Daddy

There are many reasons why I have a love/hate relationship with God. Of these, the most potent, and painful, is unanswered prayer. I'm not talking about simply not getting what I asked for from God. I'm talking about being misled to believe that I was getting what I asked for, but wasn't.

I know using the word "misled", in reference to God, will shock and/or offend many people. God wouldn't/couldn't mislead anyone, devout Christians/Jews/Muslims will say. God is Truth; it's simply not in His nature to deceive. Surprisingly, I agree. I believe with all my heart that God is Truth, and that He can't lie. But I can't reconcile that belief with what happened with my father.

My father, my Daddy, died of cancer this past February. He fought the disease for an heroic 11 months before it finally consumed him. It's not Daddy's death that I have a problem with. I know that human beings aren't promised eternal life in our physical bodies. I know that God does sometimes heal people of terminal illnesses, or raise them from the dead, at least in Biblical days; but all those so healed or raised eventually got sick again or died again. Thus, physical healing, even by God, is only a temporary solution to the problems of sickness and death.

My problem is that I prayed fervently for Daddy not to have cancer in the first place, and was led to believe that that prayer was being answered, only to have the devasting truth discovered when it was already too late.

What happened was this. Daddy started inexplicably vomiting and having stomach pain in the summer of 2003. He didn't like to go to the doctor, so he just put up with it. The symptoms got worse. Daddy got to the point were he was afraid to eat because he'd figured out that was what triggered the vomiting and/or stomach pain. Still, he declined to see a doctor. Finally, in October 2003, he couldn't take it any longer. On a Tuesday night, Daddy had my Mom and her brother take him to the emergency room. I came home from work to find the house dark and empty, and immediately feared the worse. During this whole time, I suspected cancer because the symptoms were so severe, but was praying that I was wrong. When I got to the hospital, I thought my prayers had been answered. Daddy was diagnosed with diverticulitis, a colon disease that makes it painful to eat cartain foods. He had all the symptoms. He was given a prescription and allowed to go home.

I left the hospital praising God. Diverticulitis! No Cancer! God had heard me! I didn't know how wrong I was.

Despite the medicine, Daddy kept getting worse. In fact, he stopped taking the medicine after a while because it made his stomach hurt just like food did. I kept praying. Daddy got a different medication to control the nausea, but it didn't work either. He got thinner and thinner. He either couldn't hold his food down, or he just wouldn't eat to begin with. He went back to the hospital and had I don't know how many different kinds of x-rays. Finally, one showed a tumor in his colon and the doctor said that's what was causing the problems. I got down on my knees and prayed like Daddy's life depended on it. I begged God to let the tumor be benign, and it was! Again, I thought my prayers were answered. Again, I was dead wrong.

Daddy got worse and worse. He got so thin, he looked like an Auschwitz survivor. Thursday, February 19, was it. I'd had it. I told Daddy he was going to the hospital. Mom called the
family, and we took him. About a week later, doctors found a blockage in Daddy's colon that all those other x-rays had somehow missed. It was removed, and proved cancerous. In fact, Daddy had cancer scattered, like grains of rice, all over his abdomen. I was devastated. For months, Daddy had been getting no cancer diagnoses from doctors, diagnoses I'd taken to be answers to my prayers. I'd praised God for answers He'd never given! But He let me think He'd had. I don't know about you, but "deceit" is the only word I know to describe what happened.

If God had said no from the beginning, it would've been different. Yes, I would've been hurt but, as I said above, I understand that people don't have immortality in our physical bodies. Eventually, I would've accepted God's no as Him allowing the inevitable to occur. But why the deception? That's what I don't understand. Why did God allow things to happen that He knew I'd take as answers to my prayers, only to have the truth crush me later? And it's not just my feelings that were damaged. Daddy lost valuable time to those false diagnoses. He could've had six more months of chemotherapy if the cancer had been found in October of 2003. God allowing me to think that He was answering my prayers may have cost my Daddy his life.

I know that's hard for devout folks to hear. But I suspect that even among the most devout believers are people who're struggling with bitter experiences like mine. They are struggling to reconcile what the Bible says about God with reality. And, frankly, the two don't fit. I think that's the unspoken dread in most religious people; that the irreconcilible differences between God and reality will explode in their faces in ways that can't be papered over with neat platitudes. There're certainly no platitudes that can explain what happened with my Daddy. God allowed things to happen that made me think He was answering my prayers when He wasn't. If a fellow human being treated me like that, I'd call him a con man. Why should I feel any different about God? Tell me. I really want to know.