Summer Sampler: Persevering in Our Suffering
This year’s Summer Sampler theme is “Persevering in a Troubling and Ever-Changing World.” Life can be hard. Sometimes, really hard. How do we persevere through circumstances that threaten to break us? This summer, journey with some women who have been through it and have come out the other side with a deeper faith and confidence in God’s love.
By Kristin Booth
… we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance...”
Romans 5:3 [ESV]
Forty years ago, I began my journey of growing in the knowledge of God’s gracious provision of persevering endurance through my health challenges. In the spring of 1983 – my sophomore year in college – my kidneys began failing. I began dialysis in July of ’85, and after six months I received my first cadaveric transplant. Nine years later when that kidney began to fail, I received a second cadaveric transplant. Thankfully, by God’s grace I enjoyed 24 years of a “normal life.” However, in 2019 after a series of infections, we were confronted with the inevitable prospect of my second kidney failing. David, my precious husband, immediately volunteered to become a kidney donor. Though Covid was sweeping the world, I was able to complete my evaluation and was approved as a recipient in September 2020, and David was approved as a donor in January 2021.
A few weeks later, we were informed that the calcification in my vessels precluded surgery with the attending physician. We were referred to another hospital, where I was accepted but David was not – his kidney function was less than 90%. Later that year, a new surgeon at the original hospital advised us that we were both, once again, approved. But more setbacks were awaiting us. During the following two years I required a tooth removal and an implant, a hip replacement that dislocated twice, and two wounds that took four months to heal, along with multiple skin cancers. In June 2022, my kidney failed, necessitating regular dialysis.
Finally, anticipating a resolution to these health issues in September 2023, David and I were in pre-op preparing for the transplant when the surgeon told me that David was in active A-fib and they could not perform surgery that day. After further evaluation, the surgical team decided that David was no longer a qualified donor. A half dozen of my friends applied to step in as David’s replacement donor; for one reason or another, none were evaluated because there was a “mystery donor” who was being evaluated as a closer match. In October, I discovered red blood in my stool. The diagnosis was colon cancer. In November, the cancerous portion of my colon was removed. The follow-up report noted they excised all the colon cancer, but they found cancerous cells in one of 16 lymph nodes they examined. This required six months of oral chemotherapy.
From the outset, my hope was for a successful third transplant that would provide me a number of years of good health. However, finding the cancer in my lymph node means that the transplant team will likely require me to be cancer free for at least three years, during which time those disqualifying calcifications are likely to increase. I now realize that I might not have a couple more decades of life – perhaps only a few years with regular dialysis. I am comforted that the LORD has numbered my days. Psalm 139:16 – Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
The sovereignty of God and His sustaining grace has been a great comfort to me throughout my Christian life, my general health and kidney journey included. Indeed, my life is hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3), my sovereign Lord. Nothing can separate me from His love. As you read Romans 8:31–39, consider Paul’s opening words: If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
We all face the prospect of our earthly mortality – some sooner than others. The truth of the Heidelberg Catechism’s opening question and answer is a vital truth for living and dying. Lay hold of it!
Q. 1. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.
Kristin Booth had the great privilege, by God’s grace, to grow up in a Christian family. The church has been central to her life, where over the years she has sung in choirs, taught Sunday School, and served in the nursery and on the hospitality committee, as well as being a church treasurer. Kristin has been blissfully wed to her beloved husband, David, for 21 years. They have one adult daughter who was adopted from Romania as an infant. David is the senior pastor at Merrimack Valley Presbyterian Church (OPC) in North Andover, Massachusetts. She feels blessed to be among such a loving and supportive church family.