Anthea and I had a potentially challenging three weeks recently. The new hip I had installed in January 2018, or was it ‘19 had been hurting and I was concerned that all the walking we were doing wasn’t good for it. An X ray showed that there was nothing wrong with it, instead it showed what I was told by my doctor was a 6mm shadow on my pelvis. Three days later Anthea opened a letter referring me for a MRI scan at a leading cancer specialising hospital for a suspected sarcoma cancer.
Each of us responded in our own way to this, but the purpose of writing about it is not so much to describe how we individually dealt with what potentially could have been life changing experience but the difference it has made to our relationship.
Fear of loss is a very powerful motivator! It brings into sharp focus all those small things in life that should have been dealt with but never have, and creates a depth of shared purpose that few other things can. We would have considered ourselves a fairly well sorted couple, after all, we should be, given our involvement in Sozo for Couples, but what we discovered over these weeks was that there was still further that we could go in our relationship, there were still things we hadn’t been telling each other often enough. There was a deeper, more intimate relationship to be had with God too, as we both reached further into Him to rescue our future, the whole experience being made almost worth it, if only for that…
10 days after the MRI we received a call from our doctor with the news that the scan had shown there was nothing to be concerned about. We were given the all clear. Perhaps oddly it tool almost as long for me to accept the normality of this new situation as it had to accept the possibility of cancer. But here’s the thing, we’re determined not to lose what we’ve learned, not to lose our common resolve for the future, not to lose our deeper connection with our heavenly Father. And here’s our challenge to you…how would you respond with each other if that letter had dropped though your front door? What difference would it have made to your attitude to each other? What might you have wanted to say? And how might it have changed your prayer life…because now’s the time to do something about all of that, not when the MRI report might be different.
Written by Darrell Cocup