Your fear and pain is my disguise

Over the summer I have posted various chapters from my blog book, PTSD and Cancer:  Lost, alone and afraid.  Many people have asked me what my response has been from those who have either found my blog via Face Book or through search engine terms, ie. “googling.”  This isn’t a super stat blog but it certainly is serving it’s intended purpose.

I am receiving notes and emails from individuals thanking me for posting an honest, open and raw account of depression and cancer – Christianity, depression and cancer.  Just as I had hoped, survivors are finding through my story that what they are experiencing post-treatment is not “unnormal” and that they aren’t “going crazy.”  In reading their stories, my heart hurts for them as I relive what they share with me.  For some survivors, I wish I could hug them and hold them and let them cry and later talk, talk about what we feel we shouldn’t be talking about because “everybody tells me I should be thankful and grateful that I am cancer free.”

My continued prayer is that in a survivor’s quest to learn more about post-treatment depression they will find my blog and read my story and find the hope and peace they so desperately are looking for.  Yes, our strength comes from Christ our Savior, and in my weakness called depression He was always there whether it be through a secular counselor, a book, a web site or a cancer support group.  I really was never alone and I am here to tell you – you are really never alone.

The following chapter is what I might consider one of my most provocative chapters.  I hear often, very often, how once a patient is done with treatment their life fills with busyness, busyness to the point of distraction.  Is it better to distract yourself after treatment pushing your cancer experience behind you or should you stop yourself and reflect on what you just went through and allow the emotions to surface that you so successfully buried?

January 5, 2010

I didn’t think I would make an entry so soon.

As I was writing this morning, my writing revealed a truth.  I was disguising my pain and fear by “helping” other cancer patients and survivors.  I was “helping” them by listening to them and talking with them about their suffering.  I made myself available to them because, subconsciously, I desperately wanted them to answer my questions about my suffering.

Since exposing my true weakness and becoming more transparent with people, some have questioned my decision to completely drop out of “things.”  I know volunteer work places attention on others and not self.  After this morning’s journaling, I know I am in the right place by not filling my time with “things” but taking the time to explore me.

January 5, 2010

I am accepting my cancer, it did happen and it wasn’t a cold virus and over in 10 days. It was an unbelievably surreal, dreamy time in my life. I might mention that again and again as I accept this illness.

So far in a year and a half, I haven’t quite found myself. I came home from SLC a much spiritually deeper person. My one true anchor through all my treatment was my faith and hope in Jesus Christ. Once home and back into a routine, that intimacy and concentrated time was interrupted as the early morning turns into a day of activities.

The landscaping of our yard was a great distraction from having had cancer just months before. To be outside with growing strength and renewing energy, the sunshine and tackling one acre of “dirt” was a healthy challenge for me. Feeling strong and working on this project was like spitting in cancer’s face.

After my SCT, I expected to spend the first year of recovery fatigued and weak. I was shocked at how quickly I recovered and how my strength and stamina seemed to grow stronger daily. I was doing pretty well and I was feeling pretty well.

Literally, when we just finished the landscaping and we were enjoying the beauty of our labor, the flowers and shrubs, and the bounty of our labor, the cherries, I fell off the ladder and broke my leg. I had a lateral break in my tibia, my tibia plateau decompressed and I tore my ACL off of the bone. Surgery rebuilt all that was destroyed. My leg was reconstructed with plates and pins.

In all my years, I never felt such pain. It was overwhelming. And not only was it overwhelming, it was exhausting! The fatigue hit me like a Mac truck. The great majority of my healing was from the end of July to the end of October. The ache or discomfort and my limp lessened all through November and in late December, I noticed what remained was a slight limp.

This accident and recovery distracted me from my cancer. My thought and energy was on my leg. Toward the end of my healing, I began to spend more and more time thinking about my cancer.

I was in complete remission and my leg was better so I began to focus my attention on other people who had cancer – I had this driving passion to help them.  I met with cancer patient/survivors personally.  Most often they wanted to hear about my experience. I also attended our cancer support group and actively contributed to our discussions.

