My Family Tree is a Fig Tree

Last night, for the first time, I simply thanked God for our house in Minnesota. I could feel those words straight from the Holy Spirit and it felt so comforting. I think I can link it to the small epiphany I had in church yesterday. We were reading Luke 14 but my eyes strayed to Jesus' parable of the Fig Tree in chapter 13. When I read it, I identified with it immediately. Here's the story, then I'll tell you how I related to it.
6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’

8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”
First, I identified with the fig tree not bearing fruit. Jody and I have known Christ as a couple for our entire marriage and I have known Christ since I learned how to talk. We have not born any fruit of our relationship with the personification of love though. Of all of the things Christ told us to do, from the great commission to feeding the orphans and widows, to Loving the Lord our God with all of our soul, might strength etc.., we really hadn't practiced it. Of all of Paul's admonishments to the early church, Jody and I did not throw ourselves into the work we're all called to do as Christians.
Secondly, I noticed the caretaker did not cut the tree to bear more fruit like the parable of the grape vine. He tilled the soil around it. That is what we have experienced. We've felt very uncertain for the last three or four years but never have we had a piece of us cut off... unless you count Jody's thyroid gland and 50 or so lymph nodes in his neck. We've felt the earth shake and questioned our foundation but our family unit has remained intact. He's provided for our needs and healed Jody's wounds. I figure I should make a list of fertilizers. Maybe your caretaker will use these.
The day we accepted that Jody's uncle would not be paying Jody a paycheck anymore was the first tough blow. It was a very terrifying experience. We had moved to Minnesota in a small non-metro area for a job which had been presented to Jody as a sure thing. We bought the house everyone recommended and presumed life would be stable. Now we realized, our house was worthless and there was no other job to fit Jody's two skill sets within 75 miles of our residence. I can't imagine how it must have felt for Jody. He's the provider for a wife and three children ages five, two and six months. I know I felt it, but he felt it more. He found a job in Boulder and we packed up lock stock and barrel and moved across country the first week of January 2008 to rent a small house sight unseen and rented out our house month to month to a single mom. It was the move from hell. Eden was sick the entire drive. I have tried to block that memory but it actually haunts me.
The next blow came about 6 months later when the housing crisis was coming into full swing and we thought we had sold our house for a loss. I opened a letter. It was a notice that the earnest money check had bounced. We were on our last straw, so we rented it out again. Our life was on pause. There was no way to buy a new house, so we just had to wait.
About three months later, Jody called to tell me he had thyroid cancer. He sounded so empty. I told him to come home immediately. I sat there with that horrible ache in the back of my throat wishing I could cry. I called my sister and best friend, but they didn't answer their phones. I tried to breath, I tried to pray. I kind of cried but it felt more like I was suffocating. I tried to read up on it, and got lost in the stages, the kinds, all of the things I didn't know any answers to. Jody came home and we laid on the couch together. The worst part was just that we didn't understand. The cancer story is so long and was so up and down, not because of Jody's health but because we just never felt like anyone explained anything and we didn't even really know if we should be afraid. His first surgery was in November. He thought it would be easy, in and out. He didn't want extra people in the house. So, the neighbor came over and I drove Jody in to the surgery. The doc made it sound so easy. Three hour surgery tops, overnight stay in the hospital. His thyroid would be gone and he'd take synthroid forever. A bummer but doable. My friend Shawna who I am thankful has a very special relationship with God felt she had to drive down from the mountains to be with me. We sat there forever. I can't remember how long that surgery took but I know it ran at least an hour over but maybe two hours over. I was talking crazy to Shawna and she just nodded and listened. Finally the doctor came out and every question I'd had pent up for the last few weeks came pouring out. He was a surgeon, not an endocrinologist and he had just been through a very harrowing surgery as I later assimilated. He and I did not hit it off. Jody's cancer was much worse than the doc had anticipated and he had spent hours scraping it off of Jody's vocal chords so his speech wouldn't be impaired and selectively removing lymph nodes. He had a particularly hard time working around the parathyroid glands, so Jody had to stay in the hospital an extra day or two because he wasn't producing calcium. He said "I beat them up pretty bad." As it turned out, Jody and I went to the wrong doctor. He did his best, but it wasn't good enough. If you ever need a surgery, do your homework. A month later he had a dose of radioactive iodine. They locked him into a chamber with lead walls, gave him the iodine and slipped his meals through a special little trap door. He said the isolation was terrible but it was worse when he came home and felt like he shouldn't touch anyone because he was so toxic. Then I went with him to the scan. I watched his body image on a big screen light up wherever he had absorbed iodine and felt fear all over me. They hadn't explained what it would look like or what it would mean. We had to wait for the results. It went like that with every step of Jody's cancer. Nothing was ever explained until after the fact. I got to the point of hysteria several times. At each checkup they took Jody's blood. Finally one day, they said it was time for an ultrasound. I asked Jody why and he told me they said it was routine. We'd seen his blood work every time too but it had never been interpreted for us and gave us no idea of what we were about to find out. When they did the ultrasound, they found three masses in the left side of Jody's neck that the first surgeon had missed. I cried and cried. I called Jody's mom and cried. The doctor ordered a PET scan to be sure the cancer wasn't in Jody's lungs which is where it goes if it travels down lymph nodes. I felt like my body was trembling all over 100% of the time. Finally, the week before the PET scan Jody and I fasted together. It was a first for us and we really bonded through it. It brought peace. I came to the realization that my security comes from God, not the presence of my husband or dad or any other person on this earth. The day after the PET scan, the doctor called Jody in to see him. He told us in person that it was all clear. Again, the ground around us had been tilled, but the little fig tree stood. We went to the Mayo Clinic for the next surgery because we trust them, we know they're the best and they are the pioneers of an experimental non-invasive procedure called alcohol ablation. Unfortunately, Jody's tumors were too big, so they did the surgery and it was hard again. I've never been there with someone going through surgery so I had no idea how it knocks a person flat. All the way through I just asked God not to make Jody go through this again. He came out with an incision all the way across his throat curving up almost to his ear. It was huge. Then we got the bill. The insurance company said they weren't going to pay it even though we had called them to be sure it would be covered if we went there. It was $33,000. Jody was angry. He said we should have just gone back to the hack. I argued back that there was no price too high for his health. Still, I did wonder why we'd paid into insurance for all of those years. We went about five rounds with the insurance company and today we got the word that they had finally completely paid their part, about 17 months after the surgery.
This last spring we tried to sell the house again. It sat vacant, for sale, for $20,000 less than we owe on it for 6 months and we never got an offer. Now we have renters again. We're still renting a two bedroom townhome, while we pay $300 more in our mortgage payment than we receive in rent each month.
That is why I say, the earth around my family has been tilled. I'd like to tell you what figs are like even if they said in Rush Hour that it would be our only reward :-) Just this time, we'll use our story to motivate others in lieu of our heavenly reward. Figs look like the faces of my children as they sit in rapt attention at Rush Hour each Sunday. Figs smell like the pages of a Bible. Figs taste like food for hungry neighbors. Figs sound like the praise my children lifted to Jesus when they led praise and worship at church in the Kids Choir. Figs feel like a warm coat for someone who needs it.