When Does Surviving End?

6 05 2010

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched, but are felt in the heart.”

Helen Keller

(Copied from nurses’ station board at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas)

The short answer to the question, “When does surviving end?” is that it never ends. Not completely. However, we can reach a point when we begin moving on with our lives in a positive, healthier manner.

If surviving is a state-of-mind, at what point are we actually moving on? I believe it begins when we start to really care about something or someone besides our own issues and ourselves. Otherwise, we are just going through various shades of surviving. Caring is a huge move up from the self defense mechanisms of surviving.

Consider, however, that it is quite possible to demonstrate some caring behavior out of habit even when we are merely surviving. In other words, caring behavior and actually caring is not necessarily the same thing.

For example, you might give to your favorite charity or the church just as you always have but without that inner spirit of caring. It’s habit or a perceived duty. But, when you are truly touched within to do something outside of yourself and your situation, you are beginning to move on.

The key is a crack in The Fortress wall—a small opening in your defenses that can lead to caring again.

Photo by Ricardo Bissaco

In time, you might actually find that your life is somehow enriched by your experiences rather than constantly burdened by them. Suffering colors our lives with its own distinctive palate. And that’s not all bad. We can become a different person with a different outlook. Perhaps we might give to that favorite charity or even volunteer with a strong new feeling of compassion rather than out of a sense of duty.

I’m not sure this caring—the crack in the wall—is something you can put on your “to do” list and plan for. In fact, it is not something you “do” at all. But when it happens, when you start caring, you can know that God is using your own experiences to do a work within you.

If you’ve been following this blog, you might remember that a turning point for me was when I met someone whose situation shook me out of my personal issues. I knew something was different the minute I was touched by a woman I met who had cancer. Little did I know at the time that she would be my future wife. I had an unexplainable and powerful touch of compassion when I met Jane. For several years, I hadn’t cared much about anything, and suddenly a total stranger with cancer moved me. I wasn’t looking for it. I wasn’t trying to care. But it happened.

Something had changed. I was less defensive and concerned about what I had been through, and more concerned about this new friend and her fight against cancer. For some reason, which I attribute to the work of God, I wanted to go with her in her struggles. The feeling was made more intense as I got to know her and God began to use her to encourage me. Now isn’t that something! Here was a woman with a rare and deadly form of cancer encouraging me.

I’ll confess to you, however, that the almost two years of dealing with her cancer have caused my survival instincts to stay very active. The whole cancer thing lends itself to survival mode.

Now that Jane has had the major surgery recommended by her oncologist, and her latest scans are still clear, we have to actually start thinking about life without cancer. What a change!

Of course, she will have more scans every three months for the next couple of years and there is always the possibility of a recurrence, God forbid. Plus, the cancer left its marks—physically on her and emotionally on the two of us. But for a sweet time we are living without the cancer and all the treatments and issues that surround it.

The truth is that I am so used to living at some level of survival mode, that my mind and body are still working on instinct rather than reality. I have to somehow train them to see that everything is all right. Back off on the knee-jerk reactions to everything and live. Live fully. Abundantly. That’s what moving on to thriving is all about.


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It is what it is, and it isn’t what it should be.

29 04 2010

“Some days even my lucky rocketship underpants won’t help.”

Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)

Photo by the Author

It is what it is. I’ve said it many times; usually as a response to someone’s complaint when something doesn’t seem right but I’m powerless do anything about it.

“This traffic isn’t even moving!” It is what it is.

“Can you believe how high this bill is?” It is what it is.

“I’m about to lose my job because of this economy…” It is what it is.

“Your scan shows that you have a tumor…” It is what it is.

Let’s just be honest about it. We can look around at many of the circumstances in life and sigh. It is what it is.

We then toughen up and live with it. Job, economy, politics, health, and just about anything else at one time or another just doesn’t seem right, not quite what it should be.

Survivors have lost the bliss of innocence. We look at life and constantly see this little twist of imperfection everywhere. A young child, on the other hand, typically doesn’t care about the traffic, the electric bill, or the economy. And he doesn’t yet understand the implications of a tumor.

But neither does a child appreciate the joy of driving through downtown Houston with no traffic or living and working in a good economy! It’s this imperfect bent about life that provides contrast and keeps us from taking the beauty in life for granted. And, yes, I hate tumors and the thought of death, but they do have a way of making me appreciate life and living.

It’s the way of things since the beginning. Adam and Eve looked around like innocent children. They were innocent children. They couldn’t appreciate what they had until they lost it. Then they became survivors. And ever since, the sons and daughters of Adam look around and see that things aren’t quite what they should be.

It’s that very trait of things not being quite right that touches us with the hope of Heaven—that something deep within us that wants to live right here, right now, but with a longing for another time and place.

Surviving doesn’t really care about the rightness of things. Survivors know things aren’t right in this world and are coping with it one day at a time. Thriving, though, moves us beyond that to look around at circumstances and sigh that it is what it is…

But know with certainty that it isn’t what it will be.