If I couldn’t physically be with people, I participated in on line discussion forums and I volunteered to be a telephone mentor through the Bone Marrow Unit at Huntsman. I was distracting myself again, all my thought and energy was expended on other people. It was an odd time and one I am now exploring.

I think I was superimposing my fear and pain on to others by disguising it as “helping” them get through their fear and pain.  In an odd way, I wanted them to answer my questions about me.  I wanted to ask them three questions. One, if the cancer recurred how would you determine what action to take? Another type of chemotherapy that makes you feel sick and crappy or another form of treatment? How would you choose quality of life verses quantity of life? Dying more quickly and naturally or a prolonged death being kept alive by drugs and transfusions? Two, how/when do you know enough is enough? (kind of the same as one) And three, discuss the reality of death and dying. I thought I was being helpful to them but really this was all about me, me and my curiosity and my grasping for answers to these questions.

I believe before my anxiety and stress manifested, I was becoming more and more obsessed with these issues and perhaps even a little manipulative with others. I wanted to make my problem their problem, I wanted them to answer my questions. I wanted answers and really nobody could give me answers. As my frustration grew, my doubt grew; I began to feel guilty and I felt ashamed. I realized I was not as strong as I thought I was and I had not overcome the psychological aftermath but was feeling the vortex pull me down again. I wanted answers but nobody could give me answers.

Why, after a year and a half was I still suffering? Shouldn’t I have overcome all of this by now? Does anybody else struggle like me? Do they think of these things? Doesn’t anybody talk honestly and openly about these issues or do we always have the “hope” that possibly some new drug will come along to save us? Stupid questions, selfish questions especially when there are women I know dying from cancer. Stupid, selfish questions – I should be grateful I am alive and in complete remission.

And I broke. I am not strong, but I am broken and afraid. I hurt and there is this deep, deep pain hiding in me.

 

Compare and Contrast: God’s purposeful plan

No matter how I try to begin this entry what first comes to mind is I cannot compare and contrast God’s purposeful plan in the lives of His people.

“Who has understood the Spirit of the Lord, or instructed him as his counselor?  Whom did the Lord consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way?  Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?”  Isaiah 40:13-14

In this blog we are following Pastor Bob Jennings’ journey of his last days here on earth.  He has been faithful in sharing with us how a Christian dies.  The day I posted this article, Mike Fechner also made a post to his blog , Building Bridges of Christ’s Love.  I was dumbfounded as I read his story of healing.  I thought God is a God of contrast yet at the same time I realized we really cannot compare Bob’s story and Mike’s story, Bob’s dying and Mike’s healing.  Is God so small that the human mind can compare and contrast His purposeful plan for our lives?  No.  God is God and He will do as He pleases.

This shouldn’t unnerve us nor rattle our faith but bring a certain security in knowing that as our sovereign God, He knows all things and has a purposeful plan in every individual’s life.  What brings a great security and comfort to me is, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  (Ps. 139:16b)   Not one of my days is a mistake; I am cancer free because there is a purposeful reason for my remission.  There is not one mistake in Bob’s life nor Mike’s life; both have purpose and this purpose ultimately is to bring glory to God’s character and name. (I am secure in stating that both of these men with their arms around one another would share a hearty, “Amen!”.)  I don’t think I need to wrestle with the question why God calls one believer home and heals the other; I rejoice in both cases.

Here is Mike’s story:

Awakened to Pray

Posted on September 11, 2012

Does God still do miracles? Is He truly the same yesterday, today, and forever? The answer is emphatically YES! We have become like the early church, whose members prayed for Peter’s deliverance from prison yet struggled to believe their prayers had been answered. While Peter stood at their door knocking, they argued with the servant announcing his arrival. They dismissed her as crazy rather than believe their prayers had been answered! (Acts12:13–16)

Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to share the many miracles the Lord has done in direct response to your believing prayers. My prayer is that we may know that God has so much more that He wants to do in this generation if we will pray by faith the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit while trusting in our Sovereign Lord for the answer! Miracles are awaiting the church in this season of awakening if we will believe our Great God and pray His Word by faith.

