Sarah Nutter
My grandmother has an ominous form of lung cancer. I found out about it while my dad and I were serving God on a church mission trip in Caracas, Venezuela, the first week of June.
I tried to block the devastating news out of my mind, because I was, after all, trying to focus on serving God, the missionaries, and the people of Venezuela. I’ve always been pretty good at detaching myself from my emotions (maybe too good!), but two days after I found out, I was pretty…glum, for lack of a better word. I woke up early and read my Bible in an attempt to brighten my spirits and have a more positive outlook on life, but still I couldn’t help but feel sad. I love my grandma. I hate that she’s in so much pain. I hate that I have cousins who are just babies and might never get to know her. I hate that my mom’s world has been turned upside down. I hate that my grandma is afraid.
With so much sadness and fear, it’s easy to question God. It’s easy to stop trusting.
On one of the last days of the trip, the missionaries took the group to Avila Mágica, a tall mountain that overlooks the massive city on one side and the ocean on the other. A huge tourist attraction, the mountain actually has a system of cable cars that transport passengers up the long distance.
My group was the first to get in a car. Slowly it carried us over the city, through a ravine, and up the mountain. Sunny skies, tall buildings, small mountains closing the city in – the view was gorgeous.
In a split second everything changed.
My seat faced the city, not the mountain. When we got pretty close to the top, I decided to turn around and check it out. I was shocked to see a huge cloud of fog only about thirty yards away from our cable car. It had crept up on me unexpectedly, and the white cloudy wisps blocked all vision. We couldn’t see the mountain – we couldn’t even see the cable cars that had gone in front of us.
When we reached the fog, our cable car became immersed in it and we couldn’t see a single thing except for the great white expanse. It lasted several minutes, and then, without warning, we landed at the top of the mountain.
That fog was a hindrance to my vision. I couldn’t see two feet in front of me, and I was disappointed that the pretty view of the city was obstructed.
I can kind of compare that to the situation with my grandma’s cancer. It’s a setback, for sure. I can’t really see the wonderful view of life I had before, and I know that my family can’t either.
But something else I noticed was how the cable car didn’t even care about that fog. That fog in no way kept the car from going forward at the exact pace it planned to go, which is pretty great news for me, because the fate of my life rested in that car.
God is kind of like that. He won’t be deterred from some silly ‘fog.’ He carries us through it – and the fate of our lives rests in His capable hands.
A little later that day, the fog cleared and we were able to see the ocean on the other side of the mountain. I like to believe that someday, a little bit later, my grandma’s cancer might be healed or comfortably treated – or maybe, that she’ll enjoy a better life in heaven – and there won’t be any fog left at all.
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