It is OK to Cry

“For most patients, cancer is the most difficult and frightening experience they have ever encountered. All this hype claiming that if you don’t have a positive attitude and that if you get depressed you are making your tumor grow faster invalidates people’s natural and understandable reactions to a threat to their lives.” — Jimmie Holland, the Human Side of Cancer

Have you had a good cry lately?  Are you ignoring deep-seated fears and sadness over your cancer diagnosis?  Denying yourself a real response to your situation?  Are you afraid giving in is the same as giving up?

If you’re like me, you have heard and heeded the advice of people who say that positive attitude is going to help you beat cancer.  But here are the facts: The preponderance of evidence in studies done over the last 20 years shows that, where cancer is concerned, nothing supports the idea that your mind has anything to do with controlling the rogue cells in your body. 

In other words, your attitude will not determine whether you live or die. In fact, there is no evidence it will extend your life by as much as another day. 

What is effective, doctors say, is being true to your nature. Trying to always be upbeat when that is not your nature is stress-inducing. It is what psychotherapist and cancer specialist Jimmie Holland refers to as “the tyranny of positive thinking.”  

It may just be when you “suit up” to battle cancer with a positive outlook, you may end up killing your own real, emotional, human reactions to an emotionally-charged disease.  And the stress of that does have proven, negative consequences in the fight against cancer.

So, the best thing you can do for yourself is to continue to live just as God created you.  If you were a curmudgeon before cancer, go ahead, continue to scowl and growl your way through life.  If you are passive, you do not need to put on a suit of armor, If you normally get angry at situations, don’t stuff that anger, but use it to your advantage.  If you have times of depression or sadness, you do not need to apologize, or feel guilty about those.  

Go ahead; it’s OK to cry (and yell, growl, scowl). 

I consider myself a normally upbeat person, but this whole experience is far out of the realm of normal living, and blue days come. On those days, I allow myself pity parties. And, since they are my parties, I cry if I want to. 

I have learned that others may not understand (or want to be around) in these times of great sadness.  False friends, those who hang with me because I am always upbeat, may walk away, sometimes forever.  Good friends and family may pull back emotionally, too.  And I need to allow them their emotions, too. 

In those moments of loneliness, God comes to my side and draws me even closer.  And that is when I am reminded, my hope is never in what I do or don’t do.  My hope is in the Lord.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.– Psalm 34:18

Gracious Father, thank you for the gift of emotions and that I am free to experience them without fear.  Help me to know that you are with me in the midst of those emotions, even those that may seem ungodly. Thank you for being with me when I am troubled.  Comfort my fears, sooth my sorrow, and restore my spirit.  Amen. 

Cosmic Santa or Savior?

“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.” — Psalm 37:3-6

I read an excellent blog yesterday entitled Faith or Presumption? http://joequatronejr.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/faith-or-presumption/

In it, the writer makes the point that we confuse faith with presumption that God will give us all we ask, just as He promised.  After all, that’s what it says in the Bible several times over, right?

Wrong. For instance, what we often quote in Psalm 37 is “He will give you the desires of your heart.” What we fail to recognize are the qualifiers:  “Take delight in the Lord” and “Commit your way to the Lord.”

God will give me the desire of my heart if I align my heart with His, my way with His. He will not answer my foolish desires, my ungodly desires simply because I have “faith” that He will.  Faith in a Cosmic Santa is not faith at all, but the presumption that we are deserving of what we want.

How often do I pray for earthly healing? Every day, sometimes several times a day.  But I am not presumptious enough to think that will definitely happen.  I don’t know God’s plan for me, but I do know he is faithful in spite of my circumstances.

Every time I come through a surgery or a treatment and my cancer is under control, I know that people will say in response: “God is good.” As if God’s goodness depends on my survival.

I have learned to answer: “God is always good. Whether or not I survive cancer does not change that. Healing either comes here on earth or in heaven, but we will be healed. And THAT is what makes God good.”

My response occasionally leads to criticism that I sound like I have “given up,” and need to: (1) pray harder or (2) be more confident in asking God to take care of our troubles. One person even suggested that I will be cured if I have more faith.

Rather than believing in God as a Cosmic Santa who fulfills our “wish lists” (as good and noble as we may think they are), we need to recognize and be thankful that our ultimate needs, those of forgiveness, reconciliation with God and eternal life through Christ, are already ours.

God has done what He promised!  Jesus lives!

Losing to Win

Reblogged from Jogging To The Finish Line:

Victory!

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever…” — Isak Dineson

God is the author of oxymorons.  The first will be last and the last first.  We must lose our life to find it. 

Read more… 221 more words

The Victory is Ours!

Looking up!

As quick as the stroke of a hummingbird’s wings, life changes. 

