christianity

Nick, the barber, says, “Trust God, then your doctors.”

donaeley1 Comment

Since my cancer diagnosis a year ago my husband’s barber, Nick, has given him two pieces of advice.

“You tell Dona like I told my wife. You stay alive, you stay healthy, you stay upbeat!  Not just for yourself, not just for the people who love you, but for the people who hate you. When they see you walking down the sidewalk, they say, ‘that woman still around?!’  And when they see you look-in good it will give them a clinch in the gut.”

And….tell Dona

“Trust God, and then your doctors.”

Although left speechless after hearing the first bit of advice I appreciated the second. But how can I trust God for my well-being and trust doctors at the same time for my cure?  I think about this all the time.  I say that I trust God but yet I find myself hanging on every word of a medical provider as if I’m hearing from ancient oracles pronouncing my destiny.  I don’t like the feeling of smallness that happens when I talk to a provider at the cancer institute.  The little girl inside me is saying, “Please be nice to me because you are bigger and I am small right now so you can hurt or help me.”

It’s not quite that pathetic but exaggeration serves the point.  I defer to medical providers as if they hold the balance of my life in their hands.  But this flies in the face of everything I believe about who truly holds my fate in His hands.

I have said all these things to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble: but take heart! I have overcome the world. (Jesus quoted in John 16:33)

I am not disabusing modern medicine in light of faith.  I am grateful for the medical advances in the care of those with illnesses.  I thank God for those who use their intelligence, ingenuity and compassion to develop treatments and cures for the myriad of diseases that plague humanity.

But what is the role of God in a person’s life when the material world offers so many empirical, concrete procedures and assurances?

My husband said that we treat science as God, technology as the Holy Spirit, and I’ll complete this false trinity by noting that the mental health profession is seen as Christ.

“Trust God first and then trust the doctors.”  But as a person who worships the Creator of the material world rather than the material world itself, how is this to look?  How is this played out in a way that moves me away from spiritual platitudes to words that reflect my deepest convictions and hope?  Well, for starters I must believe that God exists and that He can be trusted.  I don’t get there easily and I don’t get there by hard work.  I get there by being inspired, or more to the point, something is opened up to me and I enter in.  At the same time there is work, some soul work, involving curiosity and study.  For God knows that this world is not going to hand God’s trust to me on a platter.

Ultimately, there will come a point where the pursuing, studying, questioning and reflecting demand a leap of faith.  But it won’t be a blind leap. It will be a wide eyed here I go, for better for worse, for richer or poorer kind of leap.  Do these words remind me of another leap?  Yes, belief in God is like the decision to say ‘I do’ at the altar of marriage – not blind but certainly not a 100 percent certain. But there is enough information, time, dialogue and togetherness invested to make the leap seem more than reasonable – almost compulsive or desperate!  It is an I-have-to-have-this-person-in-my-life kind of leap.

So what is it to trust in God? It’s knowing we belong together; pure and simple.  He is mine and I am his, no matter what happens. Medical science and its allies are created to lighten a burden but we are not on intimate terms.  I am not their “darling” but I am God’s and so it goes for each one of us that trust Him.

Dona Eley is a cancer survivor and a mental health therapist for the Community Christian Counseling Center in Juneau.  She blogs at donaeley.wordpress.com

In this world you have trouble: but take heart! I have overcome the world.

(Jesus quoted in John 16:33)

Fear of Dying

donaeley2 Comments

The atmosphere was tense in the CT scan waiting room.  Nothing seemed particularly different at first blush – several men and women waiting their turn to have a machine tell them something about their tumors.  Like me, many were being accompanied by a family member or friend.  By this time, I had been in the breast cancer waiting room several times.  The atmosphere in the BC waiting room I now see as qualitatively different.  A friend referred to it as, “You and your sisters waiting together.”  None of that filial bonding in the CT scan waiting room.  We were a mixed gender and we were there representing a variety of different malignancies.  No one likes the word “cancer” but I imagined you flinched a bit when you read “malignancies.”  But that is how it felt.  I think that it had more to do with fear than anything else.  I wasn’t seated long before I heard the frustration and anger of one man directed at the two receptionists.  He and his wife had been waiting a long time and he was upset, “this place is incompetent and needs more accountability” was one of his many comments.  His disgust and self-righteousness was difficult to hear.  But later his gait to the CAT scan room told the story of great pain and a life threatening condition.  Another woman was angrily defending her cell phone’s dependability with one of the CT scan techs. “I have my phone with me all the time so there was no way you tried to call me to change the appointment.”  She pleaded, “I need this to happen today so that my oncologist can start my meds again for my liver and pancreas.”  I wanted to cry for her.

Things calmed down for me a bit until the two mega TV screens came on with a feature story on the plight of Syrian refugee children.  The shocking statistics of children who had already died in the Syrian war and the continuing health crisis of children in the refugee camps including an outbreak of polio only served to increase the malignant atmosphere of the waiting room.  By the time I was ushered into the CT scan room I was praying, “Come Lord Jesus, Come.  There is too much pain and fear of dying in this world so just come and set everything right.”

Laying on the CT machine’s gurney, I thought I was doing well emotionally considering my experience in the waiting room.  But I was suddenly betrayed by my limbic system.  Out of nowhere, my heart was racing and my breathing was rapid and shallow.  Where did this come from?  Within a nana-second I knew why.  My body was picking up the physical sensations of fear before a rational thought was registered.  The classic case of the amygdala beating the frontal cortex to the punch.  “Oh no, the test is over so why is the tech taking so long to come back to me?  They must be seeing something that is of concern.  The horse is out of the barn!  Metastasis!”

The fear of dying had just made itself known.  So, I did what a few friends had suggested in fearful situations.  I started quietly quoting relevant bible verses audibly. Verses that I had memorized in my twenties, the time in life to memorize as the young brain seals the deal.  It helped. I can’t say with confidence that the fear of dying will never find its way back to me again or that the way out of it will be to always quote scripture but there is a scripture verse I am taking to the bank of heaven.  It’s a verse that doesn’t depend on me to muster up a no-fear-of-dying feeling in order for it to be operative.  In Romans 8 verses 37-39 of the New Testament the Apostle Paul writes,

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

By the way, I found out two days ago and now, four days before my surgery that the CT, bone and MRI scans were clear.  The horse is still in the barn.