Did I get a tiny glimpse of God's plan?

 It is sometimes hard to believe that God works all things for good.  Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things [emphasis added] God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." It is especially hard to believe this when the world seems to get more brutal and evil and corrupt every passing day.  Now, having said that I think it can be argued that it feels like the world is getting worse but perhaps it feels that way at least partly because of the 24 hour stream of news we all hold at our fingertips.  My mom's boyfriend quipped to her many years ago, and she would often repeat it to us, "The world's been burning since the world's been turning."  Take a look at history - humans have been brutalizing each other since we have historical records.

But back to my main points...all God asks of us is to have faith.  Even a mustard sized amount of faith is enough.  We, as humans, simply cannot understand all the intricate weavings of the universe.  I have come to believe that what looks like unimaginable senselessness to us can be worked by God to change the world in positive ways someway, somehow, at some time.  It is important to understand that God would never, could never cause terrible, evil things to happen.  But if we believe that God is omnipotent, then it must mean that he allows awful things to happen.  I have seen these types of happenings in my own life, multiple times now.  And they happened in such a patterned way that it really can't be overlooked.

Almost 7 years ago now, my larger than life, boisterous, fun-loving, hilarious, best friend of mine mother succumbed to mesothelioma and died.  But about two years prior to her death, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer and the biopsy was sent off and we were all in shock and she had to go on disability from work was when the shock and grief truly began.  What on earth was she going to do for money?  She'd been a realtor her whole life and hadn't had a 401K, she hadn't saved for retirement and didn't have a health insurance plan.  She'd gotten out of real estate during the 2008 crash and had been scraping by working for a company as a collections agent and had actually become quite successful at it.  Due to her intelligence and compassion, she was good at helping people come up with a plan to deal with their debt.  But no matter how successful she was, she still wasn't making a ton of money and was using Minnesota state health insurance.  Fast forward a few weeks and her biopsy results came back and she learned her lung cancer was actually mesothelioma!  This made sense since her parents (my grandparents) did a lot of home renovations/demo when she was a young child and she was likely exposed to asbestos at that time.  She was connected with a law firm and was awarded enough money to live comfortably during her final two years of disability as her body slowly succumbed to the cancer.  Because she was healthy and stubborn, my mom did what she could to fight her cancer naturally and actually felt pretty good until the last few weeks of her life.  For those final two years, my Mom and all who knew and loved her, including me, prayed ceaselessly that God would heal her completely and allow her to live a full life.  But God did not answer our prayers.  However, because God saw fit to bless her with the type of cancer He did, and with the settlement money she deserved, she was able to take piano lessons for the first time in her life.  She bought herself a brand new piano and a comfortable seat with a back to sit at it on.  She bought a DSLR camera and practiced with it, taking photos of her flowers on her little deck and of her cat and fish.  She set up a huge salt water fish tank and learned to keep cichlids and delighted in her fish and her kitty and the beautiful flowers she planted on her condo deck.  She was able to have good conversations with her healthcare givers about her faith and about how even if God did not heal her, she knew that she was going to Heaven.  She was able to spend time with her family and friends, and especially with her daughters and grandchildren.  She was able to meet all five of her grandbabies, even her youngest granddaughter, Emma Jean, who was born just 9 months before my mom died.  She purchased a Bible for each of her grandkids, chose a special verse for each of them and noted it on the inside cover of each of the Bibles, and a wrote a note inside the Bible telling them how much she loved them.  She wouldn't have had the time, the wherewithal, or the money to do these things if it weren't for the type of cancer God blessed her with.

Last October, my mom's sister, my Auntie Jo, also died of cancer at the young age of 64.  Auntie Jo died of breast cancer.  But we need to rewind about 10 months prior to her death to see the similar, fascinating blessing God was working in her life.  About 10 months before my aunt died of her cancer, she was laid off from her job and it was incredibly shocking.  She'd been one of the heads of safety at the pharmaceutical company where she'd worked for, gosh, at least seven years I think.  She was well respected for knowing the ins and outs of her role but also being kind and good to work with.  The company had recently been bought out and her role was filled by someone already employed by the company that purchased her company.  As part of her layoff, she was awarded a year's worth of her salary to get her by until she found a new job.  She was devastated for a few days because her health had not been good (at this point, she did not know her cancer had returned).  She was frantically scouring job openings and I was sending her openings I knew of at my company.  But then she decided she was going to rest for a bit, pray that in God's timing something would fall into place, and she would deal with her health first.  After a few months of rest and trying to get her strength back up on her own, and not feeling better, she went to her oncologist and learned the bad news.  Her breast cancer had returned and metastasized all throughout her body.  She would not recover this time.  But because of the money she'd been provided as part of her package when she was let go, once again God had had provided a blessing for my aunt.  She had the opportunity to not worry about how she was going to survive, financially, for the remaining months she had on earth.  She was able to pay her bills, spend time with her close family, put her affairs in order, and take care of her mother's affairs to the best of her ability since my grandmother (her mother) sadly, suddenly passed away due to a stroke just four months before my aunt passed away.  She also spent her remaining weeks sharing the Gospel with anyone she came into contact with.  I was blessed to care for my aunt in her final weeks and we did all kinds of errands together, getting her affairs in order - we went to banks, the funeral home, the flower shop, etc. - and everywhere we went, she would share that she only had a few weeks left to live so she was putting things into place so that I had less to take care of after she was gone.  People would remark that she didn't seem afraid, that they couldn't believe she was smiling!  And my Auntie Jo would respond it was because she knew where she was going.  She knew that because of her faith in God, and in Jesus as her savior, she was going to live for eternity in Heaven so she was quite simply unafraid and was actually a bit excited for this next part of her eternal life.  Just think of what kind of impact she may have had on the people she talked to, or those who heard her who were just in the room?

It cannot be a coincidence that God did not answer our prayers to heal either my mom or my aunt and that both of them died very young, and that both died of cancer but that both were blessed with windfalls of enough money so that they could stop working for the last months/years of their lives and use that time to love their family and friends well and also to love strangers well by sharing the Gospel message.  Who knows what impacts those conversations might have in the future?