I can assure you that my inactivity on this blog this past month has not been directly related to the end of my treatment. In many ways there has been more to tell about these weeks than there was during a good part of the last two years.

It’s just this:

A) I can’t type for long. I manage a sentence or two every five minutes, and maybe two or three paragraphs per day. Then my wrists pretty much quit.

B) What I’m writing these days reeks to me of self pity. I wonder whether it is anything more than an unecessary and altogether negative rant. I personally don’t mind being really honest about pain, so long as I can see some way that honesty will bring forth some good thing. Right now, being I can’t quite put any path to goodness together in my head (and I feel it even less in my heart), I seriously question the value of my going into great detail about the nature of these present trials.

If I were to describe well how things hurt, and what is so hard, I will have little left to extrapolate the good. But if I give the cliffs notes on the pain and go straight to the good, I will have misrepresented our reality, and what good there is might lose some of its context and therefore some of its weight.

And being I must now so carefully budget my words, and yet don’t have the mind or the physical strength to sit at the keyboard long enough to make timely and appropriate edits, anything I write, if it is to be thorough about anything, is necessarily going to read like an uncensored journal entry. Limited in its perspective, and raw in its content.

If I am to be honest about anything these days, individual entries will leave loose ends untied. They cannot be stand alone representations of the big picture. They will need weeks of context to be understood.

I really do enjoy writing for anyone who will read. And I want badly to offer words that are ultimately beneficial for anyone who happens upon them. But right now I am needing to give my time and strength to things more physical in nature, and will have just enough left to write, but not necessarily to write well.

So I’m not sure exactly why I feel I must ask your permission, but would you give me the grace to give what I’ve got? I can write a little bit every couple of days, but it’ll most likely be the complaint without context; the despair without a devotional at the end; a snapshot of reality without redemption; the tension without the resolve. (Ever read Psalm 88 and said Amen?)
Are you okay with that?

Would you promise to keep in the back of your mind that I do believe God is good and strong and present? That we receive his goodness daily and are thankful for it? That we do really still hope that things will get better? And if they don’t, that Jesus is still our Lord?

Ah, the mind games we play…

Thank you, friends.

Still His,

Jeremy

This is my news in a nutshell: I am done with chemotherapy. Recent scan was clear. No cancer. I will be monitored every six months for the next several years - five years to what they call a total cure. Statistics say it’s a coin toss. I’m not much into statistics.

I am grateful. Really. I’m still here. I’m still sane. My wife still loves me. And we’re not broke. Yet.

It’s just this: Being done is a big deal. And it’s far more complicated than marking one last X on the calendar and throwing a party. Believe it or not, finishing has been rather anti-climactic and a bit of a crisis in itself (I’m not making this up). It may have much to do with the fact that the turnaround isn’t instant. Life isn’t normal. What’s normal? I still hurt. Life has changed. I have changed.

There are complex emotions that come with the completion of 2 years of this stuff, and much to process in head and heart. Trouble is, I process on the page, and I’ve been both too exhausted and in too much pain to write any. These sentences are the first words I’ve tapped out on a keyboard in two weeks.

Those of you who’ve been following this know how badly I want to be writing a book. Writing for this blog has been a big part of that process. When I can’t write, I feel like my mind slows down. Right now I can’t write. My wrists flinch when I even get close to a keyboard. I hurt. I hurt more and more consistently than I can ever remember hurting. It’s just plain discouraging. And I’m so tired. I don’t much mind being unable to use my body if I can still use my mind, but neither seems to be too cooperative right now.

A note relevant to this conversation would be that I recently read there’s now a medical term for chemo brain. Funny thing is, I can’t remember what it was.

More when I can.

Still His (and still here),
Jeremy

PS. Celebrate with me however you’d like this Friday evening, when I would normally swallow nine chemo pills, but won’t.

PPS. This may seem indulgent, but isn’t intended as such: I’m wondering who in the world is reading this? Besides my mom, I mean. I get numbers, but I don’t know who might be behind the numbers. Being my audience here, your presence has been a catalyst for the telling of my story. Whoever you are, thank you.

PPPS. Please pray for us. (As if I need to ask)

This morning I woke up with a pillow tattoo across the right side of my face. Folds and wrinkles of fabric were imprinted on my flesh in dark shades of red. Apparently twelve hours of REM will allow this to happen.