When I was diagnosed thirty-eight months ago with stage 4 non-smoker’s lung cancer, I believed the diagnosis and accepted as truth that I was a dead man walking. I planned my funeral, arranged my affairs, and prepared for death to take me within eight months—eighteen months at the longest—anticipating seeing God face to face. “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21) was ever on my heart.

As I waited for death, a group of intercessors came into my office, among them, Kay Boleman, who had been assigned to be my intercessor while I was on the staff at Prestonwood Baptist Church. These prayer warriors prayed as the Bible instructs us to do:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (James 5:14–15, emphasis mine)

They prayed a “prayer of faith.” The Greek could be translated “a prayer of believing” or “a believing prayer.” That is, they prayed believing that I was already healed.

That was a critical ministry they performed on my behalf. People in the pit of despair simply do not have the capacity to believe. I needed Kay and the others to pray over me and for me. Their prayer of belief lifted my eyes from this death sentence to see my great God and to hear His promises. And I believed, that day, I was healed. I began to walk daily in this confidence, no matter what men would say. I do not ignore science; I simply give more credence to the Word of God. I did accept the best course of medical treatments offered, but I placed my trust in the Great Physician to heal me.

Let me be clear. “Praying in belief” is not our attempt to bring God around to our way of thinking or to get His approval for our desires. God is sovereign and He calls us to trust His character. Trusting in our Sovereign God for the answer to prayer means that if He tells me it’s time to suffer greatly and then go home to be with Him, I should rejoice knowing that this will bring Him Glory. (I will explain this further in a later post.) Jesus is King and we must surrender to His sovereignty.

The week before surgery, the pastors and elders of Prestonwood Baptist Church held a prayer service on my behalf. The elders anointed my head with oil and prayed believing God for my healing. My mother prayed in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming that I was healed. On that day, I believed, by God’s grace and mercy, that this surgery would be the final chapter in my battle with cancer. Click here to listen to her prayer now.

Before surgery, Dr. James Batiste, a Neurooncologist with U.T. Southwestern Medical Center, warned that removing a tumor the size of a golf ball from my brain would likely cause balance problems, which would take anywhere from two weeks to six months to resolve. He mentioned that I should expect nausea, headache, impaired speech, sore neck, and muscle spasms during my long recovery.

When I was taken back to surgery, I remembered the last words of my oldest son Michael, who prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for entrusting this to our family.”

When I woke, the surgeons reported that the tumor was completely contained and came out in one piece! My doctor said, “We all know that Somebody else had something to do with this.” I spoke freely and clearly, experienced no nausea, no major headache, felt no more pain than a sore neck. The next day, Dr. Batiste came to see my first attempt to walk; as he watched, I walked with no assistance. He said, “Please quote me on this: This is a miracle.” (Click here to see for yourself.) Less than forty-eight hours later, note the improvement.

By that afternoon my bodily functions were all normal and I needed nothing more than Regular Strength Tylenol for minor pain. In fact, I spent much of my time in the waiting room praying for families whose loved ones lay in the ICU. I was released from the hospital three days after surgery instead of the expected four to seven days, and I have been feeling great. A week after leaving the hospital, I began working out at Gold’s Gym .

I tell you this for two reasons. First, I want to encourage you. We serve a God who continues to work supernaturally for our good and His glory. (Rom. 8:28–39) Second, to proclaim that the Lord is calling all of us to be awakened, to know Him, and to experience Him in a fresh and powerful way! There are miracles yet to be experienced if we will, again, become a people who pray by the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting in the sovereignty of our great God.

As Jesus said to His followers,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:7–11)

Yes, glorious freedom is coming . . .

