I sent the following e-mail to my parents and siblings on the 10th of August, 2007 in response to a plea from my brother to come back to Texas for medical treatment. It seems appropriate to post it here for the rest of you who care about me, as well:
We've decided to stay here in Australia. Karen talked to Charlotte by phone and we had a "family meeting" with Wesley and Jake. We are all agreed.
The doctors here know about M..D. Anderson, what they're doing and what they can do. They've been quite clear that I have a better chance of a literal, supernatural miracle than of a cure, even from some medical breakthrough. I'm either going to get a miracle or I'm going to die. The only difference between treatment and none is a few months. The main advantage to dying there a few months later is that I get to die with you. The main advantage of dying here is that I get to spend the time I have left, doing what God has called me to do, helping as much as I can to get a church established that will make a bigger difference in a couple of years than everything I did with my life previously to planting the church in Frisco.
And if God chooses, as we're praying, to heal me, his miracles are not geographically dependent and it will be easier to stay here than to get back here, because of the financial situation we'd leave behind if we left now, including breaking our lease and phone contracts.
I'm sorry. I love you with my whole heart, but we're staying. We're still working on getting tickets for a 3-week visit during Jake's Christmas break from school. It's not certain we can achieve even that, but I think we can pull it off. Someone has offered enough frequent flyer miles to buy the tickets. We just have to figure out the details of how that's done and when.
In the meantime, I will try a new "alternative" therapy of diet and supplements that claims to cure cancer or dramatically reduce it after two months on the regimen. And Kenneth's magic cancer-curing water should be here sometime during that period, as well.
Love,
Brad
1 comment:
Brad,
One of the things I really like and appreciate is the honesty with which you approach the whole situation. We have a family here in our church where the father died of cancer, age 47, just last month. But they gave the impression that death was simply never an option. It is hard to deal with an attitude like that from the outside. Your honesty makes it a lot easier to talk with you and pray for you.
Hans
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