Always a reason for hope, even with cancer

The words had inadvertently found their way on the printed page; they were obviously not meant for anyone to read. Only two words: “No hope.” But they said so much. Too much.

They were printed next to the name of a cancer patient for whom we prayed. I flinched when I read them. No one is beyond hope--- not even those who appear to be victims in the last stages of cancer.

Cancer is indeed a powerful foe. It’s taken down the tough (Lyle Alzado, Mickey Mantle, Walter Payton), the entertaining (Bette Davis, Milton Berle, Jack Benny), the rugged (Yul Brenner, U.S. Grant, John Wayne), and the brilliant (James Baldwin, Steve Jobs, Enrico Fermi), just to mention a few. There is no vaccination against cancer, and no society is cancer free. You have a relative, or a friend, or a neighbor with cancer.

Maybe you have cancer.

According to Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, because we are living longer, cancer has more time to strike us, making it a “new normal,” in our lives. In advanced nations, cancer attacks two to three people during their lifetime. But we are making progress in the fight against cancer. Although the incidence of cancer is rising, cancer mortality is actually going down, says Dr. Mukherjee.

And so we hope.

Yet even as we hope in advances of medical technology and the benefits of healthier lifestyles, we know our time is limited. As cancer victim Steve Jobs said in his commencement address at Stanford University shortly after his cancer diagnosis in 2003: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one had escaped it.”

I’m not sure what Jobs’s concept of the afterlife was. A convert to Zen Buddhism, perhaps his hope was in an enlightened state of rebirth, or a dissolving into a blissful nothingness. Or maybe Zen provided the underpinnings for a more secular form of hope with no need of dogma or revelation, where this world is all there is and all we need. Christianity Today editor Andy Crouch’s observation in The Wall Street Journal seems quite correct: “Mr. Jobs’s Apple is a religion of hope in a hopeless world---hope that your mortal life can be elegant and meaningful, even if it will soon be discarded like a 2001 iPod.” As Crouch notes, for many in this secular age, that’s enough.

But for others it’s not.

For the one whose future was mistakenly labeled, “no hope,” it wasn’t. He clings to hope---a hope that he, still in the prime of young adulthood, will by God’s mercy overcome cancer and avoid death, at least for a while, at least until he can leave the hospital where he has been confined for more months than he cares to count, imprisoned in a bed where he hears of life on the outside, of days other people enjoy, days of sunshine and fun, of breathtaking sunrises and glowing sunsets, of weddings and parties with friends, days stolen from him by cancer’s curse; days forever gone, dissolved by the slow drip of chemotherapy.

As I conclude my prayer, he signs the cross---a motion of his faith--- and I join him, as we both hope in something more than a miracle cure, something that’s beyond death, something grounded in the hope expressed by the apostle Paul, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

In the hope of that eternal glory we can rest, finding within it reason to live in a world bounded on its four corners by death, breathing the oxygen of a hope that survives the misery of our happenstance because it’s a hope in the One who takes us by the hand now and promises to carry us home then.

In that hope, we find reason enough to live for another day.

And rest in peace forever.

Contact David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, davidbwhitlock.com. David is Pastor at Lebanon Baptist Church in Lebanon, Ky. He also teaches as an adjunct professor at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Ky.

Just One Word

All it took for Doris Troy was, “Just One Look,” in the words of the hit song she wrote and sang to the top of the charts in 1963. “Just one look/ That's all it took, yeah /Just one look.” Good and right for her.

But sometimes, in other situations, all it takes is just one word--- one word to change a life forever.

We---my wife Lori and I--- waited for that one word, having been told we would receive the results of Lori’s biopsy between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Thursday last week. Actually we had been waiting for over a week, including the time for the scheduling of the biopsy itself and the determination of the results.

Waiting can be an unnerving experience: the human mind is capable of a thousand possibilities, mostly negative, creating one more worst case scenario, allowing our ever imaginative thoughts to wander, recalling people we’ve known somewhere---that one where it so suddenly happened to her, or the other one where he went so fast, or the one where she fought so bravely for so long, and the one that so heavily weighs on you just now, the one you await---yours: “What will the one word be: Benign? Malignant?”

It’s just one word; but what a difference one word can make.

Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans a day and costs over $200 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. In Lori’s case the particular biopsy was for breast cancer, a cancer which about 1 in 8 women will develop in the course of their lifetime. Almost 40,000 women were expected to die from breast cancer in 2010. Only one other cancer, lung cancer, claims the lives of more women in the U.S. You are probably thinking of people’s names as your read those statistics. Maybe they died this last year or perhaps they are battling cancer today. Maybe the name you are thinking of is your own because you are struggling with this disease.

And so Lori and I waited for that word: benign or malignant.

“The word ‘benign’ has to be the most beautiful word in the English language,” one of my friends later declared.

“Then ‘malignant’ has to be the ugliest,” a second quipped.

I know something of that. My first wife, Katri, died of breast cancer after a six year fight with that formidable foe. In her unfortunate case the news came like a terrorist bomb on a peaceful parade, exploding on us as we hypothesized the cause for her mysterious symptoms, scratching our heads, all of us, including doctors---experts looking in the wrong direction, searching for the cause of her pain, examining relentlessly--- until the disease, with a Jared Lee Loughner smirk, proudly exposed its sinister self, and snickering at our surprise, “ha!” went on to announce with warped glee, “Breast cancer it is, fourth stage, metastasized to the bones.” And that was the cause for her pain, a pain among many that would dominate the remaining 6 years of her young life.

And now this day, Lori and I anxiously awaited her test results:

2:30 p.m., “I’m good, how ‘bout you?” I tried to exude confidence.

3’clock: “Half way there, they should call any time now.” I was still attempting to console.

3:30 p.m., “It’s okay, but what’s taking them?” I tried to remain upbeat.

3:45 p.m.: “Maybe you should call and see if they forgot.” Now I was getting aggravated.

3:55 p.m.: “For goodness sakes, what‘s wrong? Just call!” Frustration had found a parking place in my soul.

3:59 p.m.: Finally, the phone rings, Lori answers. My ears are attuned. Life hangs in the balance, “Okay, Yes… Yes…Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you for the good news!”

“Benign.”

I sigh with relief.

Just one word. A wonderful word. Not malignant. Benign. Praise God!

“The Lord giveth.”

“The Lord taketh away.”

In just one word.

For now, I’ll rejoice in the “giveth” and in that one word: “benign”--- at that moment the most beautiful word I could have heard.

Until it’s time for another test.

But that’s another day.

Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com. His website is davidbwhitlock.com