More than a cancer patient

November 22, 2012. We were driving home from a day filled with family gatherings. As we approached our exit on the interstate, my lower back suddenly started to cramp up. I was sure I had overextended myself playing with all the grandchildren. Within a few hours I would find myself in immense pain, ultimately requiring two trips to the ER to put me down. Later I would discover it was a huge army of immature white blood cells that were applying so much pressure on my bone marrow cavity that they prevented mature cells from growing. Two weeks later would come the diagnosis of AML – Leukemia.

Early on, my wife and I decided we weren’t going to let cancer define us. As individuals and as a couple we are more than that. But everyday, the condition and details of Leukemia would continue to press in: Medical reports to be interpreted, daily procedures that were foreign to us, always more numbers and counts to track, and of course the pain from the condition and the treatments.

It was a new world to us and each step of the way we found ourselves asking, “Who am I in the midst of this?” “Am I a cancer patient or a man who has cancer?” You might ask what is the difference. The first question sees the product of an ailment. The second acknowledges a person of value, choice, and meaning who also experiences cancer. Cancer defines the person in the first question. It is only one element in the second. We cannot escape it and we have to attend to it, but it does not determine who we are. We are creatures of conviction, not just circumstance.

How about you? No doubt, you have confronted great battles before. But are you a divorced person or a unique individual who has experienced the pain of divorce? Are you a poor person, or a person of limited financial resources who is in many ways richer than others? Are you an invalid or a person constrained by illness or physical condition, but still filled with ideas and passions to share with others?

When does faith in what is unseen become the vessel that carries you through that which is seen and experienced? When does faith determine who you are and the circumstantial condition become something to navigate?

The answer is found when we come to realize who we are in relation to our great God. When we realize our victorious nature comes from his power, our circumstances lose their power to overcome us.

Despair Or Hope?

What would others who know you say characterizes your life: despair or hope? Okay, likely it is some of both, but we all tend to lean more to one or the other.

Years ago, we were invited to dinner at the home of one of Marcia’s students, a Russian physicist who was learning English. We enjoyed a delicious meal and the company of our gracious hosts. After dinner, I asked the husband how Christian churches were doing in Russia. He quickly advised me that he was a scientist and engineer. He said that he was proud to believe only what he could see and touch. I also shared my belief in the one true God, who loves us so much that He sent His Son Jesus who came to pay a debt He didn’t owe because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay.

In the course of our conversation he talked more about the science of atheism and I shared more about the loving God who created science. And after some while, I felt that we would just not come to really understand each other. But then he made the most interesting and revealing remark. He said, “You know Bryan, there IS one thing you Christians have that we atheists don’t. You have HOPE.”

How many of us get so comfortable with our own pain, grief, sense of self-reliance and hopelessness, that we become numb to the possibility of discovering real hope for living better now and eternally!

The message of Go Light Your World is that there IS hope, that God’s best for you is available now. Yes, there WILL still be pain and sorrow and grief, and maybe even cancer, in your journey. But there is also real power for living beyond the problems and circumstances that beset us.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
2 Corinthians 4:7-9

On The Lighter Side

We continue to ponder the depths of our discussions with the Medical team at the University of Iowa yesterday concerning our limited options to treat this Leukemia. It was a lot of weighty information to process. (More to follow.) But God gave us both sufficient strength for the day (and today too) compared to my weaker days of the past week. We give thanks for that. And in the midst of the heavy discussions there were lighter times, even greatly needed laughter.

“Does this cancer make me look old?”
I encountered someone this week who I hadn’t seen for a long time. At first they didn’t recognize me without my hair. I asked them, “Do you think my bald head makes me look older?” “Well, yes I think it does,” she replied. We laughed at the honesty of friends.

But I’m not completely convinced. After all, this chemo makes me kind of feel like a teenager…I only have to shave once every couple weeks or so…if that. Those 14 whiskers that survived are very slow to grow!

I looked at my bride over the restaurant table yesterday and, contemplating the calorific menu items said, “The good thing about cancer is you can eat whatever you want!” (Except fresh fresh fruit and veggies)

Chemo brain is a term used to describe a physiological phenomenon that causes the patient to experience a loss for words or words are sometimes interchanged. Last night I told Marcia I was thinking about some of “the funniest life events in my imagination.” (I meant ‘in my memory‘.) As I write this I wonder if some of the funniest moments of life ARE in my imagination! 🙂

As it turned out, the funny moments in our life weren’t so prominent in our memory (or imagination). They are however, like the seams of your shirt. They don’t draw much attention but they certainly are essential to the structure of things.

Whatever numbers you are crunching, whatever heavy load you carry, whatever fears may visit your door, whatever relationship strains you experience, may you find the strength to laugh, and the joy of knowing that circumstances do not determine your response to them.

“(There is)…a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance…” Ecclesiastes 3:4