Dona's Blog

He hears me crying.

Mornings can be tough. I wake and face a day where side effects of treatment must be managed, including the worst of all, fatigue which challenges every movement. As I texted to a friend, yesterday, “This ‘whack-a-mole’ existence, the bane of all of us Stage 4 types, will be endless. Do I have the strength for this?”

And so I cry, and David hears.

The other day he encouraged me to read my posts from 2014-2016.
“I read them, Dona, and they are good and comforting. Perhaps you would receive comfort, too.”

I have taken his encouragement to heart so I am reading a few here and there (see companion piece that I wrote earlier on finding God’s comfort) but with some trepidation; fearing that that which was so real back then will not feel as real now that the diagnosis is so much harsher. And not only have I been reluctant to read my previous cancer blog posts, but I enter the cancer hospital feeling less familial with my fellow tribe of cancer sufferers. An unhealthy envy creeps into my psyche for all those folks who have cancer but are in the treatment for the cure. I was one of them in the “good old days of stage 3” but now metastatic singles me out, isolates me from the others or so it feels. It is as if I wish there was a clinic within the hospital with its own private entrance that was reserved for all stage 4 cancer patients. I imagine myself talking more with these folks, mining their thoughts and feelings, sharing something helpful with them and they with me. I’m thinking of joining a Stage 4 support group. Meanwhile, I am reading my earlier posts and breathing sighs of relief that it is still the comforting truth for me then and for me now.

As bleak, sad and angry as I can feel sometimes it always comes down to something that the apostle Peter said when many followers left Christ after He delivered a hard teaching. Jesus turned to Peter and asked, “Peter, will you leave me, also?” Of which Peter responded, “Where else would I go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Life as we all well know can be cruel, indifferent and unbearable at times. If not for us its no doubt been hard for people we know and love. And if somehow we and all our family and friends have escaped the vicissitudes of life, well, then just read news about places and people who struggle through unimaginable loss and suffering. Where do they all go when it gets tough? A lot die, no doubt, but did they die with hope? I don’t know and nor do I presume to answer for them but I have found no greater answer to my despair than what Peter said to Jesus.

“Where else would I go? You have the words of eternal life”. (John 60:68)

When I am struggling with the demon of despair it’s the reality that Christ has the words of eternal life that throws me the life ring of hope and faith. There is something about the words of Christ and the words of his followers who wrote gospels and letters in a text we call the New Testament that awakens something in me that feels alive, organic, true and full of conviction, promise and hope. The scriptures give me comfort in my grief but also the scriptures give me needed chastisement from time to time that feels oddly hopeful, too. The scriptures challenge me to think outside my pre-occupation with self – the mandate to serve and pray for the poor and others brings comfort.  The scriptures prompt me to think about the cosmos (I’m binge watching Netflix’s the “Fabric of the Universe”). The big bang of our big God excites and reassures. Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  I like contemplating the bigness and mysteries of God and His creation and I imagine his delight as humans are driven to discover and explore the grandeur of it all.

One of my favorite quotes from Jerome, one of the early Christian fathers, concerning the gospel captures wonderfully what these words of eternal life are like for me:

“The Scriptures are shallow enough for a babe to come and drink without fear of drowning and deep enough for a theologian to swim in without ever touching the bottom.” ― Jerome.

I am more than fond of this Jerome quote. It is one of my favorites. I like to think that suffering when I am at my best moves me beyond treading water to  diving deep for those words of eternal life.