Same Kind Of Different As Me

Denver learns from Mary Ellen that Deborah has cancer. He has faith God will heal her. Then again, he’s also afraid God won’t save her. Denver has lost too many people in his life and doesn’t want to lose her too. Everyone at the mission takes the news hard because Deborah was the most faithful of the volunteers and never judged the homeless. Denver and Chef Jim begin praying for her every morning in the kitchen, and there are many other prayer groups of the poor there doing the same. Denver says, “Seemed like they didn’t have nothin to give, but they was givin what they had, takin the time to knock on God’s front door and ask Him to heal this woman that had loved them” (132).

After the colonoscopy, Deborah has another surgery scheduled for three days later. Until then, the Halls retreat to Rocky Top and, joined by their neighbors Roy Gene and Pame Evans, prepare for the battle in front of them. Deborah tells Ron if the cancer has spread, she doesn’t want to fight it. Ron knows, however, she’s still a fighter, even if she doesn’t realize it. For his part, Ron resolves to love her like never before.

In the hospital waiting room, after Deborah’s five-hour surgery, the doctor tells Ron she’ll need more operations, and the prognosis isn’t good. Ron thinks of a verse from Job: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away” (135). He thinks about how unfair it is Deborah has gotten sick, given how healthy she lives and how spiritual she is. After she wakes up, Ron tells Deborah the news, and she doesn’t shed a tear. Ron yearns, however, for a biblical flood of tears from his own eyes as he has never learned to cry. 

After four days in the hospital, Deborah’s room is overflowing with flowers, which she tells Ron and Carson to take to the mission. Upon arriving, they see (and join) a prayer circle for her just inside the front door. Ron is worried about Denver, as he hasn’t seen him since the diagnosis, and Ron doesn’t want him to feel caught and released. Chef Jim says Denver is asleep. Ron has a flash of disgust because only someone lazy would be asleep in mid-afternoon. Chef Jim explains, however, Denver has been praying next to the Dumpster outside all night every night for Deborah—after all, there are plenty of people already praying for her during the day—which is why he is asleep. Once again, Ron is ashamed of his snap judgement about Denver.

Denver knew he could have prayed in bed, but he didn’t want to fall asleep like Jesus’ disciples in the garden. Each night, sitting on the ground with his back against the Dumpster, Denver talks to God about Deborah. He wants God to heal her, and he wants to know why this is happening. Nothing makes sense to him. Then, Denver thinks about how falling stars shoot across the sky, but you never see where they go. He decides this is a lesson about Deborah: God put her in Denver’s life like a bright star, but only He knows where she is going, and everyone will just have to accept it. Denver feels praying for her is the most important job he has and won’t quit no matter what. 

Ron and Deborah are between houses in Fort Worth, so they move in with the Davenports. Less than a month has passed since Deborah’s diagnosis, but she is now in constant, terrible pain. After more tests including an MRI, her doctor says at best she has a year to live. Deborah faints, falling out of her chair in his office. When she comes to, she asks the doctor if he believes in God. He says he believes in medicine. After leaving his office, Deborah asks an incredulous Ron to join her in praising God. She says, “We serve the living God, who knows our number of days. I intend to fulfill each one of mine” (143).

Deborah begins a series of grueling chemotherapy treatmentsthat quickly drop her weight to one hundred pounds,and she suffers extreme side effects as she endures a variety of chemical combinations. Still, when she has the energy, she and Ron go walking together. 

Deborah is concerned her illness is keeping Denver from being in their lives, so she decides he should get his driver’s license. However, Denver has an old citation for marijuana possession in Baton Rouge, Louisiana that he needs to take care of first. On a cold December night in 1998, Ron drops off Denver at the bus station along with several hundred dollars for his fine. When Denver arrives in Baton Rouge to turn himself in, the police laugh at him because they think he only wants a warm bed for the night. Ron contacts an old family acquaintance in Louisiana who helps clear Denver’s record. Ten months later, after much studying for his driver’s test and parallel parking practicing, Denver finally obtains his license.

Regan, Ron and Deborah’s daughter, finds a job she wants: being a cook at Young Life, a Christian youth camp in Colorado. Jokingly, Ron asks Denver if he wants to drive her belongings there. Denver is excited at the chance to go through the city he is named for and says he’d be happy to. Now Ron is obligated to let him do it. Denver still can’t read, so Ron draws him a lot of pictures of highway signs and detailed maps to make the two-thousand-mile round trip. Finally, the morning comes when Denver is pulling out of the driveway in Ron’s almost new F-350 crew-cab truck. Part of Ron thinks Denver is happy he has been entrusted with this job, but another part is convinced he will never see Denver again. 

Denver is amazed Ron is willing to trust him with his truck and all his daughter’s possessions. He doesn’t know how smart that is, but it does demonstrate faith, something even more powerful. Denver is determined not the let the Halls down.