Last night I learned a lovely, kind and considerate woman from my Friday morning Bible study was diagnosed with lung cancer and mesothelioma.  She is one of the first people who strongly encouraged me in my proposal to facilitate a local Christian cancer support group, the first in our valley.  She was also enthusiastic about my blog and sent my information to her daughter who was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I am so sorry that now she walks this often bumpy road called “cancer”.

When you hear the final pathology report and the doctor states, “You have cancer”, in one millisecond fear grips your mind, you feel like you are suddenly adrift on a huge sea and without a raft or life vest, you struggle and gasp and sputter trying to breath and not go under.  Finally, your cloudy thoughts begin to become somewhat coherent as you hear the doctor outline the next steps for the rest of your life.

John Piper states in the introductory chapter of his book, Don’t Waste Your Cancer,  “When God subjected the world to futility, he did it ‘in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21). So the groaning of our cancer has a double meaning. It means that sin is horrible, and it means that glorious freedom is coming. We will waste our cancer if we don’t hear in our own groanings the labor pains of the new creation.”

Groanings is an interesting description of our suffering.  How many of us groaned inwardly, and maybe for some of us, groaned outwardly through harsh tears, when we heard our diagnose?  My first response was confusion and then, yes, fear; never did I think that my diagnose was the start of labor pains of a new creation being birthed in me.

As the doctor states (often as a matter-of-fact) what our next step is in our all out war against our newly diagnosed disease, we catch our breath, grab a hold of our life vest and with what strength we have left, pull ourselves into the raft that the emotions, or “groanings” begin to flood our minds.  For me the following 24 hours were crucial in my emotional decision making.  Was I going to be angry at God and with my fist in the air shouting, “Why me God?  If You really loved me You wouldn’t do this to me!” or “It’s the devil!” or “I submit to Your perfect plan for my life.”  And our decision colors our approach to our sorting out and accepting this life changing diagnose.

I accepted my cancer as purposeful and that there was a perfect plan surrounding my suffering and there is no getting around it, I feel like I did suffer especially in my post-treatment recovery at home.  I experienced a deep groaning and felt lost and confused as I sorted out the last seven and a half months, adjusted to my having cancer and accepted the fact I had cancer and foundationally, some how and in some way good would come from my experience.  So Mr. Piper was correct, my groaning was likened to labor pains and now, in looking back, I see the new creation being wrought in me.

“So the groaning of our cancer has a double meaning. It means that sin is horrible, and it means that glorious freedom is coming.”  Yes, indeed, sin is horrible.  Period.  The falleness of the world wracked my body and it was horrible.  But a promise follows, “and it means that glorious freedom is coming.”  What is that glorious freedom?

I believe any traumatic event can cause one to reflect on their life.  My suffering was a pause and prompted a journey of recollection of my earlier days before cancer.  Through the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit I saw a very judgmental woman.  I was driven but my ambitious nature was a guise for a deep need to control my surroundings.  What I realized I was ashamed of and I was deeply convicted.

Before my cancer I was a woman with a tongue that freely spoke my thoughts and I know I made bold statements to people that I “loved” and these statements hurt them deeply.  In this season of post-treatment suffering and reflection, I repented for my judgments and criticisms.  I was sorrowful that perhaps by my harsh words fellow believers stumbled in their faith and maybe left the church because of Pharisees like me.

My groanings spurred on my confession of sin and this confession began my glorious freedom of a changed person.  This freedom is ever expanding.  I softened, I began to listen, I was more empathetic and compassionate and patient.  I am softening, I am listening and I am learning to be more empathetic and compassionate and patient.  Where once a cloudy gray confused my heart, an ever increasing soft light shines.

How did you receive the news you had cancer?  Did you groan inwardly?  Did you sense the crush of horrible sin?  Has your groaning turned and are you beginning to experience the glorious freedom that is coming?

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”  (Rms. 8:28)  My cancer was for my good and it is my hope that my cancer helps me today in better reflecting the goodness and glory of Christ.