The Big Lie and the Big Truth

I know someone wonderful, whom I love deeply, who is feeling worthless, who is hurting badly right now, and medicating his pain in ways that only add to his shame. Those are things I think we can all probably relate to. So we’ve been corresponding about it lately and when I was done with this latest response it occurred to me that it deals with such universal issues that it might, with a few minor alterations to eliminate personally identifiable details, be helpful to others as well, so here it is:

What you're really expressing is what everyone, believe it or not, feels to one degree or another, when they're forced to be honest with themselves. We can see that other people -- at least some other people -- are inherently valuable and worth loving, but not us. At least in our low moments, we can each do exactly what you have done here: go through the list of all the things that are valuable and admirable and lovable in us and say they don't really count, the good things aren't really me, the bad things are. Any evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I remain unloved and unlovable.

When another dear friend was writing to me years ago about her inner struggles, there were times early in our friendship when I could say things to her and she could begin to accept them even though they were the same things she had discounted or denied when her husband said them because "He has to say that; he's my husband." Eventually, as our friendship matured, she began to say to me: "Of course you'd say that; you're my friend." There is something in us that says "my real worth is determined not by the best things I've ever done or that have ever been done to me, but by the worst things."

It's a lie, precious heart, a lie from Hell. You ARE fearfully and wonderfully made. You ARE worth more than many sparrows. YOU are adopted, chosen, made a royal heir. When the Bible says "while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" it means precisely that Christ knew that YOU were lovable and worth loving even when you were in the middle of those experiences that cause you the deepest shame, because those things aren't who you really are; they aren't what you're really about. There is a real you, not just a potential future different you, but a real you, right here, right now, that is good and noble and beautiful and worth dying for and being friends with, no matter what you've done and no matter what's been done to you.

The blood of Christ goes deeper than the stain of sin has gone, to that real, truest you, beneath all the layers of pain and self-protection from pain, beyond all the shame that has layered on top of the real you, and beyond all the facades that you've layered on top of that to hide the shame.

It comes most naturally to me to express to others in words the worth I see in them, like I'm doing now. It comes more naturally to you to express to others their worth -- to love them -- by doing things for them. But it is in both cases a sweet, beautiful, admirable heart that is, each in its own way, loving others. A loving heart is always a lovable heart and yours is as loving and as lovable as any I've ever known.

YOU ARE who God says you are, and not who the lie in your head says you are, no matter how persistent the liar is in repeating to you your alleged worthlessness and no matter how clever he is at compiling the purported evidence that you aren't lovable. His case is a deception, a clever, twisted house of cards that connects unrelated details, misrepresents them and deludes a redeemed man into submitting to the bondage of fear and pain and loneliness even in the middle of a loving crowd. Those good things you do for people can't simply be discounted; they are a reflection of who you are. With you, as with God, the quality of the gift is a reflection of the character of the giver. And the quality of your gifts is better than you think.

The truth will set you free, baby doll. Trust God's assessment of you. Accept God's assessment of your worth when he uses other people to reflect to you his positive view of you. You are more loved than you think, by more people than you think, and they would find it impossible not to love you. They reflect how God sees you, and how God sees you is who you really are.

Love,
Brad

My Hair-brained Linux Infatuation

I had my third chemo session yesterday. It was pretty uneventful. The doctor said after two more he'll order some new scans to see how the cancer is responding and then we'll meet to decide where to go from there. I'm praying of course for a miracle that shows no cancer then, or at least a providential answer to prayer showing the cancer significantly shrinking.

At any rate, I was going to post here Phillipians 1:20-22 from the New Living Translation. It perfectly expresses my thoughts right now on my present prospects of life and death. Then I'd have probably said something borderline profound about the passage.

Unfortunately those thoughts have all been driven completely out of my head by a self-induced technological crisis. I got this hair-brained idea to try to install Linux on our family desktop PC. Linux is an operating system like Windows or Mac, only it's free and is supposed to be fast, virus-free and never freezes up. I had hoped to have what's called a dual-boot system where I could start the PC in Linux while Karen and Jake would still be able to start it in Windows with everything just like it has been, until I got everything set up for them in Linux. Then I would try to lure them over so we could get rid of Microsoft altogether.

I discovered that all those reviews that told me how easy and consumer friendly Linux is were written by Linux geeks who wouldn't know easy if they tripped over it.

