When a child is learning to walk, she falls down repeatedly. As she masters a toddle, her falls become less frequent, although it doesn’t take much to throw her to the ground. But she hops up without damage or discouragement 99% of the time.

An older school child doesn’t fall as often but doesn’t pop up quite as readily, either. There may be tears or a need for a cartoon-enhanced bandage, but she heals up quickly and soon forgets her tumble.

By the time we’re adults, falls are nearly non-existent. We’ve become good on our feet and sure of our steps. If we do go down, it’s quite a crash, and getting up again is awkward at best. Often we feel the effects 24 hours later when muscles stiffen and bruises appear.

A year ago today, Nate fell. Because his cancer diagnosis was new, we weren’t sure what had caused him to wobble and lose his balance without warning. I heard the collapse from the next room, but Nelson and Klaus were mere feet away and sprung to his aid. As they lifted him from the floor, Nate dismissed it as nothing, saying he tripped over his own feet.

But he had wacked his head on a door frame as he fell, giving himself a plump goose egg. The next day I reported the mishap to Dr. Abrams, who disagreed with Nate’s comment that it “was nothing.”

“With his body already working overtime to fight cancer,” he said, “it doesn’t need a brain bleed.”

Despite Nate’s frustration with another test, a better-safe-than-sorry approach seemed wise, and he willingly endured the scan. Thankfully, he’d been right. It was nothing, although I thought the bruise on his head ought to count for something.

When it was all over, the fall had traumatized the rest of us far more than it had Nate. To witness him going down was to feel sudden shock. Yet we all decided not to blow it up into more than it was, hoping he wouldn’t fall again. Sadly, he did, two more times.

I’ll never forget how Nate consistently minimized his misery during those horrendous days. Rather than complain, which we would have understood, he would bear his pain in quietness. When I think about it, it makes me wince.

Complaining comes easily for most of us, not necessarily about physical pain but about things much less worthy. Nate’s example puts me to shame. His acceptance of the way his life changed toward the negative was remarkable, and I’m trying to emulate it.

God doesn’t like whining. Scripture refers to it as murmuring or grumbling. Although we think complaining will make us feel better, it only spreads our misery to others. A better approach is to talk to the Lord about it, knowing he’ll set us straight and teach us how to combat whining with gratitude.

Nate’s falls were physical, but all of us can fall without even hitting the ground… by falling into sin. God watches to see how we’ll respond to trouble. Will we make things worse by whining? Or will we bear up under our difficulties in quietness.

Although Nate did fall, he didn’t fall down on the job. And I’m really proud of him for that.

“Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he heard them, his anger was aroused. (Numbers 11:1a)

During every hour of this day my mind has jumped back 12 months to September 22, 2009. I remember driving the 80 miles from Michigan to downtown Chicago, picking up Nate at the curb in front of his office at Wabash and Monroe, and heading across town to Rush University Medical Center. We were scheduled to meet with a team of doctors who had studied our “case” and reached a conclusion as to what was wrong with Nate. Today I’ve been mentally back at that meeting receiving their report: Nate had terminal cancer.

We both knew he had a mysterious mass on his liver. We also knew he was scheduled for back surgery but had “failed” the pre-op physical. And we both hoped the team of doctors was going to give us good news, something like, “Nate’s mass is benign. We’ll remove it during spinal surgery, and he’ll be as good as new.”  A year later, I see how these thoughts were tantamount to wishing on a star.

Just a week ago, all of us except Nate were gathered in northern Wisconsin, enjoying being at the same place at the same time. We shared laughter, conversation, prayer, fun, work and each other. Today, blending the warmth of those days with our cold day of discovery a year ago, I wonder how we got here, why we’re still standing. I feel like the answer might be found in looking back.

Last fall, we watched our husband/father receive his diagnosis, absorb the shock, do his best to put his life in order, decline physically and finally die, all in six weeks. Many of the details are a blur. Something deep within me wants to climb back into that painful time, to inspect everything under a magnifying glass and see what we experienced.

I’m not sure why I feel compelled to do that. Some of our children want to avoid remembering. Others want to remember it all. Returning to the scene of our family trauma is, for me, a way to honor Nate’s memory. But each of us will have to cope in the way that seems best.

When I think of Nate being selected to go through intense pain and die at age 64, leaving all of us “too soon,” his own words ring in my ears. “I shouldn’t ask, ‘Why me?’ Instead, ‘Why not me?”

There was wisdom in those words. More than that, though, there was permission for the rest of us to accept his diagnosis because he had. As I travel back during these next weeks and read my own blog-report of each day, I’ll be asking the Lord, “What should I be thinking?”

Nate was thinking as God wanted him to a year ago, refusing to fight his “fate” or rebel against his approaching death. For all of us, he was a sterling example of grace under pressure.

…God’s grace…

which is also the reason we’re still standing.

“To all… who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 1:7)

Today is September 17. Last year on this date we were blissfully unaware of Nate’s cancer, which was secretly taking over. He was still working six days a week, commuting from Michigan to Chicago’s Loop, still providing for his family.

On this day he left work before lunch to have a biopsy, because we’d learned via phone several days before of a “mass” on his liver. During a routine pre-op exam prior to back surgery, his blood numbers had been askew, so the doctor had ordered a scan.

“Try not to worry,” the doctor told Nate on the phone. “A mass doesn’t always mean cancer.”

We took his advice, at least outwardly. Nate’s response to the news was stalwart. “It’s probably nothing. Let’s not mention it to anyone.” We agreed to keep it quiet until we knew more, shrugging it off as a blip on his health screen.

That night when I couldn’t sleep, a legal phrase laced my thoughts: innocent until proven guilty. My greatest longing was to hear the doctor say the mass was innocent… benign.

The day of the biopsy, Nate insisted I not accompany him. “I’ve got a jam-packed day, and I’m sure it’ll be a quick in and out at the hospital. I have to go right back to work afterwards.”

But he walked in the cottage door earlier than usual, looking weary. “How was it?” I said.

“Brutal. Four zaps with a gun to the chest.”

The biopsy site was bandaged, but the next day his chest testified to the pain of having four pieces of flesh, even tiny ones, plucked from an organ.

Nate and I mentioned the mass and biopsy to no one, as if holding back that information might hold back bad news. Later, after we learned the deadly truth, we agreed it was good not to have known for those five days between the phone call and the diagnosis. As a matter of fact, it was good not to have known that whole summer. What benefit would there have been? Pancreatic always gets its patient anyway.

As the old saying goes, timing is everything, and God is the one regulating the event-clock. Despite Nate’s occasional physical complaints, summer had been good as we settled in at the cottage. We got to know our neighbors better and were liking the new routine. Our children came and went all summer, happily enjoying beach days with cousins and pals, without the burden of knowing their father was sick and dying. In a bad situation, God’s timing was good.

On the day Nate died, the Hospice nurse and Mary gave him a bath while he slept. As the nurse tenderly washed his chest, I noticed that the four biopsy punctures were still black and blue, a reminder of our journey’s beginning just as we were nearing the end. Although it had been a terrible six weeks, it could have been 12, doubling the misery, or 24, quadrupling it.

God knew what he was doing by bringing the cancer to light when he did. By waiting, he kept the blare of life’s alarm clock silent in order to give us a precious gift: a summer of time with Nate, without cancer… at least as far as we knew.

“To everything there is a season… a time to build up… and a time to break down.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,3)