I’ve occasionally given a good deal of thought to this phenomenon. It’s a wonder to me that we go to bed at night looking one way and wake up in the morning looking another. What happens to our hair and our face while we sleep is almost inexplicable. Exactly how does it happen and who does it? A pillow power trip, maybe?

I’ve been giving my pillow ample opportunity to do its thing this week. Sunday morning I woke up to post-prednisone fatigue for what I hope will be the last time in my life. As such, I want to do my best to write about the experience before I forget what it’s like. It’s really something else. The word “tired” doesn’t cut it. Even adding adjectives and hyperbole like “deathly” seems tame. I remember thinking once that even while death might’ve been a release from the fatigue I didn’t have the energy to die.

It hurt to roll my eyes (like I’m rolling them now). Glancing from left to right was dizzying, as my vision seemed slow to follow. Another way to say it is that it felt like heavy weights were hung on the optic nerves inside my head, like wet blankets on a clothesline.

Conversation was exhausting. In part because of the calories spent pushing wind through my vocal chords and putting shape to my words. But equally so was just thinking of the words to say. And this wasn’t rigorous mental activity. This was telling Aedan where to find his blanky.

I remember noticing I had to think to breathe. It wasn’t that I’d stop breathing if I didn’t, but I wouldn’t breathe well. But then I’d start thinking about it, and my lungs would begin to burn with that Icy Hot sensation, as if they didn’t like the extra attention, and were willing to go on strike to make it go away.

Several times when I turned my head in bed I felt as though I’d just finished running the bases for an infield homerun. And I’m a single sprinter if anything at all. You know that rubbery exhaustion you feel in your legs after a good run or a good swim (the “I can’t take another step” kind)? I felt that way all over all day long for two days in a row.

At some point in the day on Monday, I stood at the bathroom sink willing myself to put my head under the faucet to wash my hair. I had to mentally convince myself that I would feel better if I did so, and that I would find the strength to pull my head out of the sink once I was done. I nearly cried for the absence of any sustained energy. I did my daily bathroom routine in shifts, evenly spaced throughout the passing of two days.

I’m realizing now why I’ve so rarely rehashed these weekends once they’ve passed - not so much because I don’t want to remember them, but because I can’t. It’s such a haze.

Sunday afternoon I napped. That’s what I did all afternoon. Naps are most often a relief from the fatigue. I dream when I sleep, and have had a very colorful dreamlife ever since I was a kid. They’re like little adventures every night. Another life, almost. Where I can run and fly and play guitar or baseball.

But Sunday afternoon, I was napping in my dreams. In my dreams I was fatigued and trying to sleep, but couldn’t. And so when I woke up, after four hours of sleeping, I was still tired.

Now I don’t know exactly what’s going on chemically. I’ve read just enough to be dangerous. But having experienced firsthand for four years the letdown of a prednisone-induced adrenal crash, I can tell you what it feels like. And it feels like I’m entirely out of fuel.

You know the saying: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Well, this is that. I wonder if we don’t always have a little adrenaline burning subtly beneath all the activity, like a pilot flame on a furnace that keeps the house warm, or the idle of an engine that makes it ready at a moments notice. That spark has gone out in this kind of fatigue. There is no reserve. No back-up generator.

What I’m guessing (and what I’ve been led to believe, though perhaps wrongly) is that prednisone serves as a stimulant like the hormone normally released by our adrenal gland. A hormone that is always present at some level, though abundantly so in extreme situations. The presence of prednisone for long periods (like treatment for Crohn’s disease) or high dosages (like treatment for this cancer) fools the adrenal gland into thinking its work is unnecessary. It shuts down. And prednisone becomes the fuel.

Then when there’s no more prednisone, there’s no more fuel. And the adrenal gland, though quick to move when up and running, is an extremely sluggish riser. It is slow to wake. It sputters and stumbles into action. And while it’s coming to, you’re not just out of fuel - you’re pushing a dead car up the road in traffic and a snowstorm. Not to mention that you can’t shift the transmission out of park.

And here’s another funny thing: if this is true - if this is what is happening - then drinking a caffeinated beverage isn’t going to do you any good. Caffeine does what it does by affecting your body’s use of adrenaline. So if there’s no adrenaline, there’s no way for caffeine to pull the strings.

Enough said.

