Being the Church: What It Really Looks Like
My life changed in late July 2016. It was high summer in Minnesota, the payoff for living through the winters here. My husband and I had plans for a trip to Nashville during the third weekend of August. A writer’s organization to which I belong was having its annual conference and awards gala, and I was a finalist for one of the awards.
Three weeks before we were to depart, my husband complained of pain in his abdomen. Not unbearable, but there. As the evening progressed, the pain did as well, and by morning he said, “I think I need to see a doctor.”
For those of you keeping score at home, my husband is doctor-averse. He’s always been as healthy as the proverbial horse and had not seen a doctor in fifteen years!
I was on the phone in a trice. We are blessed that our local doctor’s office also happens to be the Mayo Clinic. They got him in immediately.
They say when someone gets a cancer diagnosis, it’s a watershed moment in their lives. The moment that doctor said “sarcoma” my life changed. I call it BC and AD: Before Cancer and After Diagnosis.
Appointments to see an oncology surgeon were scheduled, and we were sent home.
Why was God doing this to us? I wanted none of it, and I told him so. I had walked this road just a few years before with my mother-in-law. For ten years, we nursed her through her battle with cancer. And in the midst of that, we lost my sister’s husband to cancer. Wasn’t that enough? Didn’t I deserve a pass this time?
My husband was so calm and accepting of our situation that I both clung to his serenity and wanted to shake him and ask if he truly understood the ramifications of what we were dealing with.
In church that Sunday, when it was his turn to go to the pulpit and pray, he calmly told our church family what he was facing.
Then he prayed. He prayed for our missionaries, our elderly worshippers who couldn’t be there in person, our pastor, and our church. He reminded God that he is good, and he is sovereign. We accept everything from his hand, and we give him the glory.
I needed the reminder, but I still felt as fragile as a soap bubble.
Our church, where we always had served, where we had been the ones taking meals, giving rides, doing repairs on the building, teaching Sunday school, always on the giving end of the equation, now began to give to us.
We received love, support, prayer, kind words, meals, offers of help. It was almost overwhelming.
As we were loved on by our church, the peace that is beyond our ability to comprehend began to seep into my thoughts and heart. This body of believers wasn’t just “doing church” they were “being the church.” Through their willingness to bear our burdens with us, to love one another, to lift us up in prayer, they strengthened my faith.
It’s easy to “do church.” To show up on Sunday morning, put in your ninety minutes of singing and listening to the preaching, and then scoot out of the building to lunch and the football game. It’s easy to sit through the prayers and let your mind wander a bit. It’s easy to write the check and drop it in the offering plate and think you’ve done your part.
But to “be the church” is something altogether different. Being the church calls for commitment, investment, and sacrifice. Bearing someone else’s burdens is heavy work, sometimes messy work. Loving someone calls for putting their needs above my own, recognizing their failings and extending grace in the same measure in which I am going to need grace to cover my own failings.
My husband’s cancer opened my eyes in a whole new way to what being members one of another means. If one is hurting, all bear the pain. If one is rejoicing, all should rejoice.
And if one is going through a dark valley, the rest come along for company and comfort.
My husband had his surgery at Mayo, where the world’s foremost gastro-oncology surgeon “just happened” to take his case. (Thank you, God!) An enormous tumor was removed from my husband’s body, and he embarked on the road to recovery.
Though I had jettisoned all thought of going to Nashville for my conference, the doctors urged us to go. My husband would need to recover from surgery before he met his new oncologist and began a chemotherapy regime.
While at the conference, I was able to again witness God’s church being his church. Believers I had only met online greeted me with “How is your husband? I’ve been praying for him.” My husband had been added to the prayer chains of churches we’d never visited. Words of encouragement and support flowed from believers all over the country who had gathered in Tennessee. I was reminded again that God’s people are everywhere, doing his work and being his church.
And now, here we are, over four years out from the day that changed my life, and I can say I’ve learned and matured in ways I would not have if not for that diagnosis. Along the way, I’ve met other cancer wives and been able to minister to them in ways I would not have been able to do from outside the group—a group no one wants to belong to. I have been able to participate in being the church in a new way.
My husband continues a daily chemotherapy routine, and in a few days from when this article posts, we’ll be back at the oncologist for his semi-annual tests, praying again for the all-clear.
Whatever the test results, I know that God will be with us, through his Spirit who lives in us, and through his people, who are his church.
And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Eph. 4:11-16 NASB)
is a bestselling, award-winning author who loves Jesus, history, romance, and watching sports. When she’s not writing fiction or cheering on her teams she’s planning her next trip to a history museum. You can connect with her at her website, where you can learn about her books and sign up for her newsletter, and you can find her online on Facebook where she spends way too much time!
