Nearness is Enough

I lost my eighteen-year-old son, Ezra, to a cruel battle with Leukemia in September of 2022. When he was sick, the seventh floor of the Children’s Hospital, the cancer floor, was full of children fighting that cursed disease. Parents wore the battle scars of life at the hospital—the wrinkled clothes and messy hair, the simple meals in the kitchen area, the always present seventh-floor sticker-name-badge, and the dried, cracked hands from continual washing. There was an unspoken camaraderie between us, a knowing and a grieving.

It was not uncommon to walk into the kitchen on that floor to find a mom crying, trying to work up the courage to step back into her child’s room. There were times I silently approached these women, asked if I could give them a hug, and prayed for them. Afterwards, they left with tear-stained faces, ready to step back into battle.

I came to understand that a sign hung on a child’s door that said, “Do not clean” meant they were gravely ill in the ICU. I’d walk past those rooms fifteen times a day and pray for the children who were away from the seventh floor. A visit to another floor was never good news.

As we walked with Ezra through cancer, so many people said to me, “I don’t know how you’d do this without faith.” I’d usually smile and nod in agreement, yet it also left me wondering: What would that journey have been like without faith? I wondered what the parents who sat with their dying children thought and felt when they had no hope in life after death, no God to cry out to. I wondered if there were any tangible differences between the journeys we faced.

If I’m honest, my desire and prayer throughout the entirety of Ezra’s illness was that God would pluck us up out of the horrors of what Ezra was walking through. I prayed for and expected miracles. I pleaded with God for healing. I believed God was going to heal Ezra here on earth. Surely, knowing the God of the universe would offer me some advantage, some benefit that others would not experience. Surely, he would pluck us up out of the mire and muck of cancer, set our feet on solid ground, and heal Ezra. I imagined telling stories of how God reached down and rescued us and healed my son.

God did none of that.

I longed for a miracle. I longed for healing. I longed for God to remove our suffering and restore the story of our lives. Yet, those moments when God miraculously removes our suffering seem to be rare. Throughout the entirety of Scripture, it seems God rarely removes the trials of his people. Rather, he gives this promise over and over, “I will be with you.”

He tells Abraham in Genesis 26, “I will be with you.” He tells Moses in Exodus 3, “I will be with you.” He tells Joshua in Joshua 1, “I will be with you.” The list could go on and on. Yet, in my pain and anguish, there were times I yelled at God, “I don’t want you to be with me! I just want you to rescue me! I want you to rescue my son! I want out of this!”

This brings me back to my previous question: What was different about our road of suffering compared to those families on the seventh floor who did not know Jesus? I cannot point to any one time and say, “There! That is where God was with me!” I cannot point to miracles or moments of clarity. I cannot name any specific instance in which I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that God was with us. Yet, he promises he is with us. Scripture says that God “is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). It also says that his nearness is our good (Ps. 73:28). As a brokenhearted mom, I knew Scripture said God was near and his nearness was for my good. I confess, however, that his nearness did not look anything like I had hoped. My desire was problem removal. God’s answer was his nearness. Somehow, in ways I cannot comprehend, God’s nearness was better than the removal of cancer. I don’t understand that.

So, what does the nearness of God look like amid our trials and our suffering? For years, I thought the nearness of God would mean that everything would be okay or, at the very least, feel okay. I hoped that his nearness would mean some sort of tangible presence, some sort of relief from pain. I hoped that it would act as a shield and protection around me, that it would stop the fiery arrows of the enemy from penetrating my heart. But that was not the nearness of God.

Could it be that God is near, even when we don’t see or understand it? Could it be that his nearness will not look anything like we had hoped? Maybe it’s in our deepest valleys and most broken places where Jesus meets us—not with relief or by pulling us out of our pain and suffering, but by simply holding us close, holding our faith. Maybe the nearness of God looks like the daily endurance to do hard things and not give up. Maybe the nearness of God is the ability to stare death in the face, on the face of your precious son, and know with certainty that this life is not all there is. Maybe the nearness of God looks like faith that endures when, really, there should be no reason to hold onto faith. Maybe the nearness of God was seen through the hundreds of prayers we uttered in the midst of disappointment and loss. Maybe the nearness of God was having the courage to pray with and for doctors who did not know Jesus. Maybe the nearness of God was shown through the kindness Ezra extended to the nurses over and over. Maybe the nearness of God was found in moments of laughter amid so much sorrow and suffering. Maybe the nearness of God was seen through a thousand small decisions to keep moving, even when all we wanted to do was give up. I don’t know. Maybe the nearness of God will not look anything like we had hoped or thought, and yet it’s there in a hundred tiny ways every day.

As I sit and reflect on how our story played out, I have to believe that, somehow, God’s nearness helped us. I have to believe that our story was different than others because we had the King of Kings in the room with us, even if most days we were unaware of his presence. There has to be hope in knowing that even amid such heartache, God is at work doing something in us and for his glory that we cannot yet see or understand.

There is much that I learned in that season of sorrow, and there is much I am still learning as I try to figure out what life after loss looks like. I do know that it has required me to surrender the hopes and expectations of what I thought God was like and cling to the knowledge of who God says he is. He is kind, loving, and good, even though none of what we walked through felt kind, loving, or good. He was near, and that was for our good, even though I cannot point to how I saw his nearness. He is faithful, and he must remain faithful to who he is.

I think God’s nearness is one of those mysteries that we can know to be true yet still not fully understand. If I’m honest, I wish it was different. I wish there were tangible expressions of God’s nearness all the time in the midst of suffering. I wish that God would have pulled us out of that time. I wish that things had ended differently. But God was near, and that was somehow better. It’s a mystery I don’t understand, yet I still choose to believe it. Perhaps that belief itself is evidence of God’s enduring nearness.