Almost immediately Denver misses a turn and ends up in Oklahoma. From there, he stops at a series of gas stations to ask for directions as he heads toward Colorado. Even though Ron has given him money for a motel, Denver sleeps in the truck at night to make sure nobody steals anything out of it. As he gets closer to the youth camp, the roads become steeper and narrower. Finally, by the time he is winding his way up one last mountain top to his destination and several days behind schedule, Denver is driving five miles an hour with what seems like a hundred cars trailing along behind him. 

Ron is worried when Denver doesn’t show up on time in Colorado. Maybe there’s been an accident. Maybe Denver has reverted to form, Ron thinks, and has kept driving to Mexico or Canada. He thinks about calling the police but, given the scope of Denver’s route, doesn’t even know where they might look for him. Eventually, he tells Deborah what is going on. She says Ron should quit worrying and instead pray with her for Denver’s safety. After only a few minutes, Regan calls to say Denver has arrived.  

Denver makes it back to Fort Worth in a day, and he shows up with the truck washed and waxed. Ron is amazed Denver still has over half his expense money, several hundred dollars. Ron wants him to keep it, but Denver refuses, saying he did it to bless the family, not as a job. He finally takes the money when Ron tells him to use it to do good for someone else. This trip has two benefits: Denver has proven to be trustworthy, and Ron has learned to trust. Shortly thereafter, Denver successfully transports pieces of art worth over a million dollars from Baton Rouge to Fort Worth for Ron. 

From May to November, in 1998, Deborah undergoes chemotherapy. For Thanksgiving, she prepares a Thanksgiving feast at Rocky Top for family and friends. She has finally gained some weight and is looking healthier. By Christmas, her tumors have shrunk enough they can be removed from her liver through surgery. After that, Deborah is declared free of cancer. Everyone celebrates the good news and considers it a Christmas present from God.

Their Christmas gift from God doesn’t last, however; by the end of January, Deborah’s cancer has returned and is worse than ever. Still, Deborah is determined to lead at least the semblance of a normal life and decides to go shopping at the mall. However, she soon returns in tears as she ran into a friend there who says how good it is to see Deborah given she’d heard Deborah was terminal. This is the first time Deborah has had to consider this being true for herself. She carries on, going to church even if she’s too sick to stay for the entire service.

Denver is happy to be driving around town in a car the Davenports gave him and impart pithy theological reminders to Ron, such as, God is good. Denver even joins the Halls at their neighbors’ ranch for their spring roundup and despite his misgivings, learns to accept white men on horseback with ropes for the first time in his life.

One Sunday, after church, Ron’s friend Scott goes with Denver to check on Mr. Ballantine, who lives in a government-funded nursing home. Ballantine, an old, spiteful racist, appeared one day out of the blue at the mission. Denver offered to help him inside but received only racial slurs in return. Nonetheless, Denver helped Ballantine and continued to look after him at the mission. After he had to be moved to the nursing home, Denver would walk the two miles to get there to check on him. One day, Ron drove him there and went inside. He was horrified by the disgusting conditions and had to step outside while Denver cleaned up Ballantine’s room. He thinks about how generous Denver is to a man who is so mean to him. Ron is suddenly afraid he is not good enough to be Denver’s friend and that he’ll catch and release Ron, instead of the other way around. 

Denver hopes Scott doesn’t have the same reaction to Ballantine that Ron had. They visit with the old man, and finally Scott asks Ballantine if there is anything he needs. Ballantine says he’d like some Ensure and cigarettes. However, when they are at the store, Scott feels wrong about buying the cigarettes because that’s just helping Ballantine kill himself. Denver becomes agitated and says, “You asked the man how you could bless him, and he told you he wanted two things—cigarettes and Ensure. Now you tryin to judge him instead of blessin him by blessin him with only half the things he asked for” (161). Scott relents and buys the cigarettes, too.

Scott drops off Denver at the nursing home, where he delivers the Ensure and cigarettes. Ballantine is surprised Scott paid for them as he has no way to pay him back. Denver says Scott doesn’t expect him to; he bought those things because he’s a Christian. Ballantine says he hates Christians, and that’s when Denver breaks the news to him that he’s also a Christian. Startled by this, Ballantine apologizes for all the mean things he’s said to Denver over the years. Denver takes a chance and tells Ballantine that God loves him. The old man thinks he’s committed too much sin to ever be in God’s good graces, but he’s also tired of sinning and figures that might count in his favor. Soon after that, Ballantine accompanies Denver to church and decides the service was “real nice” (162).  

A little over a year after her initial diagnosis, and after her second surgery in four months, the doctors once again declare Deborah is free of cancer. She and Ron travel to New York City to be with their son, Carson, on Mother’s Day. Yet, at dinner that night Deborah experiences crushing abdominal pain and must leave the restaurant. Their worst fears are soon confirmed when the doctors say her cancer is back again and even worse than before. Still, Ron tries to remain strong: “I clung to my faith like a ropeless climber to the side of a cliff—faith that the God who said He loved me would not rip out my heart, steal my wife, my mother’s children” (165). Ron and Deborah try to be still and wait for God’s blessing, but that becomes harder and harder for them to do.

