Brett's Discernment

to have never known anyone closely who has been very ill or passed away young. But inevitably, I suppose, it happens.
My favorite student, hands down, has been diagnosed with a very rare type of cancer. Her tumor is in her trachea, is large, and is inoperable. Chemotherapy/radiation have very little affect on this rare cancer, not to mention that it is unheard of that a 16 year old be diagnosed as such. She is at home and resting as comfortably as she can with her pain medications and a traech tube in due to the tumor continuing to block more and more of her airway. She emailed me today that she had a biopsy of a nodule they found on her lung, so it most likely has metastasized there as well.

This is very hard for me, obviously. This girl I adore like a daughter and have taught her for two years - when she was at school she'd check in and come chat with me at least a couple times per day, and is an amazing role model and friend to all others she came into contact with. She tells all her other friends and any boys that like her that she won't be around them or be close friends if they drink, smoke, or do any drugs - and she swears to all of them that she never will. She is a leader for my program and a great ambassador for it - she wants to teach my subject when she grows up.

Even before she got sick, I had known that she wasn't a churchgoer, and didn't identify herself as having a faith or belief set, and was every week or day trying to think of ways to invite her or somehow get her thinking about a faith life. To me, she is one of the most "Christian" people I know, with an intuitive sense of doing for others and being unfailingly hopeful. Now, all those around her have to be hopeful. I pray here for her own sense of hope, that it may remain strong. I feel a very strong personal grief about the situation, but I have to remember that it isn't about me. not at all. I have to remind myself of the enormity of God's grace, something I take for granted a little too regularly, probably.
I think we all do. The heart-wrenching nature of this is struck with a strong dichotomy of the frustration I feel teaching right now working toward exam week and pulling teeth to get students who have passed all of their core subject tests and all their other teachers are lowering their standards and have simply stopped teaching.
It has been a hard month for me. My brother witnessed a suicide. Another friend was diagnosed and underwent serious surgery for cancer (not her first time, either). My faith changes me though, and makes me approach things in a different way. And in ways I don't always expect. At lunch I was talking to a friend/colleague about my student's condition, and how I am sad, and like almost all others in that secular school environment I've talked to, for her the topic immediately drifted to the "why." I have mulled over these days how surprised I am that I haven't thought of that, though I have been devastated.
After all,

5 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, ^F54 or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ^F55 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you�you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?' or "What will we drink?' or "What will we wear?' 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God ^F56 and his ^F57 righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Keep this girl in your prayers, if you could. I will, and work on worrying less.

On a lighter note, I enjoyed this comic.