REAL HAPPY. FOR NOW

I've been home from the hospital for ten days, my gut-wrenching surgery now almost three weeks old. And how am I feeling? I'm happy to report that I am actually very happy. Really. I am really very happy, which surprises some people, I think, considering my circumstances, I mean my ongoing nasty case of terminal cancer.

Now the thing is, I am not by any means a naturally gloomy fellow. I am happy to admit that I have inherited a good genetic dose of what C.S. Lewis refers to (on page 1 of "Surprised by Joy") as the "talent for happiness." But nevertheless I am quite prepared to defend the Institution of Happiness from all nay-sayers, especially those well-meaning detractors who fear that by succumbing to the charms of the thoroughly flighty and unreliable Blue Bird of Happiness, people like me are setting ourselves up for disappointment. Here is my defense.

Without a doubt, my current state of happiness is circumstantial. I freely admit that I am happy these days because the immediate effect of my surgery has been the definite taming of my nine-month long state of Gastrointestinal Chaos. Because of the surgery, I am no longer the slave of a really lousy bowel system and no longer frequently and pathetically held prisoner in any one of the Small Rooms in the house. Along with all of that, I am no longer bound to a restricted diet and so have recently rejoined the World-Wide League of Enthusiastically Committed Coffee Consumers. In all of that, the fact that my current happiness is circumstantial dampens my mood not a bit.

By definition, "happiness" is always circumstantial. The word is derived from the Old English word "hap," which means "chance" or "fortune." In fact, all "happiness" is a positively emotional response to the way things have "happened," that is, to what is sometimes referred to as being "lucky" or "fortunate." And here my defence makes a humble admission.

The word "happiness" is, in its origin, not so happy a term for the happy state of heart in question. Being people who believe in "God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy" (1 Timothy 6:17 ESV), it is more accurate for us to describe ourselves as "blessed." It's just that doing so fails to explain to people how happy we sometimes are So, back to my defense.

I take in stride the temporal nature of my happiness, knowing that no earthly circumstances are permanent. But still, "everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Timothy 4:4,5 ESV).

Meanwhile, as I consider where my cancer is leading me: to several months of intense chemotherapy (beginning late in November, I think) and at least one more big surgery (this time to "resect" a substantial chunk of my cancerous liver), I accept the coming days of difficulty in the same spirit as I am just now accepting these happy days of strong black coffee. And, all the while, as it is set out in Psalm 16, "… my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices … You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." (Vss. 9-11 ESV)

Please don't worry about me and my current state of temporary, circumstantial happiness. I am very clear on the fact that FULLNESS of joy and PERMANENT pleasures are only found in the presence of God and at his right hand.

LOUSY ODDS AND AN EVEN HEARTBEAT

That charming stereotype we call "the Optimist" has sometimes been differentiated from his gloomy counterpart "the Pessimist" by his (or her) description of a glass of water that is, in fact, both half-full and half-empty. At last week's meeting with my oncologist, the good doctor told me that whereas, back in May, my chances of surviving this cancer were in his opinion very bleak, he now upgrades my odds of survival to a solid 20%. Committed as I am to the Optimist's cheerful outlook, I can now say that my particular glass of water is apparently one-fifth full.

John Piper says "you will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God." He wrote this, just before his surgery for prostate cancer, in an excellent little article he entitled "Don't Waste Your Cancer" (which you can easily find by searching here) The fine print explains, "The design of God in your cancer is not to train you in the rationalistic, human calculation of odds. The world gets comfort from their odds. Not Christians … The aim of God in your cancer (among a thousand other good things) is to knock props out from under our hearts so that we rely utterly on him."

For this powerful piece of writing, I thank John Piper. And I think that his references to "the design of God" and "the aim of God" and "a thousand other good things" add up to a very important truth. As the Bible makes clear, the life of a human being is not, in fact, a thing of uncertain duration. That long-suffering, non-optimistic Old Testament man named Job was clear on this. He says to God, "Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble … his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass…" (Job 14:1-5 ESV) And King David was on the same page. He writes "… in your book were written the days that were formed for me, every one of them, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:16 ESV [except that I rearranged the phrases for the sake of clarity] )

The point here is plain, I think. Every human life is long enough to accommodate every one of the good and pleasant things AND every one of the good but "full of trouble" things that God means THAT particular human being to experience. Life is always long enough for the purposes of God. Every human life, including mine.

So while some medically-knowledgeable people are giving me a 20% chance of being alive in a year or two, it will always remain a 100% certainty that I will live on in this world, in some state of sickness or of health, until every one of "the days that were formed for me" and my entire "number of months" have been lived, and until all of the designs and aims of God have been accomplished, and until "a thousand other good things" have been realized.

So there it is. I am a man with lousy odds, and they are against me. In fact, my odds are not even "even." But by God's great grace, against all odds, I am maintaining an even keel. And clothed with the righteousness of Christ, I am at peace, being assured by the Word of God that I will one day stand before my Judge and Maker with a 100% approval rating.

