A Gift for the Season

Sometimes gifts are boxes all wrapped up in shiny paper and bejeweled with ribbon.  

But sometimes gifts look different.  Very different.  Sometimes they look like an unidentifiable black spot that grows on your skin.  The finishing touch isn't a pretty ribbon but a concerned mother. 

Right, Brother of Mine? 

The "thing" was noticed a while ago.  But what mother is going to take one look at a tiny but unusual black spot on her strapping six-foot-three son who is swamped in work and convince him in a minute to get it checked out by a doctor?  Not our mama. At least not when we're working with this Brother of Mine.  

So it was forgotten.  At least until Mom saw it a month later.  "This thing is growing, Son.   You really should get it checked out."

"I can't right now." His words were decisive.  He wasn't buying into her concern.  "We are in our busiest season at work and there is no way I'm taking off for this.  You worry too much."

But isn't concern for her child part of a mother's job description?  Especially this mother.  She buried a sister, a best friend, and a father-in-law all to cancer and she wasn't going to let a suspicious looking spot on her son slide by unchecked.

So when it was seen again this past week, she gasped.  It was an audible gasp, but an involuntary one. Catching her breath she said, "Okay! This thing has grown substantially.  Now you have no choice.  You will be going in to the doctor.  I'll even pay for the appointment if that is what it takes, but you need to get this checked out."

No amount of protesting or pinning valid excuses to the moment were going to buy him an escape route this time.  Eventually his moaning and groaning gave way to a reluctant, "Okay, then.  Friday is the only possible day it will work for me this week."

The doctor was no fool.  He had met tall young men before sent to him by a concerned mother and he read the undertones of this visit.  

"Actually, young man," the doctor said, "your mother is right.  This needs to be removed.  However, the spot you came in for doesn't look as dangerous as this one."

His finger traced a neighboring spot.  "This one I'm very concerned about and it needs to come off today."

Mothers are too kind to say "I told you so" but ours would have had full rights.  Yet in the following days, her concern swallowed those rightfully spoken words and exchanged them for prayers.  Family and friends joined in.  

Then came the dreaded phone call.  "The spot removed was cancer and we need to see you in our office tomorrow morning." 

Cancer?  Life and death flashed through his mind.  Her mind.  Surely this wasn't happening.

The appointment turned out to be encouraging.  "It is melanoma in situ, which means it is contained."  The doctor looked at my brother.  "In a year, you would have been in serious trouble."  

But which spot was the cancerous one?  No, it wasn't the black unidentifiable one that Mom had gasped over.  That one was just a decoy God used to get a young man to a doctor.   The cancerous spot was the one the doctor noticed.  

Gifts come in all shapes and sizes.  This time the gift was The Spot that God Grew.  It was all wrapped up in a mother's concern and tied in love's golden thread. 

Merry Christmas, Brother of Mine.  How about a miracle for a present?