An accident happens.  A relationship ends.  A medical diagnosis leaves you stunned.  A loved one dies.  In a nanosecond, we go from Security to Chaos. Despair. Sorrow. Grief. Pain.

Sudden the stability that you have known drops from under your feet and you are in a freefall, with nowhere to grab, no plan for coping. 

The freefall ended for me when my emotions ran dry, and I thought, logically, that I was coping fine.  Just fine.  After all, I wasn’t crying my eyes out.

Most of us who have had a serious disease know the feeling.   As we climb out of the pit of despair, we live our days walking one step in front of another.  Always looking back over our shoulders at the memorable mess that we are trying to walk away from. Convinced we are:  “Fine.  Just fine.”

In amongst the seemingly million things I have learned these last two years of my cancer journey (and the 1 1/2 years before that with Bruce’s leukemia journey) is this one most important thing:  Regardless of how quickly the ground drops away from you, how fearful you are, how stomach-churning the fall feels, how close you are to the edge, keep looking up! 

When something shakes us to the core, the tendency is to become overly cautious. Fearful. To watch our feet to make sure our steps do not stray. We become focused on the insecurity of life. We hold out hope that watchfulness will keep us from falling again. And because we are actually moving, we think we are progressing.

Try this:  Close your eyes and imagine walking along the banks of a river.  Do not look left, or right, but straight ahead.  Keep an eye on your feet. That’s it, one step, now another.  And another.  There you go!  You’re moving forward!  Follow the curve of the path as it winds along the river.  Do not look at the river, or the sky above you.  Keep walking, sure-footed, all confident that you are not falling.

… And totally unaware of the beauty around you. Living with blinders on, your heart wrapped in an impenetrable shell. 

That is the stress-filled response to trauma. 

Try it again.  Imagine the river.  Flowers bloom on the edge of the bank.  A cardinal, overhead in a tree, trills his song, the shimmering sun reflects off the water.  Look up!  The sun is nearly blinding.  Reflected in all you see around you.  Your senses are heightened as you take it all in — the sounds, the smells, the warmth of the sun.  It isn’t just around you now; the sun envelopes you, inhabits you. 

That’s what living in God’s light can be like for those of us who have survived a life trauma.  It fills us, illuminating the darkness, and rebuilds our senses so that we again feel alive. Confident. Secure. 

With a new found confidence of God, not in ourselves.  It takes some practice to walk this way, but it gets easier as the days go on.  It takes time to learn to trust that God has our path laid out for us and that He will direct our feet.  It takes surrender that comes only when we live in faith.  But when we keep our eyes on the One who has our plan in His hands, he will put our feet back on a firm foundation and will restore our joy.

Just keep saying to yourself, “Look up!”

Only God! The God
who equips me with strength
   and makes my way perfect, 
 who makes my step as sure as the deer’s,
   who lets me stand securely
   on the heights, 
 who trains my hands for war
   so my arms can bend a bronze bow. — Psalm 18:32-34 (CEB)

Scar Tissue

I struggle with some decreased motion in my neck and left arm because of scar tissue from surgery and radiation. There is pain, but usually for just a moment, and I can triumph over it if I just keep moving.   

It is nothing compared to the emotional scar tissue on my heart. It is this scar tissue that causes me to hold back, to live with caution instead of confidence,  Unresolved anger. Scarred.  Remembered loss.  Scarred.  Broken relationships. Scarred. Feeling unworthy.  Scarred. 

Instead of powering through the pain of our emotional scar tissue, how often do we recoil and deny ourselves the opportunity to receive fully, to give ourselves fully, to live fully? 

Last week, there was no call from my oncologist after my PET scan and before my face-to-face appointment.  I knew, even before she walked in the room, silent and grim-faced, that I had a new tumor.  This one is on my lung.  Again, as happens every time I get bad news, fear found its way back to the depths of my heart and it began beating way too fast.  It was as if a hole had opened up and the physical pain was immediate.

Fear.  Not that I am dying, but that I have not done enough living.   Giving to, and living for, others becomes even more urgent as I am hit with another reminder that this life all too quickly comes to an end.   

But, scar tissue always holds me back, especially when I get bad news and life is back on a slippery slope. Anger, loss, brokenness, unworthiness are all especially large burdens when your feet are pulled out from under you.

I can not remove the scar tissue in my heart any more than my doctors can do anything with the scar tissue from the radiation.  But I know The One who can help me work through it. Today as every morning, I will do my best to hand it all over to Jesus.  He alone can remove the pain of a scarred heart, filling it with His divine love. 

And Jesus, scarred hands, feet and side, will still be with me  at the end of the day when I can say: “Today I truly lived.”  

