All Scripture quotes from Isaiah 55 and in Italics

Things for Heidi are hard right now. She’s been a bit quiet on her blog these days, so I feel I owe you all an update. Essentially, there’s nothing new. Except that cancer drags on. Dialysis drags on. Kidney treatments for her rare disease drag on. Her restricted diet (that basically eliminates all good-tasting food, including her favorite bagel, drags on). The tiredness, the pain, the blood draws–you get the idea.

The favorite bagel thing got me, guys. Heidi has a favorite bagel from Costco. Recently she wanted to eat it. This is good, because one of her diagnoses is severe malnutrition, which needs to be corrected before she could ever undergo a transplant. Mom checked out the nutrition facts. There was too much sodium. No bagel for you. Heidi cried.

We are hungry for this to be done. And Heidi is–literally–hungry for food. Good-tasting, normal, every-day food like her Asiago bagel.

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

God, heal Heidi’s kidneys so she can eat again. Lift her dietary restrictions and let her eat her favorite bagel.

God, open Heidi’s heart to receive the rich food that only you can give her. God, I can’t encourage her–I can try, but she is walking this path alone. No one else can have cancer for her. God, you have to satisfy her. Give her your rich food. Don’t withhold. It seems like you’re withholding. How can you let her go through this without that soul satisfaction that you can provide? Open your hand and feed my sister.

Originally I imagined the path of Heidi’s cancer would be hard but straightforward. She’d do a round of chemo. That would get her body ready for transplant. Then, she’d get a transplant. Then, the recovery. The end.

That is not what has happened–at all. The first chemo didn’t work. The second chemo was so hard on her body she still hasn’t recovered. The damage to her heart, her kidneys, the fluid in her lungs, her muscle loss, her weight loss–all these things are problems other than cancer, the main problem. The main problem is now on the back burner as the other problems are dealt with.

Heidi is weary with it all. You can’t compartmentalize when you’re that sick. You are just sick–all the time. The pain, the tiredness, the awareness of being ill–it’s never gone. You can’t take a night off, have sushi and a hot bath and watch a rom com and forget your sorrows like the rest of us.

The hardest thing is to see this wear on her spirit. She is hemmed in by the cancer and she can’t escape. I can’t imagine what this is like.

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that you do not know shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

God, you’ve told us you’re going to heal her. Do it quickly. Don’t delay. Do something great. God, I want you to do something so great that at the end of all of this, when Heidi is better, she will say, you know what, I’d do it again. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’d do it again because God has shown himself. Because God revealed his heart. Because God has drawn more people to the rich food of his promises. Because there will be more people sitting around his feast table at the end of time, when we all raise a toast to the joy that we longed for and now get to taste.

Last week I was talking to Heidi. She told me she was praying and telling God (paraphrase), “How come you keep giving other people signs about my healing? What about me? Other people keep opening the Bible and finding signs from you. Why don’t you give me one?” Then, in her distress, she opened the Bible. Right to . . .

Isaiah 54. Her cornerstone passage. The first passage God gave her friend Amanda as a sign.

Heidi was not amused. I wanted a new one, God! Not this old one! But friends, hearing this story, I was so encouraged. To me, this was another breadcrumb.

We are headed towards a feast at the end of time. And, in a smaller scope, a dinner party when Heidi gets better. Where we will celebrate what God has done. Where we will raise a glass and say, God does what he says he will do. I will cry, and we’ll all cry, and there will be so much joy we’ll barely be able to stand it.

But the path to that dinner party–and the feast at the end of time–is long. Arduous. Our feet are blistered and our legs weary. We’re hungry, but the meal is a long way off. How much longer do we have to keep walking? Is God going to let us die before we get there?

This breadcrumb has given me the energy to take a few more steps.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Well God, if the best thing I can imagine is Heidi being healed immediately and a dozen people who didn’t love you before coming to know and love you, then exceed my expectations. If your ways are higher, show me how much higher. I think my idea of how things should go is pretty great. Show me a greatness that makes my great ideas seem like grains of sand under a wide blue sky. Like grains of sand spinning around the sun on a blue planet. Like grains of sand in the glow of the Milky Way.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

God, you are one who does what he says. You said you’re going to heal her. I know you’re going to do it. Do it in the sight of all. Bring praise to yourself. Show the world your heart, which is large and beautiful and where there is room for us all.

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Bring us to the celebration, God. I know you’ll be there celebrating too. And I’ll hear you say, See, Jenna? I always do what I say. I am trustworthy and true. And then I will lean on your shoulder and weep with the goodness of it all.

Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;

God, instead of cancer and weakness and death, bring thriving and health and life.

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;

Instead of malnutrition and damage to Heidi’s organs bring full restoration–of Heidi’s body, and of our hearts towards you.

and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

And make of Heidi’s life–this part of it and all the others yet to come–a sign to yourself that will endure, a sign that you are God, and there is none like you, and that without you we would be most wretched, but that with you we are whole, and comforted, and led, and fed, and healed, and glorified, and safe, and loved.

And in the meantime . . . God, give us breadcrumbs. Give us snacks to sustain us.

I imagine a long road through the mountains. You’re about to pass out from hunger. Your vision is swimming. You lean for support on a rock. And there, sitting on the rock, is a little platter of blini with smoked salmon and creme fraiche, topped with a dollop of caviar.

Delicious. Exciting. Beautifully presented and perfectly timed. Not a meal . . . but an appetizer to tide us over, that reminds us that if we keep walking, we’ll get to the meal. Which will be inventive. Made with the best ingredients by the best chef. Keep going. The blini is a little taste of what’s to come.