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Connecting the Dots

23 04 2010

“Sometimes life hits you in the face with a brick. Keep the faith.”

Steve Jobs

I just viewed (a couple of times) a video of Steve Jobs making the 2005 commencement address at Stanford. My thanks to Jane Friedman, who posted it on her blog where I first saw it.

Believe it or not, Steve Jobs is a survivor. He’s a successful one to be sure, but a survivor nonetheless. He was a college dropout, fired from his own company (Apple), and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (which he later learned was a rare operable form, which is why he is still alive).

Among his comments in the speech was that you couldn’t connect the dots (about life) looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backward.

I especially like the way Jane Friedman summarizes his point in her blog post: “Life can only be lived forward, and understood backward.”

If there were ever a mantra for survivors moving from surviving to thriving, that would be it.


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Surviving a Heart Attack

19 04 2010

“It’s the big one, Elizabeth!”

Fred Sanford

A good friend of mine had a heart attack yesterday morning. Thankfully, he survived the attack and the resulting medical procedure and is now recuperating in the hospital for a few days.

It reminded me of my own heart attack ten years ago, which resulted in angioplasty and two stents. Since then, I’ve had three more angioplasty procedures, one just a year ago, and picked up an additional four stents—quite the collection.

On the whole, I’ve not felt the same sense. I’m sure some people probably do, but I haven’t. For starters, I’m generally weaker and I tend to tire more easily than I did before the attack. I don’t hit a golf ball quite as far as I did, nor can I easily toss fertilizer bags over my shoulder and load them in the car. A day of heavy gardening or heavy any other kind of work is pretty much out of the question.

Is it the heart attack or the fact that I’m getting older? Probably a little of both, I surmise, but there is no doubt that the heart attack took a toll on me physically and mentally.

Another after effect of a heart attack is the guilt-o-gram for eating a heart healthy diet. Right after the attack, when I still believed it would imminently save my life, I was pretty good about eating healthy—low fat with lots of chicken and fish. After awhile, I was adding in some burgers and fries. You know how that works.

Then, of course, there is the plastic pill box with “AM” and “PM” clearly marked for seven days of the week. Pills to control cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood thinning suddenly stock the medicine cabinet and have to be refilled for the rest of your life. Last year, my cardiologist told me to take my latest wonder drug, Plavix (a drug required by the special stents he put in me), everyday, without fail, “even if Jesus comes again!” So, each morning I look heavenward and then pop the Plavix along with the rest of my pills.

The mental effects are subtler, but they’ve been there over the years to be sure. I don’t see how anyone can go through a near-death experience, followed by a week in Intensive Care without experiencing some kind of change in thinking. Of course, as time passes, they aren’t as pronounced as they once were.

A heart attack tends to make a person more emotional. I’m not sure why that is, but it seems to be true, at least in my case. I cry more easily than I did before the attack, which is damn inconvenient at times. Related to that, maybe, is some depression, an after effect confirmed to me by physicians.

Yes, a heart attack lets itself be known in many ways for many years.

My friend, an accomplished landscape artist, will delightfully discover one of the very positive after effects of a heart attack—God’s creation looks even more beautiful than ever. Without a doubt.

I loved his art before. I can’t wait to see what he does now.


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Cancer on the Big Screen and the 18th at Augusta

12 04 2010

Cancer was front and center in our household again over the weekend, but in a very positive way. On Saturday evening, Jane and I went to see a movie called “Letters to God” (Possibility Pictures), and on Sunday we watched Phil Mickelson win an exciting victory at the Masters followed by a very touching embrace between Phil and his cancer-stricken wife, Amy.

“Letters to God” is a movie—filmed in part at the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando—about a 10-year-old boy with terminal cancer who writes letters to God during his illness. His spirit provides the redemptive path for numerous people in the movie including the mailman, but the most fascinating part of the movie to me, were the letters themselves.

His letters reveal how this kid copes with his imminent death and how that might impact his friends and family. It is humbling to watch no matter your circumstances.

The movie was a little “churchy” for my taste, but I was shedding tears along with everyone else in the audience. I identified with much of what happened in the movie. Mostly with the frustrated and angry mom and brother (Robyn Lively and Michael Bolten). Both reach a point in the story where the weight is just too heavy to bear and they lose it. At one point, Mom rebukes her own mother’s attempt to console her with Bible verses. I could sure relate to that.

The boy, Tyler (Tanner Maguire), and his young friend, a girl named Sam (Bailee Madison), are heartwarming. And the boy’s letters are amazing. No wonder Jesus said that unless we become like a child, we couldn’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t think he had whiney, screaming childishness in mind when he said that. As you hear the letters of the dying 10-year-old, you will get a pretty good idea of what he does have in mind.

It would be hard for me to watch any movie about cancer without identifying with much of it. It’s the life Jane and I have been living for almost two years. The hurt, the anger, the doubting and pouting, I’ve been through it all. Little Tyler thrills me as he demonstrates faith with a sublime innocence. It makes me want to have that sweet and simple childlike faith again. I’m not sure I can find it. I think it’s in a box stashed away somewhere behind my collection of disappointments.