There are at least two reasons I’ve gone to such great lengths to describe what this particular crash weekend was like. One is to point out that this has been the predictable cycle of experience every couple of weeks for the past fifteen months. This weekend was no exception. It was the norm. Though each trip through has been a bit harder than the one before, the type of experience has been the same.

But that is not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is I’m still here. Suffering is not extraordinary. Sustenance is. Salvation is. An experience like that of these last years could wreck a life. It could wreck a marriage. It could ruin relationships. It could crush a person. But my family is still here, we’re still happy, and I’m still sane.

This is no accident. This is not mere fortune. This is more than having a good attitude.

It’s miraculous.

This could not be but for the collective willingness of a whole community of people contributing in one way or another to our wellness. I had to quit my job. I had to ask for help. I had to lean into the provision of many in a hundred different ways, and I found strong arms to fall into. Strong backs to bear the burden. Deep pockets to keep us floating. Tender hearts to weep with us. Bold spirits who hoped for us.

Because sometimes you can’t make it on your own.

The absence of shrapnel does not mean there was no bomb. Just because there’s no mess doesn’t mean there wasn’t an explosion. Rather, the destruction was resisted. The force of the blast absorbed, transformed, redeemed. C.S. Lewis suggests that those who know the persuasive and destructive force of evil best are those who resist it. (So Christ gets it best).

When enough of us take the hit together (talking about suffering, not Woodstock), when we share the pain, the force of destruction is diffused. We need each other. We need families, spouses, in-laws, churches, schools, clubs, governments, professions, friends; we need community.

And we need God.

TWO DAYS LATER

I’ve been unable to post this update now for three days running. No technical problems. Just this. It’s beginning to feel (in my mind, at least) a lot like writing a book. As such, the ideas I have for what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it have been too abundant for my pained wrists and my tired eyes to keep up with. I write for an hour and then spend the rest of the day nursing weak and achy hands. I realized this morning that by the time I am able to finish saying what I’m saying it’ll be old news. Which is fine for some things, but not an “update” of recent events.

So I’ll just throw out a few more glimpses of current circumstance and have to save the rest for when I can do the writing.

It’s been a difficult week. Not unbearable. Not spectacular. Just a slow, predictable, and achy grind. Resurfacing after each successive prednisone dive has been more and more taxing. I’ve begun to realize why the treatment lasts for a full 24 months: because month 25 would probably be one too many. Two years of this particular treatment is enough. I’m ready to be done.

Last night (5/4) I took my third-to-last dose of chemo pills. Two more weeks. I take my last dose on Friday 5/18 - exactly two years to the date from my first bag of chemo. Doctor Hurley (and all the literature I’ve read and the survivors and nurses I’ve talked with) said to expect a slow rebound. And we do have conservative expectations. Nevertheless, I am eager to begin feeling better. Excited to be getting back up for something other than the next blow.

My wrists (and sometimes my back/legs) have hurt more lately than they have in many years. I am thankful for massages and pain medicine these days, for without it I really don’t think I’d be moving much (or writing any). The few times I’ve forgotten or missed a dose, the pain has arrested all activity, and left me catching my breath in bed.

Springtime in the Midwest is beautiful, though. And the beauty has put a burr in my saddle. We’ve had a good deal of help these past few days doing the necessary spring-cleaning. It’s incredible to have people so willing to help - both those who respond without questions to specific requests and those who show up unbidden. Simply awe-inspiring, holy moments.

(When Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, he says the Samaritan anointed the hurting man’s wounds with oil and wine. While these were probably common ointments for wounds in the day, I think the beautiful thing in this story is the statement he may be making about worship. The priest and the Levite both took part in worship rituals at the temple in Jerusalem. Two essential tools of the trade were oil and wine. They used these to signify holy moments. I think Jesus was saying the Samaritan was worshipping God in his service to this man who needed his help. Jesus was saying it was a holy moment.)

Most of our spring projects, however, will have to wait.

I’ve been beginning to process the full scope of experiences from these past two years. I pray I can do so. Writing has been an exciting and life-giving work for me lately. Lord willing, a book of some sort is just around the bend. Please pray for me in this. It is not so difficult to think of what to say, but what not to say. And then to have the body to do the work of writing it out. A sedentary lifestyle is more difficult than one might imagine. Especially when physical therapy is a must for a return to health.

