a 25% chance of rain*

with great anxiety, i hope that my dad doesn't have cancer

I have struggled with anxiety since my early childhood. One of my first major worries was about my parents. As a kid, my number one prayer was that my mom and dad would live to a hundred years old so that I could spend more time with them. I’ve always feared the idea of losing them.

In this period of preparing for my mission trip to Panama, I learned that my dad received an abnormal test result which indicated a 1/4 chance of cancer. Unsurprisingly, my heart was immediately wracked by anxiety. So I did what any other worrywart-son would do: I scoured the vast archives of Google and WebMD.

I looked into whether certain kinds of exercise could help or worsen my dad’s potential condition. After researching the most beneficial antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables, I rushed to the grocery store and then returned to my parents’s house with several bags of bright red and orange produce (such fruits are rich in lycopene).

But despite all of my persistent efforts, my anxiety would not recede.

What’s ironic is that a day prior to hearing this news, I was at a bible study where I shared a simple prayer request: for God to help me to submit to His plans, even if they were not what I wanted. It felt like the ultimate irony. Was this how God would answer my prayers? Was this a tribulation meant to test my faith in His future for my family? To be honest, my immediate response wasn’t very faithful. I wanted to satisfy my uncertain heart by turning off my brain and binging in pleasures: online shopping, Uber Eats, and a mindless Netflix binge. However, ultimately, I went to God in prayer to ask for the faith to trust Him over my own short-sighted plans, and for as my dad’s health as well.

I shared my worries with the pastor overseeing my upcoming mission trip to Panama. He answered with three brief but illuminating questions:

“Do you love your parents?” Yes (of course)

“Do you think you love your parents more than God?” No

“If God loves your parents more than you ever could, then why can’t you trust God to take care of them?”

This simple series of questions led to me realize, with a broken heart, that the reason I could not trust God with the future was because I did not understand His love. As humans, part of our psychology is to trust people by the measure of how much they care about us and are invested in our circumstances. Then, if there is a God who loves us and cares for us infinitely beyond measure, shouldn’t we be able to trust Him with anything?

I couldn’t stop thinking about this reflection over the next few days. A week later, I had a second realization that this applied to my own insecurities as well. Why could I not trust God with all of my personal anxieties and circumstances? Why am I so insecure about my life and why do I feel like I always need be in control? I realized that it is because I do not sufficiently know the immeasurable love of God.

And so my prayer for my dad grew a little bit longer: “God, would you help me to understand how much you love me and my parents? Help me to know more of your love that is boundless, so that I can trust you with my dad even if my own hopes fail.”

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Another week passed, and while reading the Bible, I discovered a prayer from Apostle Paul which seemed to mirror my own.

“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Ephesians 3:14-19

In the moments I kept praying for my dad, my anxieties became still.