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?” — Bishop Fulton Sheen

If We Could Gain the Whole World.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? — Matthew 16:26

I had a conversation today with another leiomyosarcoma survivor. She has been fighting LMS for many years, and her honesty has given me an intimate look into issues and emotions involved in later-stage LMS.

She recently has been treated with a drug that is not approved by the FDA for use on her specific cancer and received bad news. The benefits administrator for her husband’s employer has decided they will not pay for any more treatments with this drug, which holds some (maybe the only) promise for her. The drug manufacturer has no interest in doing trials of the drug for LMS (rare cancers mean little profit). And covering the full cost of treatments out-of-pocket would quickly break any family’s bank.

And so the ethics question arises: What is a fair price for a few extra months of survival, a year, or maybe more? How do we put value on a human life, especially one still young and vibrant?

The answer, whether you ask this woman’s insurer, her doctor, her husband, or her small grandchildren, will vary. I would declare her priceless. She is a godly person, a kind woman with a rapier wit. She has become a good friend very quickly, even though we have never met face-to-face. I want her to live so we can meet and share a hug.

As our health care providers, drug companies and insurers concerned about profits battle compassionate doctors and our families who want us to survive as long as possible, it is easy to become despondent, to see our lives reduced to a bottom line. It seems that the world has declared us no longer worth saving. Options exercised and others dismissed, all hope appears gone.

Matthew 16:26 is usually referenced as a stewardship verse; focused on the truth that there is no profit in the things of earth, and so we need to guard our souls by checking our desires. But there is another truth in this verse: God considers my soul, and yours, of greater value than the whole world. 

I take great comfort in and encouragement from that.  God has declared us His treasure.  When we respond to Christ’s call to follow Him, we become recipients of the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:46), worthy of the life of His Son (John 3:16), and crowned in glory and honor (Psalm 8:5).

In Christ there is no loss, only gain. It is in His hands, and His alone, that we should place our lives. He is our future, our Hope for life.  Eternal life.

Put me on the merry-go-round

When I was in grade school, I went to the State Fair for a Minnesota history test contest.  In between the test and the distribution of prizes, our little group of five sixth-graders had the run of the State Fair without adult supervision for several hours.  It was my first taste of real freedom, and I’m guessing the same for the others.  What I remember best was that Robin rode in the front seat of the roller coaster; we rode behind her.  I didn’t much like the roller roaster and I thought Robin was so brave.  She recently mentioned this same day to me during an online conversation.  She told me that she discovered after one or two more rides that she didn’t much like roller coasters either.  I think it’s that the thrill of the up and down is exhausting.     

The last four months of this year have been a blur of activity.  There was the wonderful addition of grandson Nolan, born to daughter Katie and husband Chris, followed quickly by our granddaughter Emma’s 2nd birthday.  We took a great trip to San Diego; business for Bruce and rest for me.  I had successful surgery to remove the titanium bar in my jaw that was holding the transplanted bone in until it had successfully fused.  And that was just late August and September.

In October, our son Dave and fiance Erin had a joyous wedding in Duluth, which gave us another reason for a mini-vacation, this time on the beautiful North Shore of Lake Superior.  Shaina had open heart surgery, followed 10 days later by ablation when the first surgery was not fully successful.  In one week, she and I had 14 doctor appointments or therapy sessions between the two of us.  But, we are ending the year with good reports for all of us — Bruce’s leukemia remains in remission, my scans show no current evidence of disease and Shaina’s heart rate is beginning to come down, finally.     

It’s like we’ve just disembarked from a four-month-long roller coaster ride. 

A wise doctor told us when Bruce was diagnosed with leukemia that we should not allow our highs to get too high, or our lows too low.  I have been able to do just that by focusing on the following truth:  God, and His kingdom are the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.  There is nothing in this crazy life we are currently living that God did not already know would happen.  So, while it is all a surprise to us, we have been prepared by a loving God for whatever today is bringing .  When I keep that in mind, life is no longer stomach-wrenching, exhaustion-inducing, but manageable.  While our lives are filled with bumps and twists and turns, I know when we appear headed to the bottom, we are caught, captured, and uplifted again by God’s right hand. 

What could quickly become an emotional roller coaster ride, I visualize as a merry-go-round.  There is no beginning, no end, no stomach-inducing highs, or lows.  Just little ups and downs, with unending opportunities to grab for the brass ring, the prize!  There is no need for great sadness, nor am I looking for moments of joy, because joy is with me all the time.  That’s my brass ring.  Joy that never ends, and peace that passes all understanding. 

Put me on the merry-go-round any day.  I will leave the roller coaster to the thrill seekers.  Thank God for wise doctors and for His provision!

“We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.  Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.” — 2 Corinthians 1:8b-10