesn't mean he caused it, right? I know that my God is big enough and powerful enough to take the bad and make it good. Like with this. He's taken this horrible thing that my dad has to go through (having his body pumped full of poison 8 times between March and August) and turned it into an encouragement for my family and our friends.
I definitely feel closer to my daddy now that he's started having to do this.

So I'd just like to say- God loves me. He loves me enough to take horrible, horrible things like losing two amazingly brilliant and loving people or having to watch your dad go through chemo and make them into something beautiful- a way to show His faithfulness and the importance of the body of Christ. Mm. It's good.