I got Linux installed, but wiped out Windows in the process, so no dual-booting. That wouldn't have been too terrible because I have all our data backed up. The problem is Linux doesn't recognize my wireless card so I can't get on the internet anymore, which is 90% of the value of a PC for us.

I hope to have some nice Linux geek rescue me within the next few days, but until then I'll be a little slower in answering e-mails and in updating www.choosing2live.com and this blog.

While you're praying big prayers for my healing, maybe you could pray a little one for my stupid computer's healing, and for Karen and Jake to forgive my poor ridiculous self who lives in that tragic netherworld of people who aren't competent enough to qualify as geeks but are too curious and proficient to just leave the PC alone and settle for word processing and e-mail.

In the meantime, let this be a lesson to the rest of you. We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Small Gifts and the Main Gift

You can find an update of my physical and psychological status at our website, www.choosing2live.com, by clicking on "Choosing to Live Physically" and "Choosing to Live Psychologically" at the top of the page. Basically, the news from the oncologist this morning was at least tentatively encouraging. Of course, he's such a pro at dealing all day every day with the false hopes and false fears of cancer patients that he never shows a big reaction. I'm sure he wouldn't act visibly shocked or excited if a patient walked into his office with a full-grown, fully functional third arm growing out of their forehead. But I think it was good news. Anyway, you can read about it on the website.

My other blog thought for the day is basically a copy-and-paste from an e-mail I wrote to my sister-in-law today, after she commented on the website:

The idea behind the website is precisely to use my terrible situation to say that the things we believe about God are not just trite platitudes or airy-fairy clichés or cruel hypocrisies. He is real and loving and powerful even in your situation, right here and now. We are told that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. I think that includes me -- and this. So we're giving my cancer to God to use it for our good and for the advancement of the purpose to which he has called us. We believe he's healing me, but we want to bring people not to the idea that if you're a Christian bad things will never happen to you, or that every crisis will always be resolved in your favour, that no real loss or grief or hardship will ever happen to the saints; rather, we want to bring them to the idea that the God who is able to give me healing or daily bread or deliverance from the lions den or the fiery furnace is able still to be God in my life, and to draw me into deep intimacy with him, even in the lions den or the furnace, even to the grave; that physical health or prosperity is not the main gift He wants to give us, or the main gift our hearts really desire. HE is the main gift he wants to give us, and the main gift that we'll discover that our hearts really desire. It's not mainly the ability to run a 4-minute mile or buy a big fancy house that our hearts were created for. Our supreme destiny and desire, the reason for our being and our ultimate joy is a deep, fervent, mutual love relationship with him, that spills over into a love for the people around us and an ability to see their incredible worth as He sees ours and theirs. And we can have that right here and now in the middle of the fiery furnace. That's what made it possible for the three Hebrew men in the Bible story, when faced with that furnace, to say: "but if not, be it known unto thee Oh king that we will not bow down to the idol you have set up". He is able to deliver us and he will deliver us, but even if he doesn't, we can trust him when he says "my grace is sufficient for you"; we don't and we won't bow down to the idol of fear and control. That makes every moment, even the bad ones, worth living.

THIS is the day the Lord has made.

A dear friend referred me to a website that contains a short essay by a Christian author who has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. It was encouraging because he talked about his recent apparent physical healing. (After being told he had a week or two to live and being essentially bedridden, he gradually got stronger and healthier over the next two months, but hadn't at the time of the essay gone in for confirming medical tests.) But the essay was also encouraging for his description of how he has been praying:

Quote:

We live and pray one day at a time. We pray each day and say, “Thank you God for the healing you gave me today. Please heal me tomorrow.” It has occurred to both of us that if we were truly spiritually sensitive, we would have prayed that way all of our lives but it took the threat of imminent death to bring us to this point.

That's exactly the perspective I've developed and basically the same prayer I've been praying every day, except that his wording is slightly different and certainly better than mine, and I will adopt it now.

The downs and ups go along together. For the first time since the diagnosis 5-6 weeks ago, I've had several days this week of occasional abdominal discomfort. The other up-down thing was that Karen got a letter in the mail while I was at work on Thursday from our insurance company. She wasn't sure how to interpret it and didn't have it right in front of her when I spoke to her on the phone about it. From what she could recall of what it said, they had decided not to deny coverage of my cancer treatment as a pre-existing condition. It looked like they were going to pay. We might still have had significant out-of-pocket expenses if the policy didn't cover 100% of everything, but it would have seemed immensely more doable then. We were feeling real relief until I got home and read the letter myself. It turns out they were just agreeing to cover the initial colonoscopy and weren't saying anything, one way or the other, about coverage of the ongoing treatment.

