Me & My Man - Part 9

Mr. Wonderful: "Well, I was at the church office filling out the paperwork for the membership and something happened."

Me: (My heart dropping.) "Is everything ok? Do you feel ok?"

Mr. Wonderful: "Yea, yea. But I don't think you're going to think I'm very handsome anymore..."

Part 9: Walk By Faith

Me: "What do you mean by that? It's absolutely absurd!"

Mr. Wonderful: "I wasn't feeling real well while I completed the paperwork, so as I wrote with my right hand, I had my head resting on my left hand. When I looked up from the paperwork and lifted my head, there was hair in my left hand. Erica, it started today. I'm losing my hair."

And that's was just the beginning of the physical side effects. His chemo treatments continued, and each weekend when I came home from school to visit he looked weaker and sicker. He eventually lost all his hair, his eyebrows, his eyelashes, a lot of weight and muscle mass, and his rosy coloring. He looked a lot like a walking skeleton.



Although Mr. Wonderful's physical strength and health withered, the one thing he wasn't losing was his faith. He clung to the Lord and to the Lord's promises tighter than I knew possible. The Lord gave him a passage in 2 Corinthians, and Mr. Wonderful had it posted on the wall of his bedroom:

"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." -- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

This verse was so special to Mr. Wonderful because it reminded him that it is the moments when we are weakest, when we cannot muster any strength to press on, that the Lord becomes the strongest in us. It is in these moments when He steps in with supernatural, miraculous results.

The Lord was faithful to move in my heart as well during this season. What I have failed to tell you all yet is that before Mr. Wonderful was diagnosed, before our life completely changed, the Lord convicted me that I was becoming too dependent on Mr. Wonderful. I was looking solely to him, my boyfriend, for my security and my significance. It became a fervent prayer of mine that the Lord would take Mr. Wonderful away from me if he was stealing my attention from my relationship with God. I thought that may mean that Mr. Wonderful and I might break up. Little did I know that in a few short weeks the Lord would in fact take Mr. Wonderful away from me, but just in a different way. The Lord physically took him away from me (we were living in different cities), and He took Mr. Wonderful away from me emotionally as well (Mr. Wonderful was often so sick and weak that he could not be there to support me emotionally like most boyfriends). It was in these days that I truly learned what it means to trust in the Lord with my whole heart and cling to Him alone.

As Mr. Wonderful and I each grew closer to the Lord, our feelings for each other intensified as well. My fall semester wrapped up, and after I checked my last resident out of her dorm room, I traveled home for the long Christmas holiday. I could hardly wait to have a whole month at home with Mr. Wonderful. We had great plans for our Christmas celebration. Mr. Wonderful was extremely weak and tired, but we were all committed to do our best to still have a wonderful time with family and friends.

I awoke two mornings before Christmas, and I felt terribly ill. I had a slight fever and felt like I was coming down with the flu. Crap! Crap! Crap! There goes our Christmas plans! There was no way I could be around Mr. Wonderful and his non-existent immune system now...