Under darkening skies, beside the crashing waves of Lake Michigan on a soul care retreat, I wrestled with God over the glaring unfairness of my son’s worsening health:

“I would never have chosen this path, but You didn’t give me that choice. I am choosing right now to stop resisting Your plans—even if that means regression in the future. You have committed to never leave him and I want to believe that’s true. I want to trust You with future courage and comfort in walking this unknown path.”

I desperately needed God’s “future courage and comfort” in the days that followed as my son experienced even more regression. Three months after my crashing waves wrestling with God, an emergency room visit led to a week-long hospital stay which included three brain surgeries, a shunt, a biopsy, and an eventual brain cancer diagnosis. 

Cancer was unrelated to, but just as impactful as, the brain injury he’d received from viral encephalitis just before we adopted him in China six years prior. The long-term effects of his brain infection have been an intellectual disability and developmental delays. 

I couldn’t understand why God had allowed so much to be taken away from him. My expectation was that, as even more was now taken away, it was next to impossible for him to experience “life to the full” that Jesus described in John 10:10. 

But one stiff groggy morning at 3:00 a.m., from my fold-out couch in the ICU, I was awakened by my son’s answer to the night nurse who asked if he needed anything. “Oh!” he replied as he considered the possibilities. “Maybe frosted flakes and some pudding.” On a sugar high and unable to go back to sleep, he then asked if he could listen to praise music on my phone and happily “danced” in his bed with his stuffed bear. 

All I could think of at that moment was that my son, who had experienced so many setbacks and limitations, was the one showing me how to live life in all its fullness. I had expected that as his medical situation became worse, the quality of his life would subsequently become less, but somehow it had become more.  

God had completely turned my expectation of what was possible upside down.