Struggling With Faith

This post on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog is an honest letter from someone struggling with faith because of health issues. Those of us who spend time with people fighting cancer (or going through any of life's other difficult challenges) face these faith questions frequently, both theirs and ours. Here's my comment reproduced from the blog -- not wisdom, just where I am.

What you're struggling with is hard. Many of us have been, are, or will be struggling with precisely the same questions you're asking. In fact it's likely that we'll go through this questioning multiple times in our lives.

After years of spending time journeying with people asking these questions, struggling with them myself, and studying lots of what's been written on the subject, I'm convinced that in the end, it boils down to a simple decision we each have to make. We can choose to believe and trust -- in spite of not understanding or liking what's happening -- or we can choose not to believe or trust (and still not understand or like what's happening). That was Job's decision -- to maintain his integrity, his faith and trust in God. If we understood it, if we could explain it, if it all worked the way we wanted, then it wouldn't be faith.

I choose to believe and trust, because I simply can't imagine going through these trying and uncertain times without God. That's my prayer for you as well.

Texas Medical Center Parking Payment Thoughts

A barage of thoughts while standing in line to pay for parking at M D
Anderson:

Impatience at the slowness and quirkiness of the machines.

The burden of $10-12 per day parking costs on patients and families.

How much fun it would be to stand there with a bundle of "get out
free" passes.

Resilience under Fire

Sometimes I'm amazed by the resilience of people. Today is one of those days. I visited with three people, each of whom has been hit with at least a double whammy.

First, there's the mom. Her teenage son is battling a difficult cancer and will undergo two difficult surgeries this week with periods in ICU following each surgery. Yet she's stuck in a neighboring hospital having just been diagnosed with brain cancer. She's facing the battle of her life while her son is fighting his own. I can't even imagine what she's going through, what her son is going through, what her husband is going through. Yet they were all doing what they had to be doing today. She feels that this battle is really about spiritual warfare -- Satan trying to diminish her faith, her testimony. I didn't disagree

Then there was the man with serious cancer in ICU. As we talked, he revealed to me that he and his wife were involved in a bad auto accident a week or so ago. She was severely injured, and has just been released from the hospital. He told me that when he woke up in the hospital after the accident, that he didn't believe what they were telling him had happened. Yet today he told me that both of them were taking this new chance to live their lives for God. Part of our conversation touched on his decision to forgive someone who wronged him almost 60 years ago, and how difficult forgiveness is. He's focusing on forgiveness -- not on self pity.

Finally there was a 30-something year old guy recovering from surgery for his fourth cancer recurrence. He's been fighting it for six plus years, with chemo, surgery, and radiation. And each time he fights back. I was inspired by his fight, his optimism, and his recently found faith.

What I learned today is that people are capable of dealing with incredible hardships -- and through it all staying faithful and positive. May God bless them.

Perspective: Do What Matters

Sometimes I struggle to maintain perspective. I've got things I want to do, and a long list of the things I need to do, and I don't seem to be making much progress on any of them. So I get frustrated. I know that most of us share this struggle that is complicated by being caregivers.

After visiting a man in ICU this week, I went to the waiting room to spend a few minutes with his wife. Her daughter had told me that she had gone to get a nap and and some rest, but to please visit with her. I found her sitting at the computer, emailing her office. As we talked, I learned that she had gotten a five-minute nap, but that she was trying to keep her business going -- her clients still needed what they needed. And that while things were better with her husband, the long-term outlook was dismal. I recognized the look in her eyes that spoke volumes entitled, "I Don't Know How I'm Going to Get Through This."

I know that she will, because God will provide each day exactly what she needs to be able to do it. Not everything will get done, important stuff will fall through the cracks, but it will be okay because the really important stuff -- caring for her husband, being loved by their girls, will get done.

And that provides the dose of perspective I need -- "When you can't do everything, be sure to do what matters."

From Bad to Worse -- But With a Respite

For some, life turns upside down seemingly overnight. That's the case for a man I visited this week.

Inoperable pancreatic cancer. Major medical complication after two rounds of chemo, requiring extensive surgery and extended stay in ICU. Metastases discovered during surgery. Unknown future treatment options, if any. Loss of 60 pounds in two months since diagnosis.

It's a story of things going from bad to worse fast.

Yet we prayed a prayer of gratitude and thanksgiving because his immediate condition had improved enough not to be as scary for him and his family as it had been for a couple of days. In the midst of fear and terror came a respite and time for rejoicing. I treasure that moment even as I'm saddened by the long-term outlook and the pain this family will suffer.

Chaplaincy Training Session

Today's Lifeline Chaplaincy workshop session, "Creating a Healing Community ," that I got to be part of by helping teach. It's been a good day.