Some of you have recommended using some sort of voice transcoder. Others have even volunteered to do the typing. Thank you for this. But I am not so gifted a thinker to speak and create on the fly - at least in making a book. I’ve heard that G.K. Chesterton often did this. But I need to interact with the page to do what I do. Pray I would be able to do what I need to do for my body to be strong, and that God’s gift of healing would be at work in my back and hands.

Okay, so this is about as much as I can do for now. Four days in and this update is finally ready to post. Just a few more things: I’ve been invited to speak on two separate occasions in my hometown this summer. High School Baccalaureate and Church Night at the county fair. Fun stuff. Please pray for me as I prepare.

And I love my wife. What’s that got to do with anything?

Just about everything.

Thanks each and all again for reading.

Blessings.

Still His,

Jeremy

MONDAY April 23

I got it. Today I was given one of those purplish certificates from the cancer clinic staff congratulating me on the completion of chemotherapy: infusion number 78 of 78, month 24 of 24.

Only four more weeks to go.

What a ride.

I called a friend of mine today who’s celebrating his thirty-third birthday. He’s also in the midst of putting his life and insides back together in the wake of several bad decisions. He said, “This is the year, man… this is the year we’re both done being sick.”

Yes. Bring it, brother.

Just over a week ago I had to cancel plans again. I was too sick, again. I hurt too much, and was too tired. Again.

I’m tired, too, of being the broken record.

Living like one. Writing like one. Feeling like one.

Just when it sounds like the song is about to break into its climax - into something new and powerful - it skips back to the beginning. The boring part. The part you’ve heard at least a hundred times already. The part you know so well. Too well.

Sometime last week, though, springtime got into my blood. It was like something budded inside me. Again, I had the sensation of a new season. And it was more than just the sunshine.

But the sunshine helped. I got out of the house several days in a row. Went for a few walks by the lakes. Found a new coffee-haunt or two. Used my YMCA ID. Got really wet and came home smelling like chlorine. Four days in a row.

I still felt fatigued when came the weekend. Artificially sustained by buckets of caffeine, rising Sunday morning took me an hour and a half, just to get out of bed. And this was a day I was genuinely excited to get to where I was going. It wasn’t lethargy or reluctance that made waking difficult. It was utter fatigue.

But again, this seems like a new season. Or at least the eve before one.

Like the countdown before lift-off: “T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7…” Much prep goes into that moment, and in the miles immediately following, there is gravity to fight and much fuel spent in the fighting. It is a rather violent segue between earth and space. The separation is not tranquil. But it is the necessary effort to bring the ship and its crew to higher places.

The countdown is steady in my head now. 28 days. One week of prednisone. Three more weeks of chemo pills. One CT scan (I don’t like those - I made a mess of the machine the last time they loaded my veins up with intravenous contrast).

Then I’ll wake up one morning without another chemo treatment looming near. Then I may actually have the juice to do what I need to rebuild my body.

Jen and I took a few hours following my infusion to walk around downtown St. Paul in springtimey sunshine. There’d been a few moist eyes at the clinic earlier, but we had stopped crying well before we were strolling the cobblestone sidewalks on Wabasha and West Seventh. So I’m not sure what our excuse could be (I’d say chemo-brain, but that only works for me) but we were in the middle of a crosswalk when we weren’t supposed to be. Suddenly we had to scuffle off the street to avoid being hit by a Volvo, and while scuffling, I pulled a muscle in my butt.

Right cheek, actually.

I’m still limping.

Get that: I pulled a muscle in my butt while scuffling across a street.

At the clinic today, I weighed 132 pounds. Almost my normal weight. My nurse for the past two years rightly quipped, “I’ve never seen those numbers before.”

So I look good. Good grief, do I look good (please notice the hair on my chin and the tongue in my cheek), but despite all evidences to the contrary (here’s that broken record thing, again), I’m not in great shape. I strain muscles in my back and neck when I sneeze - for crying (or sneezing) out loud. Sitting on lake Calhoun last week, I kicked off my shoes and put bare feet on sun-warmed bricks. A runner jogged by, clomping his tennies on those same bricks. I imagined doing the same and my ankles began to unconsciously, instinctively twitch with the expected pain.

It will be so much fun to be able to do stuff again. And I’m so glad I get to. I’ve been itching to get out. To see things. To do things. To explore with my boys. To romance with my bride. To enjoy common hobbies with my friends.

And for a few days last week, and a few hours this afternoon, I got to.