And the Word of God teaches me what to say: "Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments … He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid until he looks in triumph on his adversaries." (Psalm 112:1,6-8 ESV)

READINESS

Two weeks from today, I will once again be the Special Guest at a meeting to be held in my honour in one of University Hospital's Operating Rooms. This will be my third surgery (Lifetime), with the great likelihood of two more surgeries to follow in the months to come.

This one being fourteen days from today, the words of England's 18th-century "Man of Letters" Samuel Johnson come to mind. "Depend upon it, Sir," he once said, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Although I've never been threatened with hanging, I AM finding that the same principle applies to gut-wrenching-surgery-deemed-necessary-because-of-a-serious-case-of-cancer. These days, I'm finding that my mind is being wonderfully concentrated, and that the advantage has everything to do with becoming ready for the inevitable.

It's just what Hamlet said, as he was trying to decide whether to be or not to be: "If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all." (Hamlet, Act V, Scene 2.) While I don't suppose that Shakespeare's Hamlet should be anyone's final authority on these matters of life and death, even if "the readiness" is NOT all, nevertheless attaining (and maintaining) such a genuine state of readiness IS a goal with a lot going for it.

The thing is, cancer patients aren't the only ones who are mortal. Dying may never be something a person looks forward to, but there is a perfectly good reason for every one of us to look ahead to it. "It is appointed for man to die once…"

These days, I'm working on staying clear on the sobering fact that if I DO manage, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, to beat the odds, so that, in September 2018 (that is, five years from now), I am declared "Cancer-Free," I'll still be a guy who is going to die someday. "If it be not now, yet it will come." And of course, sometime, anytime, before my cancer gets around to doing to me what it is all set up to do, I could get run over by a cement truck or struck by lightning.

The writer of the Old Testament's Book of Ecclesiastes stated it plainly. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die… " (3:1,2 ESV). Day to day, one of the distinct advantages of this sort of readiness is the capacity to see every day, every hour, in fact every moment of every day, as a specific gift of God: one gift in a finite set of such gifts -- and so one not to be wasted. It seems to me that it really does help to be very clear about the fact that one day, one such moment will be the last one I get. And having no real clue about the exact date and time is no good excuse for putting the whole matter out of our minds.

So let us take a tip from Samuel Johnson, and concentrate. Wonderfully.

IN GOD WE TRUST. WITH ALL OUR GUTS

Mark 12:28-31 ESV
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ [Deuteronomy 6:4,5] The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ [Leviticus 19:18] There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Here in the Gospel of Mark (and also in Matthew 22 and Luke 10), Jesus identifies a whole-hearted, whole-souled, whole-minded, full-strength love for God as "the most important commandment." It's easy, I think, to see how it is, for in one simply-stated law, our ongoing obligation to the God who has made us, sustains us and offers to save us is thoroughly addressed. In the same breath, Jesus identifies as "the second" most important commandment our obligation to love our neighbour, that is, all the people in any kind of proximty to us.

This past Monday, having met for a second time with the surgeon who in June had turned me over for the summer to the care of two oncologists, Deb and I heard some not very good news about how much, that is to say, how little my six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation had actually accomplished. Contrary to what the early-August CT-scan seemed to indicate, the rectal tumour isn't really much smaller than it was in June and is almost certainly still inoperable. Surprisingly, the punch line of this bad news is not that I don't have an upcoming surgery after all. Instead, I have been scheduled for a four-hour surgery on Friday, September 20th: a procedure intended to prevent the prospect of a complete bowel obstruction. What this means in the long run is that my two oncologists now need to weigh in on the question of what other chemotherapy might be successful in shrinking, and so making operable, what presently remains unshrunk and inoperable. (Yikes.)

In the hours, and now the days, following the appointment, there has come to my mind what might be labelled "the third most important commandment." I am definitely free-styling here -- a questionable Bible study practice, to be sure -- but what I am thinking is this: since "the most important commandment" addresses our relationship with God and "the second most important" addresses our relationship with all of the people in our lives, a commandment that addresses our relationship to the details of our own lives, to our own challenges, to all our own stuff -- might possibly be the third most important commandment. So here, trying to be helpful, at least to my own disappointed self, is my shot at naming #3, extracted from the Old Testament as are the two commandments cited by the Lord as the first and second most important. What I'm suggesting is that the third most important commandment is this: "Trust God." Just trust God.

The Old Testament reference, of course, is Proverbs 3:5,6 ESV
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.

This is a very good and helpful instruction to me just now -- except that it's not my heart that I am concerned and uncertain about. Neither this upcoming surgery, or the surgery that may or may not follow the upcoming chemotherapy, is a matter of the heart. It's not my heart. It's my bowels. In just over three weeks, this surgeon, who is reputed to be very good at what he does, and certainly seems to be a very caring and knowledgeable man, is going to cut me wide open and temporarily, for the sake of the cause, disembowel me. To put it plainly, for a few hours this September, this man who I have only just met will hold in his hands my intestines, all of them, both the large and the small. And I've never even seen his resume. I don't even know if he wears gloves. And all the while, I'll be fast asleep and so unable to make suggestions or offer feed-back.