Our Subconscious Grieves

I had an "Aha" moment last night while reading about Anniversary Stories in John Savage's book, Listening and Caring Skills. I was reviewing it in preparation for helping teach Lifeline Chaplaincy's Creating a Healing Community workshop.

Savage writes about the fact that we often display emotional, mental, and physical symptoms of grief as we approach an anniversary of a loss, even when we have not consciously thought about the anniversary. He gave personal examples of a time when both he and his wife were irritable and grumpy, and once they talked about it, realized that it was the anniversaries of both of their mother's deaths, even though they occurred almost 20 years before.

This is further validated by brain research which indicates that the brain, when not focused on some present activity, stays very busy trying to make sense of the past and working on the future.

The reason this brought an "Aha" to me is that for several weeks I have been a little down, both emotionally and physically. While I'm conscious that today is the fourth anniversary of Mom's death, I hadn't tied my symptoms to grieving. Perhaps an even bigger "Aha" came when thinking about Dad's behavior and symptoms over the past month or so in this light. He is grieving Mom's death as well as the illness of his wife Carol, which has interrupted their lives in significant ways. He, as we all do, keeps trying to figure out how to feel better by trying to find physical remedies -- prescriptions, exercise, foods, etc.

He's just following the same rule we all seem to follow, "I'm not feeling well, so there must be a physical solution." Yet we all know that our emotions drive how we feel, even physically. But most of the time when we're not feeling well, we first think about physical causes. Part of that is probably a defense against the pain of bringing the emotions to the conscious level, and part of it is cultural -- being seen as overly emotional is a sign of weakness. Yet it's amazing how healing it is when we recognize the grief and allow the emotions to become conscious.

Learning how to grieve consciously seems to be a lost art in our culture. But the more life experience we have, the more we have to grieve. And the more important it is for our physical and emotional wellness that we learn to grieve well.

Synchronicity or Providence

I'm thankful for the surprises God brings into my days.

As I was walking up to a patient's door this week, a man was just getting settled into a steno chair by the door. I asked if he was with the patient I was to see, and he told me he was with someone in another room, and just finding a place to wait while the medical folks were performing a procedure.

It turned out that the person I went to see wasn't in the room, so on the way out I began to exchange pleasantries with the man. That spark of interest gave him permission to tell me some of his story, about a relative to whom the doctors had just said they had no further help to offer. He talked to me about God's help, and we talked about how hard this circumstance was. And at the end of the visit, I asked if he'd like to pray, and he said, "Absolutely." I can still feel his strong grip on my hand as we prayed.

Just when this man needed someone to be able to open his heart to and share the pain he was feeling, God brought me to him and made me available by having the person I went to see be out of the room. I can't believe that was "synchronicity," the word the world uses to describe such happenings. It could only be providence, the work of the Holy God.

A Holy Moment

Monday, while doing one of my visits at M.D. Anderson, I experienced one of those "holy moments."  Actually it lasted over an hour.
After gently knocking on the closed door and slowly pushing it open, I could see that there was an attractive young woman sitting in the chair, and that everything was packed ready to leave the hospital and go home.  I introduced myself as a volunteer from Lifeline Chaplaincy and asked if it was a good time to visit, which was met with a big smile.  She told me her name, and after asking, I took a seat on the empty bed.
Not sure whether she was the patient or a family member, I asked, "So what's going on here?"
She replied, "I have metastatic cancer, I'm terminal, and we're on our way home.  My husband has gone down to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions."  As she explained a little more about her disease and it's history, she was smiling and quite upbeat.  I commented, "You seem to be doing quite well will all this."
"It's all due to the prayers of the righteous.  I am at peace with what is happening, and have joy.  I can see the hand of God in every turn in my life."  And I could tell from the way she said it, that it was absolutely true.  For the next hour we talked about her spiritual journey to this place.  Several times during the conversation, she would begin quoting scripture, and sometimes I would join in vocalizing the familiar passages with her.  Once she sang me a verse from "This World is Not My Home," and I just listened appreciatively.  At one point I paraphrased from something Randy Becton wrote, "Cancer is not strong enough to defeat God's plan for you."  She wrote that down, along with my comment, "You are spiritually victorious!"  I was glad that I could add something to the conversation that had meaning in the midst of her saying so many things that were so profound.
I asked how her husband was doing, and she talked about him lovingly, showing me his photo.  She talked about her Mom and Grandmother.  She talked about her church.  But mostly she talked about God and how good He was and how she saw His hand in her life, giving me example after example.
We prayed together and I was trying to leave the room because I could see that she was tiring, though she was still wanting to talk. She said that if I was ever in her city, to look them up.  I said, "That not likely, but when I get to heaven, please look me up because I'd like to continue our conversation."
For that hour, I was in a holy place with a holy person.  And I resolved to be more vigilant in seeing God's hand in my own life.