Those of you who’ve been following my story know why I hesitate to say this:

Life is looking up.

I was intending last week to write this hoorah. Right in the middle of my happy days.

Then the shootings at VT happened. And I learned of Walt Wangerin’s cancer. Closer to home, friends M & S found out that S was going to deliver a stillborn in the sixth month - their second miscarriage. And friends J & A discovered the adoption they thought was a done deal (little J had been living with them for well over a year already) was suddenly very likely to come undone.

Bad Days & Better Days

I wondered how I could pass out party favors to celebrate better days when my better days were happening at the same time as someone else’s very bad days. Would it be irreverent, disrespectful, frivolous, or insensitive for me to say just how good my good days were?

How was I to reconcile the sheer pleasure I intended to describe in an afternoon of sunshine on Lake Calhoun with the simultaneous pain and uncertainty in the lives of some of my closest friends? More broadly, how should we feel when pleasures like frozen custard and Oregon Chai, bike-rides and swimming-pools sit side-by-side (on the globe, anyway) with famine, contaminated water, genocide, and disease?

One time I hurt so badly I couldn’t recall the good times I’d had prior to the pain. The collective cry of suffering in this world at that moment undid me. In July of 2005, my own hurt amplified the hurts of humanity and the darkness invited me to despair. Though the good times eluded my memory, at least I had good times to recall when I could.

If all were pain, sorrow, and frustration all the time, I am convinced humanity would collapse upon itself. When I was sick, others were well. I couldn’t remember my own good times, but I saw others having theirs.

When one grieves, another is laughing. Weddings and funerals, baptisms and bloodbaths happen on the same planet, on the same day.

And while this incongruence often agitates our sense of justice (which it should), I’ve come to see it also as a grace. Good and bad coexist here. It is a grace. The two are juxtaposed, and we always know how bad bad is and how good good can be. And we know the difference. The contrast is necessary.

Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do all we can to alleviate the pain that is. While the good times (whether ours once or theirs now) give us something to hope for or remember when we hurt (it is so true that in the midst of grief we can forget what life is like without grief), the pains of others serve as another kind of reminder in our peace. And they provide us with an opportunity to make their hurts (and ours collectively) easier to bear.

How good it is we’re not all grieving at the same time! If we all hurt all the time what comfort would there be? What life could we look at and say, “That is right and this is wrong; I want that back. I know that this is so bad because that is so good”? What’s more, who would there be to console us? Who would there be to give - were we all so bent up so as to be incapable of the selfless offering needed to bring healing? Who would there be to serve as the tangible flesh and blood bringers of God’s kindness?

Our exposure to the hurts of others (the shared grief of our planet) keeps those of us who are well from living frivolously. From thoughtlessly embracing pleasure. Now if we enjoy anything, we thoughtfully enjoy it as a gift. And if we prefer triviality to reality, ignoring the suffering in this world (neglecting to do what we can to help) we are all the guiltier of our indifference.

Finally, may the hurt here help us to know not only how badly we need each other, but ultimately how deeply we need God. The brokenness of suffering in life is the evidence of a broken relationship with the Giver and Sustainer of life. We really do need to meet our Maker.

May the Church remember and reclaim, in each generation, her calling to be the tangible representation of this Lord who brought salvation in so many ways: healing the sick, feeding the hungry, forgiving the sinners, and giving power and purpose to the lives of very ordinary people like you and like me.

Consider this the party favor and the invitation to celebrate with me.

We live still.

Collectively,

His,

Jeremy

PS. New downloadable tune posted sometime this week!

How hard it is to look good and not feel good.

How often I’ve wanted my bald head back. Or a band-aid on my forehead. In grade school, a band-aid invoked sympathy. Invited attention. “What happened? Are you okay?” I remember one sunny, wet, spring day in elementary school gym class when we were running around the playground near a chain-link fence. I was goofing off and intentionally stumbled into the fence, getting my foot caught beneath the bottom pokies and the ground.

My foot got snagged and I tripped. It tore a hole in my tenny. We laughed, I got up, and we finished our run. My foot hurt, so I said so. Yet in spite of the hole in my shoe, nobody believed me.

As we lined back up in front of the teacher to do stretches and jumping jacks, I knelt to remove my shoe. I needed to take a peek at my foot. The other kids were laughing. Even the teacher was walking down the row to order me back up. I was trying to explain how my foot hurt; that I was removing my shoe to see what was wrong. Everyone thought I was exaggerating or being a baby.