What I have here is a great demand for trust. And I have twenty-three days to get clear and okay on this, because, to use a technical medical term, these surgeries are going to be gut-wrenching.

Psalm 20:7 ESV
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

So wrote King David in the days of ancient Israel. His point, I think, is that even in regard to our best assets and most high-tech advantages, it is God we should be trusting with all that concerns us. Even when the chariots are shiny and new and fully-loaded and the horses are fit and chomping at the bit, it is God we should acknowledge as the giver of all good gifts and the director of our paths and the healer of all our diseases.

What was true for King David in ancient Israel is true for me in modern south-western Ontario. Some trust in surgeons and some trust in oncologists, but, according to the third most important commandment, I will endeavour to trust in the Lord my God. With all my guts.

JUST WAITING

Yesterday I visited the Tanning Salon for my 28th session and swallowed my 336th pink pill. With some sense of ceremony, I then stood in the reception area with my girls, mallet in hand, and gave the London Regional Cancer Program's Radiation Gong an enthusiastic whack, signifying to the other cancer patients and their relatives that, for me and for now, that whole business is now over with. A polite round of applause followed, as usual.


Thus endeth my six weeks of Chemo-and-Radiation Therapy, but apparently it doesn't end the radiation. Apparently, just as the roast keeps cooking for a while after it's taken out of the oven, so the tumour keeps glowing for a while after the tanning sessions are over. For two weeks, in fact. (Who would have guessed?)


And now a question comes to mind: "So?" The answer is, "I wait." I wait for two weeks for the radiation of my nether parts to cease, which takes me to the end of July. And then I wait for a few weeks more. In fact, now that Round One in this fight for my life is concluded, I begin Round Two: another six week (or so) Waiting Period in which the battlefield quiets down enough that the results of my 28 and my 336 can be discerned, by means of an MRI (to see what's become of the tumour) and a CT-Scan (to see what my liver has been doing for my summer vacation.) Following these two Dates with Destiny, Deb and I will have a chat with the oncologist to hear what he suggests is next. The obvious happy possibility (I mean, besides a miracle of God's healing, which I continue to pray for, and deeply appreciate your prayers for) is a surgery in September to remove the shrivelled-up tumour. And at the other end of the list of possibilities: a new regime of chemotherapy sessions, either designed to try again to shrink the tumour, or as palliative chemotherapy (An intimidating term!), if it seems that there's not much else that can be done.


So that's what's up for me for the next six-or-so weeks. I wait. I just wait in regard to the enormous uncertainty on my horizon. Just as do many people I know, because this is what life is like --- and because we all have our stuff. Obviously, we don't all have cancer or other life-and-death health problems, but we all have stuff. Some of this stuff isn't so much personal as interpersonal: a marital challenge, or a child-raising problem, or a difficulty with a friend, or a "work related" or "school related" burden. In the hope of being helpful to my fellow "stuff-bearers," I am glad to share what I have learned about waiting (with thanks to Clint Eastwood and the other makers of a 1960's film phenomenon called "spaghetti westerns.")


What's GOOD about waiting.
"Just waiting" is good when it builds character. It can develop patience and perseverance and, if we are waiting on God, it builds faith and hope, all of which are good and beautiful things.


What's BAD about waiting.
"Just waiting" turns bad when I start considering my perspective and my wisdom and my sense of timing and my opinion on what's best for me to be superior to God's. Who am I to say that a certain period of "just waiting" is going on too long? With a mistaken view of myself and of God, my confidence in God erodes, and so does my hope. Functionally, I become more and more a man "without hope and without God in the world." A very bad thing.


What's UGLY about waiting.
"Just waiting" turns ugly when my disapproval or discontentment with God's perspective and wisdom and sense of timing begins to embitter me, especially when it embitters me toward God. At that point, my doubts and unbelief begin to define me, and if "a gentle and quiet spirit is precious in the sight of the Lord," than surely an opposite state of mind and an opposite condition of heart is ugly to God. (Yikes!)


So here I wait. For about a month. And while the radiation continues to do its work on my lower end, I work on my heart and mind, believing that "just waiting" can be a good thing, and seeking to ensure that it is. Coming off of a month and a half experience in which I repeatedly quoted Psalm 16 to myself, I love and am helped by that psalm too much to let go of it now. But I am now taking on another favourite psalm. Over the years of trying to be a helpful pastor, I've recommended it to a lot of people and in many cases have loved to see what strength it supplies to a believing heart.


Psalm 27:1-3, 13-14 (NASB)
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life. Whom shall I dread? When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; though war arise against me, in spite of this I will be confident … I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.


May the peace of God guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And may the joy of the Lord be our strength.