Christ In Winter:
Reflections On Faith From A Place Of Winter For Years Of Winter…
“Power in the Blood… and
in Those Who Deliver It”
[This is a repeat from CIW
of Jan. 2, 2011. Joe will be 17 this month.]
Our grandson, Joseph
Kennedy, was diagnosed with liver cancer at 15 months of age. Over the next
year, he spent most of his time in Children’s Hospital at the University of
Iowa or in the hospital in Mason City, IA, where we lived. He survived four
surgeries and a ton of chemotherapy so toxic that he weighed two pounds less on
his second birthday than on his first.
He is now almost twelve
and is as whole a person as I know. Kathy Roberts, who was the director of a
mental health center and so knows well the difference between persons who are
whole and fragmented, says simply that he is “centered.” Perhaps he was whole
and centered when he was one year old and that quality helped him to survive.
Perhaps his wholeness and centeredness came out of his ordeal. Perhaps both are
true.
Helen and I sometimes
speculate about what Joe will do as a job when he grows up. Kids who have been
through hospital experiences often gravitate to the medical field. Joe is
attracted to the medical field, even as a fifth grader, but does not like the
blood part of it. I understand.
I think that maybe he
should be a state trooper. I’m not naïve about that job. Our para-son, Len
Kirkpatrick, is an IL state trooper. [1] We know how dangerous that job is. We
worry about him all the time. But…
Joe has a rare blood type,
and he needed a lot of transfusions. Especially in Mason City, his type was
often in short supply. The closest place to get it was Rochester, MN. It was
always an emergency when he needed blood, so to get it into Joe’s veins as
quickly as possible, a Minnesota state trooper would go to Mayo’s and pick it
up, speed to the IA state line, where an Iowa state trooper would meet him and
speed it on to Joe.
Joe is alive and whole
because of his own centered being, because of his mother and father and sister
and the rest of his family, because of doctors and nurses and technicians and
pharmacists and dieticians and ward clerks and custodians and housekeepers in
two hospitals, because of friends who raised money, because of people known and
unknown who prayed for him, because of people who gave blood…and because of
state troopers whose names we never knew, who went back to giving tickets and
pulling people out of wrecks without knowing how much power there was in the
blood they delivered.
I pray in thanks for all
those people every day. And I hope that those troopers live to see old age, and
that as they sit around the table at the old troopers home, wondering if their
work was worthwhile, looking for final integrity for their lives, they will
remember speeding blood to a little boy…
…and if some years from
now you are stopped on the highway by a handsome young state trooper, just take
your ticket and thank him. He might have just delivered some blood to save a
child.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
[1] The second question a
state trooper asks a speeding motorist, after “Where’s the fire?” is “Do you
know John Robert McFarland?” When Len stopped my pastoral colleague in the
Central IL Conference, Burt McIntosh, and asked him that question, Burt said,
“My first thought was, will it help me or hurt me if I admit I know him?”
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