Until I pulled my shoe off, exposing my bloody sock. Then everyone got really quiet.

Mrs. Glassman removed my bloody sock, and there was my pinky toe, barely hanging on by a messy piece of flesh, the blood oozing from the place where it was supposed to be attached to my foot. Gym class took a break on account of me that day. Mrs. Glassman walked me to the nurse’s office where my aunt Karen came and picked me up, and drove me to the hospital where I got a shot and seven stitches. And the rest of the day off from school.

The trouble with looking good and feeling so rotten, is people expect you to be feeling as well as you look, and if you’re not, you either have to accept that misinterpretation of your well-being and get over it, or justify your inactivity and irritability at every juncture, engaging in explanation time and time again. An exhausting activity, as it tends to be quite self-centered, and disagreeably so. Sometimes it’s just easier to stay in bed. To keep to your cave. It’s almost like a Jekyll and Hyde routine, except the good doctor locks himself up every evening so as to keep the monster from hurting anyone when he’s out.

Unrelenting pain can so easily make a person cantankerous. Pain nags until the person does.

And these days I hurt. I have been in more pain this week than I have been in a good while. Perhaps it is in relation to prednisone-withdrawal, or a consequence of the inactivity of these winter months, and the ensuing atrophy. Perhaps it is another bug.

In any case, the pain often takes my breath away. On my back or up on my feet, I am stiff and rigid, needing to command my exhale. Without intentionally doing so, I nearly cease to breathe - stuck in the breathlessness of a constant ache. The ache in my back, in my neck, in my jaw, and my legs.

My wrists give out with a turn of the steering wheel, or a push of a button on my keyboard, the pouring of milk into my chai. My head is heavy with hurt. My wrists weak with pain. My calves are rigid - hard as bone, my wife says. I am regaining weight, reclaiming muscle mass, but every fiber of those muscles is fired-up to the max. Flexed as flexed can be. My tendons are taut. My softer muscles twitch and threaten to go hard like the rest. My bones creak under the pressure. I walk again like an old man. Bent. Mechanical. Slow. Grimacing.

My gut is slowed by the pain meds necessary to keep me moving - the pain meds that further diminish my energy and capacity for productive thought, making me sleepy, putting me back in bed.

I am in worse shape now than I was at this time one year ago. A glance wouldn’t tell you this. I look better. I have more hair, better color, and a beard. But I hurt more now than I have in many months. I am more fatigued. I’m supposed to be on my way up and out. Then why does this feel more like deeper down and further in?

What is this? Why is this? Aren’t I almost done? Shouldn’t I be getting better now?

It’s been nearly two years. Two years is enough. A month and a half from now I will swallow my last dose of chemo pills. I can understand why some folks opt out of chemotherapy when they relapse. It is hard enough the first time. Even the easy stuff has proven hard for me. At best, imagine being sick with an intense head and chest cold - or the flu - the kind that puts you on your back in bed - for three to four days a week, every week. For two years.

Imagine bouncing back every week. But a little less every week. Eventually you wouldn’t be bouncing back at all. Drop one of those dime-store bouncy balls and watch it until it stops moving and you’ll get what I’m talking about. Eventually, you would stop bouncing altogether, rolling into a hole or a rut in the ground, stopping. You’d just sit there. Unless someone bigger than you came and picked you up.

This is what it has been like for me. It just gets harder and harder to get back up. This past week, rather than feeling a little bit better every day, I felt a little bit worse. Ahhh, and it feels no good to complain. It doesn’t make things better. Especially when there is so much good that goes unheralded (though not unnoticed) in my grief.

Perhaps there are some unaddressed psychological reasons I feel the need to give voice to my pain. There are a few that come to mind. Yet, in spite of this, there is a simpler reason why I write paragraph after paragraph of what Job calls, “speaking from the bitterness of my heart.”

When either of my boys gets hurt, they cry. Even when their hurts are being mended, if the hurt still hurts, they join the primal chorus of lament. Infants, toddlers, and big people, too, have been lending their voices to this work for thousands of years. It is what we do when we hurt. It may grow in complexity as we age - may find more syllables, interesting syntax, less volume, clever wit - but it is still the primal cry of pain. Very often, these posts have been little more than this.

