My last post was written a little over 6 months ago. And then, the diagnosis.
My friend, Sam, had cancer. And it was bad. He had a beautiful wife, 3 wonderful kids, but cancer Did. Not. Care.
When Sam was fighting his battle, I couldn't write anything. Everything I could think to write was either very, very angry, or seemed very flippant and unimportant in light of a stage iv cancer diagnosis. Quite honestly, everthing seemed frivolous to me. What compares to the battle for life that I watched unfold in my friends' family? What situation or observation justified words, justified expression when my friends, who were living life so well, who were doing everything right, were faced with the possibility of such a loss?
When Sam died in July, I felt that the next thing I posted on this blog should be a response to his life, a response to his death. Though there were words, they were raw and rough and ranting.
So I wrote for myself, and I wrote for God, but I did not write for an audience.
You see, though I only knew Sam for 6 years, his life impacted mine. Not just because his wife was one of my first friends in KC, nor because I knew his kids and watched the life he lived with them, but because of who Sam was.
I'm easily bored with people who give off the impression that they have everything together all of the time, and situations that require one to "put on a good face" exhaust me, so whenever I meet someone who in some way exhibits authenticity or gives a glimpse of their character and shows themself true, I like them. I'll say to Ferdie "You know what I like about that person?" and inevitably he will reply "They're real?"
And Sam? Well, Sam was "real." He was quirky. He had definite ideas about lots of things, from what he liked to wear to music to culture, and he would let you know those ideas. Sam was a thinker, and he didn't accept the status quo or the excuse of "that's the way it's always been done."
I liked him immediately.
A few years back, Sam had a vision for a different type of Sunday school class. He called it "Workmanship," and he invited all of the painters, photographers, writers, sculptors and wanna-be artists in the church to join him as he led discussions and studies of biblical themes. We processed and created and wrote in response to these discussions, and for the first time, I saw Sam in his element.
Sam taught me that creating anything--the act of painting or sculpting or putting words to paper--was a reflection of the Creator. And that the discipline of creating was an act of worship to the one who gave us the ideas, the images, the words. To the artist, then, art was spiritual discipline, as crucial as praying and fasting and studying and serving.
And Sam worked at his craft. Though he was an architect by day, a busy father of three by evening, he was an artist after hours.
One year, he completed a piece every week, blogging about his experience and giving his readership a glimpse at his creative process. I was inspired by Sam's determination, the dedication to his art, the discipline he displayed as week after week he posted painting after painting. At the end of year, he held an open house exhibition, and as I took in all of the pieces that lined the walls of his home, I remember thinking "That was a year well spent."
So here we are, four months out, four months after losing Sam. I watch his wife, who day after day after day gets up, keeps on, lives out courage. I watch their kids, and I ache for them, I get angry for them, that they didn't have more time with their dad, that they have to grow up without Sam. I'm infuriated at the injustice of his death.
Sam should be here still, he should.
He had more to give, more in him of value, more ideas, more love, more wisdom, more, just MORE. Sam should still be here, and he's not, and quite honestly, his not being here, his not surviving that damn disease, has left me speechless.
Because I believe in a good God, a God who loves the people he created, a God who Sam loved and served and lived for, a God who could have healed Sam in an instant, but didn't. And there are no words that can do justice to that, no words to explain God's seeming inaction on behalf of Sam and his family.
So I come back to what I know in my veins and my breath and my spirit: God loved Sam, he loves him still. God loves Sam's wife and kids, his parents and his sister.
Kristian Stanfill sings:
"Higher than the mountains that I face,
Stronger than the power of the grave,
Constant in the trials and the change,
One thing remains:
Your love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me. . ."
I hold tightly to that truth.
God who I know and love is mystery and beyond and overwhelming and so much bigger than this limited mind of mine can conceive.
He is the author of generation upon generation upon generation of stories, and he knows how our stories interweave, and ultimately all come together.
Mostly, right now, tonight, this God is hope.
Hope that some day this will all make sense. Hope that as Sam walked into eternity, the thrum of good music welcomed him, and that his palette is endless and his canvas an eternal place of worship.
Hope that God will be peace and strength and, eventually, even joy. Hope that all is not as it seems, and though lives look shattered, God is arranging a mosaic, perfectly placing every shard, positioning them just so, and that someday in eternity we will see the beauty of it all.
Tonight I know this for sure: This writer's block, this inability and unwillingness to put fingertips to keyboard and words to screen, Sam wouldn't have wanted this. He, of all people, would tell me to push through, to force words, to cry then write, to be angry then to write, to write raw and real and true, but whatever it takes, to write.
He'd tell me that those small things, the frigid Saturday morning soccer games, the late nights filled with wine and words and laughter, the wanderlust that never leaves, the leaves that change colors and dry up and fall to the ground and my baby boy who crunches them underfoot, who jumps into them with abandon, these small things, these "frivolous" things?
These are breath and pulse and life.
And these words of mine? They are lifeline and tether, desperation and worship.
And they matter.
Written in honor of the life lived by
G.F. "Sam" Wagner
