Let us storm heaven…

Kobayashi Maru’s brother has been dealing with leukemia for a little while, and yesterday the news became very bad, indeed.

The test results are back. His leukemia is back – for the third time. He’s been given a 5% chance to live. There. I got it out.

If it had been anyone else, the doctor said…the doctor would have recommended hospice care. Hospice. Shit. Next year he turns forty. Instead, they’re going to throw the pharmacy at him – radiation, chemo, the works. One last ditch try to work a medical miracle. That all starts this afternoon.

Horrible. He is precisely where we were one year ago – when we were being told our brother would not live to see Halloween. In reading this, I almost feel like I rewalking my brother’s journey again.

As with our family, when things got to this point, Koba is finding small miracles and consolations:

Last week, my brother met, as he has several times, with the priest of the parish he attends. (My sister-in-law is Catholic. They are raising their daughter Catholic. My brother is, well… a believer… a seeker trusting in Christ. And let’s leave it at that. That’s good enough.) My brother asked the priest an age-old question: what is this prayer thing? what am I supposed to do? how do I pray? The priest replied: prayer is like catching a butterfly; do not struggle and run after it; be still and it will land on you. Nice metaphor, he thought. Beautiful.

Priest leaves. Ten minutes pass. My brother sits quietly. My sister-in-law comes home with my niece who runs in the door ahead of her. Without saying a word, my niece runs to her toy chest, opens it and pulls out… a stuffed butterfly… and sets it gently in my brother’s lap. “Daddy”, she says, “I want you to have this because I love you very much.”

Dear readers – you people of faith, and others who may not have faith but are graced with good-will…this afternoon they “throw the pharmacy” at this man named Ed – hoping for a miracle cure. I believe in miracles. What God has in mind is not perhaps for us to know, but while we are here we are not helpless, because we have the incredible force of prayer at our disposal. Please pray for Ed, and for his family. Ask for a cure, and if a cure is not in the cards, a healing – because healing happens on so many levels and tends to flow outward and encompass so many others. Let us put Ed into our pockets and sleeves and prayerbooks and storm heaven for a young father and his little one – for all the blessings and graces they can possibly receive, and for a family in crisis.

Let us pray.