Because of that, it is a wonder to me that so many of you continue logging on to hear me cry. When my boys cry, it raises my blood pressure. I want to do something, and if I can’t, it bothers me. And I realize that this is most often the situation most of you reading this find yourselves in with me. You hear me hurt, but what can you do?

To the many of you who continue praying, thank you, thank you, thank you. To those of you who send kind words, thank you. It is an amazing thing that there are people who weather these sorts of storms alone. I have not had to do that. Because of you. And I cannot say thank you enough.

But the cry is necessary. It is a reflex. It is instinct. It tells us, and the world, that we are still alive. And it screams that something is not right. The Lament is a witness to the brokenness of this world. It demonstrates that something is not how it should be, and we know it. And it communicates our desire for someone somewhere to know this brokenness with us.

And for so many of us, myself first and foremost, if the hurt is not ours, we so rarely let it interrupt or intrude upon our lives. If we know about it, we are near enough.

This is what makes Jesus so amazing. This is what most attracts me to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is what draws me in and keeps me at His side:

God stepped into the pain.

He entered into it, and entering into it, He began and secured the eventual healing. But He felt it first. He knew it. He knew it like we know it.

He didn’t have to do that. If anybody didn’t deserve it, it was Him.

This is the best story that has ever been told. And I get to be a part of it. It is simply amazing.

Back to the bouncy ball again. When the ball has stopped bouncing, stopped rolling, stopped moving altogether, the ball must become the object. There must be a Subject bigger than the ball that moves the ball. The ball can’t do the moving, it must be moved. The verb must happen to it.

This is something we don’t understand in our strength. This is something that is hard to get: sometimes we just can’t go on. These days have often been to me like traveling through the Dakotas on an almost empty gas tank. The little gas light is on, and I may run out any minute. And there’s no gas station for miles.

But God isn’t fuel. God is framework. God is transportation. I am not the vehicle that needs God like fuel. I am the passenger that needs God like a ride. A real pick-me-upper.

Anybody can bounce… for a while. But to go higher than you were before - that takes becoming the object - that requires a Subject other than the self to do the action. We need to be acted upon, to be propelled.

Lance Armstrong can bounce. Humans bounce. We were made to be bouncy. Some theologians call it common grace. With the right resiliency (and a little God-given propensity for internal exertion, i.e. survival) some can bounce higher than the height from which they’ve fallen.

But we are all still bouncing balls and not birds. To truly soar, we need to be transformed. To become what we are not. And to be transformed, we need to be acted upon. The verb needs to happen to us. We need another outside ourselves to initiate and complete the action of transforming.

This is the promise of Christ’s resurrection. Christ purchased redemption. He promised resurrection. Remission isn’t resurrection. Remission is redemption. Lazarus was dead and then wasn’t dead, but even his resurrection at that time was redemption. Or remission, as it were. His body died again.

But final resurrection is promised. It will one day be his, like it will one day be mine. Brand new bodies. Not the old body brought to life again, but the old body changed. A new body. Ahhh, how we were made to want this. The Longing (like the Lament) testifies to the brokenness of this world, to God’s intent to make things right, to His commitment to make things right, and to the fullness of things made right in Christ. He did it. It’s done. And it will be mine.

That is one reason why today, I celebrate sincerely.

He is risen, indeed.

And though I fall down, I’m gonna get up.

Can I get an Amen?

His because of Him,

Jeremy

PS. Click on any of the bouncy ball images in this post for a link to an incredible video.

PPS. Jen and boys are doing well. Eli is emerging a musician. He sings intervals better than I do. And Ade is an athletic little artist. He throws strikes consistently (across the living room, at least), and loves to paint. And Jen, well, she’s Jen. And I love her. Thanks to Ben, Dre, and Tom for seeing me through a difficult weekend without them.

Donald Miller calls it The Lie. The most persuasive deception he has ever had to unlearn.

I am unlearning it, too. A whole generation is. At least I hope we are.

So forgive me if I seem a bit self-indulgent. A blog about ME can be a sinful-pleasure for sure. It is the story I know best, however, and I’m only just beginning to relearn that my life isn’t all about me. After two years of being The Patient, it is though I am having to unlearn The Lie all over again.

I am trying, though. And here is my effort today. I will turn the cameras elsewhere for at least a couple paragraphs. For I’ve been reminded in recent days how the effect of this illness in my body has been an adversity for many: our church, my friends, my boys, my bride, her folks, my folks, our siblings, and the polar bear community near the arctic circle.