So, we're still awaiting word on that.

In the meantime, my text for tomorrow's sermon is Jesus saying in John 10:10 "My purpose is to give life in all its fullness." (NLT) Other translations say "life more abundantly" or "to the full". The Message says: "more and better life than they ever dreamed of." One commentary says he gives us eternal life -- starting now. So this day I will let God have my grief at the past and my fear of the future and enjoy this moment he gives me now, and these people he gives me now, and the sense of his spirit bearing witness with my spirit right now that we are the children of God. This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

I Love Chemo Day!

Today was my second chemo treatment. I go in once a week. This week the doctor told me that since I haven’t had any side effects from the chemo this past week, I’m probably not going to have any side effects. That’s a small answer to prayer! He also confirmed that Royal Brisbane Hospital is a cancer research facility, that they do human trials of promising new drugs from time to time, and that if one comes along while I’m undergoing treatment, he can get me into it. I had told him that as long as the existing treatment was deemed to have less than 50% chance of significantly extending my life, I wanted a shot at any promising new drug that came along, so that’s another small answer to prayer.

We pay for the chemo each week when we receive it. When Karen went to pay this week, the lady who routinely handles payments, insurance and so forth all day every day had to stop and make a phone call to see how to handle ours because she’d never before seen a case where the hospital itself had cut their charges. That means my oncologist wasn’t just doing something that they normally do from time to time in special cases; he was really collaring people and getting them to do totally unprecedented things for me. Roland and I had spoken briefly to the oncologist on my first visit, about why I’m here and what we hope to accomplish. After her encounter with the payment lady today Karen said: “You and Roland didn’t really say that much to him. Y’all didn’t do this. God moved in his heart.” He’s a good doctor and a good man, and he really is fighting for my life. That is, indeed, another God thing.

But that’s not why I’ve decided that chemo day is my favorite day of the week. On chemo day I get to sleep in, I get off work, I get 1-4 hours to sit and read without any obligation to be doing anything else. I eat food the hospital staff brings around for me which is off my normal diet. The naturapath says I don’t have to take my normal bushel basket of supplements that day. And I continue to have no symptoms of the cancer beyond occasional minor abdominal discomfort that is no greater than the average 50-year-old man experiences. What’s not to love?

God is giving me this day. He is on this day meeting this day’s needs. I don’t have my miraculous healing yet, but on days like today, it’s easy to believe I will. And either way, Roland and I should be ready tomorrow to go public with a new website that will keep people updated on my cancer battle, give them the opportunity to donate conveniently to my expenses, and use the cancer battle as an illustration of how we see God and his work in our lives. The site will thereby not only help my friends and family pray and donate as they want to for my battle, but will also help us draw secular, unchurched strangers into our planned church plant and ultimately into the heart of God.

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Resurrection

We arrived at the beach this Easter morning just before sunrise, just a dozen of us. We spread blankets on the ground, talked a little about the resurrection and the power thereof, shared communion and prayed together. The beach was on the bay, rather than out on the open ocean, so there were only the gentlest of waves lapping up on the sandy beach, and we could see land on the horizon beyond the water.

For some reason I thought of the story of Jesus grilling fresh fish on the shores of Lake Galilee for the disciples, and I wanted that, too. Do you reckon Jesus had a good recipe for grilled fish fillets? As we took communion and celebrated his submission to death and his utter, absolute, unquestionable conquest and mastery over it, I really wanted to eat what he ate and drank what he drank. I’m on a really restrictive diet right now, hoping it will help in some small way, at least, to fight the cancer, but fish is one of the mainstays of the diet. Karen and Emmy both do a really good job of making it interesting, but I really like the idea of tasting what Jesus has prepared.

And of course, how can you watch the sun rising and the waves lapping and hear even the most abbreviated version of the resurrection story while wrapped up in your own prospect of imminent mortality and not desire right now a taste of his power over death and the grave?

When Jesus rose, it didn’t right then end death for all of us, of course – not in the literal, physical sense that it ended death for him. But it was a proof and a promise that his victory over death does ultimately mean our victory over death as well. He proved it by healing the sick, by raising the dead and finally by raising himself up from the grave, eating fish with his friends, and rising triumphantly into the clouds with a promise that he would return. He promised that death is the final enemy that shall be destroyed. All the healings and resurrections recorded in the New Testament are just samples, foretastes, appetizers, temporary reprieves here and now to remind and encourage us that what we have here only as an appetizer will there be a glorious gourmet buffet without measure or limit.

