Golden Scars

January 18, 2012. That date is forever etched in my mind, and in stone (a headstone to be exact). That was the day I woke up to the chaos of doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate my son Eli who had passed away in his sleep after a four and a half year battle with cancer. He was just 28 days away from his 8th birthday. Every day is hard of course, but this one comes with the vivid memories of that morning, which makes it even harder.

It’s crazy to imagine that Eli would be turning 15 next month and that he would be in the 8th grade. He has been gone for 7 years and sometimes it feels unfair that life for the rest of us just kept going. My faith gives me confidence that I’ll see Eli again someday, but until then I have to continue on without the first person to call me “Dad”.

Recently, a good friend of mine posted a beautiful message about the anniversary of her daughter Ellie’s death after her battle with cancer. Ellie’s mom is a much better writer than I am and her words are always so moving, but this time, a comment left on her post really struck me. One of her friends said, “I think we in the West get preoccupied with the ‘fixing’ of broken to the point where you can’t tell something happened — the invisible mend. I think in many cases it is impossible and unhealthy, and creates its own set of burdens. I much prefer the Japanese philosophy of Kintsugi, where the cracks are filled with gold both to remind us of our experiences and also especially that broken is still beautiful.” I had never heard of Kintsugi, but I have seen the pottery before. As a philosophy, Kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, something of a redemptive beauty, rather than something to disguise, cover up, or replace altogether.

Eli’s long battle with cancer left a lot of physical scars. I always found it intriguing that Eli’s surgeons gave consideration to hiding those scars. His brain surgeon said that he tried to follow along his hairline so the scar would be less noticeable when Eli’s hair grew back. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness while assuring him that the scar was the least of my concerns. I used to joke with Eli that his head scar looked like baseball stitching and that his abdomen scar looked like the Verizon logo. ??

My scars aren’t physical, obviously, but the emotional scars are there nonetheless. There are things that parents who watch their kid fight for their lives just can’t unsee. There are feelings we’ll never forget. There are thoughts that are a direct result of the nightmare that we’ve lived through. Nearly every single day I have a vivid thought about how one of my other kids might die. My son Jonah is now the same age that Eli was when he was diagnosed with cancer. The unimaginable is no longer unimaginable because it was once my reality. All I can do is pray that God will grant me the peace that surpasses all understanding and show me how He has used Eli’s story to positively impact others.

There’s a song by the band Tenth Avenue North that sums up my prayer quite well. It’s called “Worn” and the chorus says:

Let me see redemption win

Let me know the struggle ends

That you can mend a heart that’s frail and torn

I want to know a song can rise

From the ashes of a broken life

And all that’s dead inside can be reborn

Cause I’m worn

God has been so good about answering my prayers. When I’m least expecting it, someone will share a story with me about how Eli’s journey impacted their life. Just yesterday I received a note from a teacher at Eli’s elementary school, Ankeny Christian Academy, letting me know that they once again held their annual PJ/Hat day fundraiser in memory of Eli and raised over $950 for Beat Cancer Today. What an amazing gesture and way to honor Eli.

We are celebrating Beat Cancer Today’s 10 year anniversary this year. It was 2009 when a few of us “pediatric cancer families” got together to create Beat Cancer shirts to raise money for those amazing organizations like Children’s Cancer Connection, University of Iowa Dance Marathon, and Children’s Oncology Group That did so much for us in our time of need. Since that time, we’ve raised over $375k for childhood cancer research, scholarships, and patient and family support programs. Each year is bigger than the one before it and we have no intention of slowing down. Perhaps the cracks in my life’s pottery are repaired with gold ribbons.

Unlike Eli’s brain surgeon, I don’t try to mask the scars. I speak about them because they are a part of my history and they have played an important role in shaping the person that I have become. While some of my experiences and parts of Eli’s journey were unbelievably painful, God is the ultimate Kintsugi artist who can bring out the beauty in our broken world if we let Him. I have received countless blessings that stem from Eli’s journey. We are never promised that things won’t be hard or that things won’t break, but we are promised that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” — Romans 8:28