It Should Have Been Me

Slight pressure in my right hand pulled me toward consciousness as I fought to kick the covers from my legs. A female voice comforted me as she patted my legs and helped me to untangle my feet. The bright light overhead reminded me that I was waking from anesthesia and the sound of my husband’s voice as he squeezed my right hand again made me turn my head.

“You’ve been out for a couple of hours,” he was saying, but that didn’t make any sense. He had gone in only moments ahead of me for his colonoscopy, yet here he sat, fully clothed and alert.

The curtain slid back and my doctor’s face appeared in the gap. His eyes said I’m sorry before he found the words. I knew I had cancer before anyone had time to tell me. Tears slid down my cheeks as I tried to blink back the anesthesia fog long enough to assure everyone I was fine.

That’s all I remember of that Friday in October until later when I was home with my husband. I’m certain he explained things to me in great detail, but the only thing I recall him saying now is, “it should have been me!” His point? He has the family history. I don’t. I’m certain there’s more to it. Why me, he wondered, of all people? As he recently shared with our Sunday school class, my only risk factors are being human and having a colon. Yet it is me.

I’ve had nearly ten months to reflect on that day but there’s nothing else. The following week was a blur of tests and visits with oncologists followed by two months of radiation, four months of chemotherapy and two surgeries to date. My husband has been by my side every moment since. In a way, it has been him. When I would apologize to him for whatever bit of unpleasantness he was helping manage, he always says, “it’s part of my vows.”

“For better or worse,

In sickness or in health,

Till death parts us.”

I’ve always known he meant every promise he made to me because he is a man of integrity, a man of his word, and I have seen him keep these promises in many tangible ways over the past thirty years. His love for me caused him to say, “it should have been me!” His faithfulness to me is why he continues to serve me in love each day we have been given as husband and wife, no matter what.

It should have been me.

Another Love, far greater than the love I share with my husband, more faithful to every promise, eternal and all-encompassing, bore a cross up a hill through death into life everlasting. He carried that cross for me. He took my place. In Him, I have eternal life.

It should have been me.

The cross speaks of sacrifice, of a great substitution- the perfect for the imperfect, the innocent for the guilty, the Lover for the beloved. Jesus instead of me.

“He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.”

1 John 2:2 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/1jn.2.2.NLT

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”

Romans 3:23-25 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/rom.3.23-25.NLT

““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 NLT

https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.3.16.NLT

It should have been me!

Thank You, God, for Jesus!