Somehow, sitting there on the countless grains of sand, watching the perennial rising of the sun over the endlessly lapping waves on Easter morning, it’s easy to believe that God is the quencher of anything that threatens to quench the eternal life he has given me, and it’s easy to believe that he will offer me now, like he offered the lepers and Lazarus, a foretaste of his death-quenching life.

Now, to totally break the mood, for those of you who recall my youngest son Jake as a blond, here’s the latest picture of him. He got a friend to dye his hair black this week, just for a change of pace.

My sister Janet has colon cancer!

Well, I had intended to come home from our Easter sunrise service on the beach this morning and write on my blog about the service. Then I figured that I'd offer a medical update after my second chemo treatment this coming Tuesday.

That's all just been bumped off the front page by late-breaking news. My brother Roy Lee and my mother called me on our mobile phone as we were on the way home from the sunrise service to give me the results of the precautionary colonoscopy Janet decided to get, after my recent diagnosis of colon cancer. She said she and my other sister Andrea were both going to do it and I figured that was fine, probably not a bad idea, but just never gave it a second thought. We have NO family history of colon cancer, and the doctors all agree that family history is the primary predictor. The fact that I have it doesn't make her any more genetically susceptible than anyone in the general population, because our genetic predecessors never had it.

Yet, shockingly, they found a 3cm malignant tumor in her colon. They removed it along with a foot of the colon, and they think they got it all. She should recover fully with no need for follow-up chemo or anything like that. Her doctor told her that her brother saved her life. I'm too astonished for words.

I'm just stunned that she could have it, too, at the same time as me, and I'm stunned at the providential nature of the discovery.

My entire family now, parents, siblings, even cousins are rushing out to get colonoscopies.

I saw a cute poster once that started out quoting a famous poem that said: "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs..." Then at the bottom of the poster it offered a different conclusion from that of the original poem. The poster finished the sentence: "...then you obviously don't understand the situation."

Man, when we live our daily life as if it's not precious and fragile, we're obviously not paying attention.

Finally, Treatment!

I just got back from my first round of chemo. The doctor re-thought the way he normally does things, talked to the hospital CEO, the drug company and offered his own services free of charge to get my cost down from an initial AU$5000 monthly to AU$900-1000 for at least the first month. When I left his office to go to the “Day Oncology” room to actually begin the chemo, I told him: “I’ll do something useful with whatever time you can give me, I promise.” He took my hand in both of his, and then patted me on the shoulder, and told me he believed me.

In 8 weeks he’ll make his first assessment of whether the chemo is working. I spent 3 hours getting drugs injected today. Next Tuesday I’ll spend 1 hour getting drugs injected. It’ll alternate like that thereafter, 3 hours one week and 1 the next. The doctor doesn’t think I’ll have a problem with nausea, but gave me medications just in case.

When we got home, Roland told me about a news item they’d just heard of about a possible major breakthrough in the cure of bowel cancer (which is what I have), from the cancer research department at Royal Brisbane hospital right here. The doctor in the story said it may be available in as little as 12 months. If they look for test subjects I hope to be right here, standing in line (and watching the birth of a new, life changing church at the same time.)

I believe in miracles and I believe in medicine and I’m willing to suspend judgment on alternative therapies and give them a shot. The biggest miracle, of course, would be to have the doctor in 8 weeks find no sign of cancer. Next step down would be a remarkable shrinking of the cancer after just 8 weeks. The lowest level of “yes” to our prayers would be that the cancer has not grown at all, and that my life expectancy is not reduced from the initial average I was quoted. If the cancer in 8 weeks has continued to grow, I keep praying and hoping for a miracle, but I probably start giving serious attention to getting affairs in order and preparing the hearts of the people I love, as best I can. At least that’s my feeling right now.

At the moment, though, I expect a miracle. Eight weeks from today is May 29. My mother is expecting to be here the first week of June, so if she comes a week early and the news is good, she’d be here to hear for herself the answer to her prayers, which would be cool. If the news is less good, I guess it’s no worse to hear it in person than an hour later by e-mail or blog.

Anyway, thank you for your prayers. Keep’em coming.

Love,
Brad