One thing I’ve noticed about myself as I’ve grown older–besides gray hair and arthritis–is an increasing level of cynicism, or, as I like to call it, a realism that balances my optimism. That means I generally give people the benefit of a doubt until the evidence shows otherwise, and my realism presses me to confront the facts. As President Reagan always told his cabinet: “Never be afraid to see what you see.”

When it comes to God’s capacity to intervene in human events, my outlook is similar. About 7 years ago, I was nearly killed by a drunk driver in a tractor-trailer. He made a U-turn in front of me. I never had a chance.

Because I was going under the speed limit at the time, I had enough time to bank to the left and slam into the side of the cab from the passenger side rather than go under the trailer, which would have cut me from 5-foot-3 to 3-foot-2.

The car was totally destroyed, the truck flattened the engine block and crushed the passenger area. I walked away with a small cut on my hand. No fractures. No broken bones.

So many things happened just right–I had looked down to adjust the volume on the radio, but looked up just in time to see the truck pulling out; I was going 10 mph under the speed limit, as I was accelerating from a stop; I hit the truck at an angle that made my engine block, rather than myself, the resultant of the load path–that I can say it was a bona fide miracle.

As a child, I had a stepmother who had terminal cancer. She had it bad. One month to live. At first, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Cancer? I didn’t know what it was. I just knew she spent a lot of time in the hospital. I didn’t know what chemotherapy was, but I knew she wore wigs a lot.

(While I was kept in the dark, my parents didn’t quite understand what happens when you have a curious, sort-of-intelligent cat like me who has access to her medical dictionaries and dad’s encyclopedias. I put 2 and 2 together. I didn’t understand all the medical terminology, but I figured out–as well as a third grader can–what cancer is, what chemotherapy and radiation treatments were, and why chemo treatments resulted in people wearing wigs.)

Nominally religious for most of her adult life before then–she was raised in a Catholic orphanage, and experience that scarred her badly–she became a Christian.

Needless to say, she–and others in the church we began frequenting–prayed for healing.

She had cancer of the liver, the colon, the omentum, and both ovaries. Over 30 years later, she’s still alive and kicking. So yes, I still believe in miracles, as do about 50% of the Americans surveyed in the latest study on the matter. I’ve seen it firsthand. Readers of this blog have a no-crap verifiable eyewitness account that miracles happen.

On the other hand, I have firsthand accounts to verify that terminal cancer is called terminal for a reason, and that miracles are called miracles because they are exceptions to the natural rule.

Kilo Sierra eschewed medical treatments, insisting that natural therapies–and Divine intervention–would be sufficient to cure her breast cancer. She died about 2 years ago.

Delta Charlie, on the other hand, pulled out every stop in his battle with prostate cancer. He went full-force with chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, and even natural therapies. He and his wife–both seminary grads who worked as a pastoral team in Missouri–trusted in God for healing. There were periods of success, periods of hopelessness, periods of hope. But once the treatments stopped working, the cancer spread to his brain and shut him down.

For the Christian, victory is rarely of this world. And unless the Dispensationalists are correct–and I have my doubts about it, as I consider Dispensationalism to be a nutty hermeneutical system–death is a door through which we all will walk one day.

Ergo, the cancer survivor–while having great reason to rejoice–will still die eventually. The same goes for survivors of truck crashes. Apart from suicide–which is not an acceptable choice for the Christian–we don’t get to choose how we leave the world.

And yes…the skeptics are correct in that when the medical evidence is there, it almost always means death is imminent.

On the other hand, death is–for the Christian–a promotion.

During my short tour of duty at Southern Cemetary, an angry friend of mine said that when she got to heaven, she’d have a boatload of questions for Jesus.

I told her, “I think I’ll settle for getting the tears wiped from my eyes. Apart from that, I’m not sure I’m gonna give a crap what the answers are.” We both laughed.

Maybe not the perfect answer–with appropriate theologispeak–but I’ve yet to see a better answer.