And then there is my wife Jane, who has awed me as she has faced down this cancer thing over and over again—tumor after tumor, surgery after surgery, chemo after chemo, radiation after radiation—with a faith that has a certain quality that’s rare and exquisite.

And that brings me to the Masters. Last year, Amy Mickelson was diagnosed with cancer and evidently underwent surgery in the summer. I don’t know much more about it than that, because it’s a private affair and I don’t really trust much of what I read about it on the Internet. Whatever she’s been through, it isn’t over. She was too weak to follow Phil in person during his play at the Masters and appeared only as he finished his last hole on the way to victory.

Evidently he was surprised to see her as he walked off the eighteenth green and embraced and kissed her in a very touching moment that couldn’t be hidden from the television cameras.

I was shedding a few tears as I watched the scene and sensed the rush of emotion go through them as they stood there holding on to one another. Perhaps only someone who has been where they have been could fully appreciate that that moment wasn’t about winning the Masters.

Go Phil. Go Amy. You da man!


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Starting Over

5 04 2010

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”

Stephen Covey

How do we live in the present free from the burdens of past disappointments? Like so much else involved in the survivor mind, it isn’t something that we can just get up and decide to do on any given day, and then scratch it off the list after we do it. Furthermore, we must be aware that those past “demons” will be around for a long time. They don’t go away, but they don’t have to keep us stuck in survival mode.

A break from the past involves a fundamental change in the way we think and live. Essentially, it is starting over. We are used to the concept of starting over when things aren’t right. A composer, a writer, a builder, or a painter might literally trash a work and begin again if it isn’t turning out the way he imagined it. Why can’t we do the same with our mindset? If darkness and disappointment is turning us into something we don’t want to be, why can’t we just paint it over again?

God said something to that effect to one of the prophets. While observing a potter smash his clay down and begin again, the prophet was told, “Can I not do with you as this potter does?”[i]

The believer has a road to renewal that isn’t available to those who are trying to do this in their own way and in their own strength. God is in the renewing business. The Lord is the Lord of starting over. He is the potter; we are the clay.

Forgiveness

Like sugar in a cookie recipe, one of the key ingredients to a new start is forgiveness. The survivor finds herself in need of forgiving herself, forgiving God, and forgiving those who have hurt her. Harboring anger, resentment, and ill will toward any of the above will keep one treading in quicksand. There is no escape.

But, admittedly, forgiveness is rarely easy. And, again, it isn’t something we simply decide to do over breakfast. It comes through much wrestling in our soul, and often takes time and comes in layers rather than one big decision to forgive. But once we truly forgive, we are no longer in bondage to that person or event. We are essentially free to move on.

Let me offer an illustration of how forgiveness might work for most of us mortals. If we are incarcerated, there are basically two ways to freedom. Someone comes along with a key and lets us go. (For some people, perhaps, the process of forgiveness is just that simple.) For many of us, however, we escape by digging our way out with a spoon, and freedom comes slowly.

That might seem like a strange analogy but sometimes that’s the path to the freedom of forgiveness. You start the process. Just start it. Then one day—hopefully sooner rather than later—it is complete and you are truly free.

[i] Jeremiah 18:5


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Easter

4 04 2010

[NOTE: The following post is a devotional that I wrote for Easter, 2001. What a message for going from surviving 2 thriving! A blessed Easter to all!]

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “Your are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”[i]

On that first Easter, the women went looking for Jesus in the tomb. They were “alarmed” to discover that the tomb was empty and became afraid. The disciples had the same experience.

What’s this, an empty tomb? Peter looked where the body of Jesus was supposed to be and went away wondering to himself what had happened. Shortly after that, he was locked away in a room with the other disciples who were hiding out in fear.

The tomb many believe was where the body of Jesus was placed

Then came a life-changing event—they encountered the risen Lord Jesus and received the promised Holy Spirit. Their doubt and fear was replaced by hope and power. Instead of hiding from the Jews and wondering what had happened to Jesus, they went right up to them and fearlessly announced, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”[ii]

I think that many people today are like those disciples on that first Easter morning. Something inside of us sees only an empty tomb while we scratch our heads and wonder what happened. Until by faith we get past the empty tomb and encounter the risen Christ, we will not live as though He lives. When Christ lives, really lives, everything changes. Boldness and power replace alarm and fear. Confidence and hope replace doubt and bewilderment. When we know Christ lives, we live every day accordingly. That means he is Lord. He is calling the shots. His purpose is our purpose. If He lives, then His Word is true and obedience is not optional.

The disciples were able to encounter the risen Jesus face-to-face. Thy touched him and ate with him. However, it is those of us who believe without seeing him who are considered “blessed.”[iii]

And so we look out with the blessed eyes of faith to encounter the Lord Jesus—our living hope and our hope for living. When we see Him, when we know that He lives, our hearts leap with joy, and we simply cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.

[i] Mark 16:5-7

[ii] Acts 4:20

[iii] John 20:29


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