“Loving” and “an act of love” are two different things, but they are rooted together. After reading a journal entry from a mother whose baby girl had cancer, I understood a deep message. It is about performing an act of love, even toward something we loathe. We may not be actually giving affectionate love to something terrible, but we ARE giving everything over to God by and through our actions.
The mother is a talented writer. She can touch a soul in very deep places. She watched her beautiful daughter suffer and die one year ago after a two year battle.
A message which keeps coming back to my mind is unusual. A segment of one of her sentences hit home so hard and it keeps replaying to me …
Her little girl had an aggressive form of cancer. One of the most traumatic parts of this type of cancer is that it causes huge tumors to form on the body. I have read other stories of children with this cancer, and all describe the horrible tumors protruding from their children’s little bodies. The tumors can, and usually will, rupture … and they are very painful.
This mother often spoke of Holy oil. She would anoint her daughter’s head with it throughout their terrible journey. It was an act of love that I assume gave the little girl a very special feeling. It gave her a different kind of strength beyond her own. When the mother could do no more, she blessed her child by a symbolic act.
During one entry, she spoke of anointing her daughter, but then she mentioned anointing the tumor. That is the part that is highlighted to me.
The tumor was destroying their lives. The tumor represented evil; yet, the mother blessed it with Holy oil.
I must sit back and think about many things after reading that. Do I lift ALL things to God? It is easy to bless a newborn baby, a new Bible, bread and wine during communion, a person who sneezes, or rings during a wedding ceremony … but we do not often think of blessing a tumor.
I will not begin anointing things I hate, but I look at them in a different light. Sometimes our ACTS of love show as much, if not more, love than a direct hug or kiss. I see what the mother did in a beautiful way.
Though the tumor was stealing her child, she maintained the upper hand it did not allow it to control her. She showed that she acknowledged it, but that God was involved with every part of the battle. The mom did what she was told to do by the medical world with chemo and radiation. She allowed the doctors to attack the tumor with their methods … but out of obedience, SHE attacked the tumor directly with God by an act of love. Though the tumor did not disappear by any of the methods, I think the mother’s technique was a beautiful and perfect act of love, anointed with purity and power.
As the little girl was struggling through her final hours, the mother said that her daughter asked for the Holy oil. The mom thought her child wanted to be anointed, but she was wrong. The little girl anointed her mother’s head.
Blessings,
Kasi
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