Desperate, Ron begins driving Deborah back and forth to San Antonio for an experimental treatment using a new drug called CPT-11. It’s terribly painful and ultimately doesn’t work. In July of 2000, the Halls visit Regan at the youth camp in Colorado, but the trip is cut short: Deborah can’t breathe in the high altitude due to her low red-cell count and is rushed down the mountain to find an oxygen tank to use. When they return to Texas, Deborah tells Ron she has asked their pastor to come over to discuss her memorial service.

On Labor Day, their children, Regan and Carson, come home to be with their mother. By October, after another trip to the emergency room, which results in Deborah being moved to a private room, her doctor tells Ron a patient in her condition only has days to live. Ron goes to his car in the parking lot, puts his head on the steering wheel, and begins to cry. Later, he realizes he is screaming. 

Denver waits patiently outside Deborah’s hospital room, hugging her visitors as they leave. Finally, late that night, Ron comes out, and Denver knows he needs to talk to him. Denver tells Ron he knows what it’s like to feel helpless, just like when he had to watch and listen to Big Mama being burned alive. He also tells Ron, “Our limitation is God’s opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain’t nothin you can do, that’s when God takes over” (169). Denver sees Ron is out of it and implores him to realize “God calls some good ones like Miss Debbie home so He can accomplish His purposes down here on the earth” (170). However, Denver promises, Deborah won’t be dying until she’s finished all the work God has given her to do. 

In her hospital room, Deborah tells Ron she doesn’t want to die. The doctors decide to do one last colonoscopy. The results are not good: her tumors have completely surrounded her colon, making it impossible for her to digest solid food. For whatever time she has left—a few days or weeks—she can only subsist on ice chips and water. Deborah asks, “How do you live the rest of your life in just a few days?” (172). 

Deborah returns home less than two weeks before their thirty-first wedding anniversary. She and Ron go through the volumes of photo albums she’s assembled over the years that document their life together. Then, Deborah begins giving away her possessions, including her cherished perfume bottle collection. Once she’s done with that, she summons Ron and her children to her bedroom. Deborah informs them that after she dies, Ron is free to be happy and remarry, something she wants him to do. Plus, the kids can marry whoever they’d like to as well. The children leave so she can talk with Ron alone. Deborah tells Ron it’s okay if he wants to be with the painter he had the affair with eleven years earlier, the first time she’s mentioned it since they’d began marriage counseling. He says that will never happen, and he doesn’t want to go there. Deborah insists the affair was a good thing as it brought them closer together. Ron is still hoping God will take him before his wife.  

Deborah is still alive when her and Ron’s wedding anniversary arrives. Mute for almost a week, she suddenly begins to speak to Jesus and describe angels flying in her bedroom. Ron and Regan are stunned to be present while she’s having such a visitation. The next morning, Denver arrives and informs them he also had a visitation with Jesus and angels the previous night at the same time as Deborah’s encounter. God told Denver He was ready for her to come to heaven, but her work was still not complete.

Three weeks after returning from the hospital, Deborah is still clinging to life. One morning, Denver arrives to have coffee and explains how he was once a captive in the devil’s prison but was saved by Deborah. He says, “She seen me behind them bars and reached way down in her pocket and pulled out the keys God gave her and used one to unlock the prison door and set me free” (180). 

A week after their anniversary, Deborah begins to have violent tremors and spasms and is obviously in terrible pain. The hospice doctor asks Ron to administer the high dose of painkillers to give her relief as it might also kill her. Ron does so, “closing off what might have been a glimpse into hell” (182). 

Once again, Denver shows up early in the morning with a message from God. Ron’s faith in God is gone, but he does know everything Denver has predicted has come true, so he is willing to listen. It turns out everyone is praying too much for Deborah to live which is keeping from heaven. Instead, it’s time for everyone to pray for her to be set free. Ron and Denver begin to pray together for her deliverance, and Ron is startled to see Denver crying for the first time ever. 

Denver has cried plenty of times by the Dumpster near the mission, but never in front of Ron and Carson. He leaves the kitchen to go see Deborah in her bedroom. Denver tells Deborah it’s okay to let go and leave this world because he’ll continue to do her work at the mission. She begins to cry, and he knows she can hear him even if she can’t speak. Denver also knows this is the last time he’ll ever see her alive. 

When Michael, Ron’s business partner from New York, arrives to pay his respects, a group of people in Deborah’s room are singing her favorite hymns. Although he’s Jewish, Michael is overcome by the scene, begins weeping, and falls to his knees. After gathering himself, he tells Ron he feels as though he had an encounter with God for the first time in his life, and he’ll never be the same. Ron wonders if this is the last deed Deborah needed to perform before being able to go to heaven. After everyone leaves, he holds her in his arms and waits for the angels.  

Deborah finally dies. Ron asks for time alone with her and begs God to raise her as He did with Lazarus. When this doesn’t happen, he breaks down. The coroner arrives, and Ron takes some pills to help him sleep. He thinks about all the things Deborah will never be able to experience, but he hopes God will at least let her see them.