And here is how I was reminded: my hometown’s high school hockey team was in the state tournament two weeks back. They won (Go Rams). My whole family was in the Twin Cities for the games (along with half my hometown). Ade and I rode back up to the farm with my mom and dad at the end of the weekend, and we spent the week up there, the first half on our own, the second with Jen and Eli.

Good idea. Except one thing. My world falls apart without Jen. It tilts off axis and spirals into a black hole of unopposed gravitational gloom. Trudging through the dark days of the week (in fatigue and irritability) without her (and with Aedan in tow) was almost enough to awaken my conscience to the absurd amount of work she does from week to week to keep her boys happy. And this would’ve done it, were it not for the good graces of Baba Buddy and Mama Deb, stepping in with Ade when they saw what I was unable to do.

But then towards the end of the week, when I was up and able to get out of the house, I ran into Bro Jeff from the Roseau Times Region. He invited Jen and I in for an interview the next day. His questions occasionally suggested that he really wanted this story to be more about Jen as a caregiver, and less about me as a wee little sick boy.

Well done, Bro. That did it. I snapped to and saw my bride again. I saw her again. Here was my hero. Here was my bride - busted up and broken human being that she was - being the hands and feet and lips and sweet-smelling hair of Christ in our home for her husband and her sons.

We talked about it later that night. I asked her to tell me what sorts of things had been hard for her in recent months. It was good. It was good for me to step into her soul through her words that night. It was good for me to see her again.

And so I consider myself at least twice blessed. Once in the very fact that I’ve been so cared for, so loved. And again for being able to get a glimpse of it. To get it. To understand the cost of it.

And it adds fervor to my prayers and my requests for them. For I’ve come to understand in a new way how our hurts as individuals become our hurts as a family. Aedan feels it in his way. Eli feels it in his. In more directions than might be imagined, the inconveniences brought by the hurt and by the cost of its healing become the burdens of many.

So this time, when I hope for these final months of treatments to be manageable, and the recuperation that follows to be quick and complete, I long for this not merely for my own sake, but for Jen’s, for Ade’s, and for Eli’s; for our folk’s, our family’s, and our friends’; for all those who’ve had to navigate the peculiar nature of our needs and our circumstances in whatever ways it might have affected them.

Lastly, this glimpse into the communal effects of one person’s needs (in this case, my own) has reminded me that even our hurts, as intimate as they can be, are not always about us, or ever completely about us. Sometimes we are called to hurt so that others may be called to heal.

I heard it said recently that the right question to ask when confronted with unaddressed suffering in this world is not “Where is God?” but “Where are God’s people?” Had I ever asked that question at any point during these last few years, the answer would have come as easily and as quickly as I could have opened my eyes.

So here I am answering that question now.

Thank you God for my bride. Thank you for my boys. Thank you for Jen’s mom and dad. Thank you for mine. Thank you for brothers and sisters and in-laws. Thank you for doctors and nurses who become friends. Thank you for your Church. Thank you for family and friends and strangers who write letters and emails and send cards and checks and show up with shovels and cakes and hot dish (it is hot dish, you know - not casserole [see Zechariah 12:32]). Thank you God for folks who take the time to read this and who are somehow moved by it. Thank you that there have been people near enough to me and my family to be the seeable, touchable, smellable, tasteable, hearable, and huggable manifestations of your grace in our times of need.

Please. Please help us to be this and become this all the more for folks who hurt like we do and who hurt more than we do. For there is still so much hurt here. Help us. Please. And thank you.

Grateful. Still. His.

Jeremy

The Other Side

On my way into the Cancer Care Center yesterday morning, walking from the parking ramp to the check-in desk, I met another patient on her way out. It was Catherine. She had hair. When I first met her, she was as hairless as I was at the time. She wore bandannas, I think. I wore Old Navy beanies.

We’d sit across the room from each other in the infusion-room. She in her chair, plugged into her IV pole, me in mine. Once I overheard her telling another patient about a smoky potato soup she makes often. I’m into soups. So I asked her about it, and she wrote me the recipe.

So yesterday when I saw her waiting by the front doors for her ride, I smiled (she did too when she saw me) and I asked if she was done. Our monthly chemo-infusions had been scheduled on the same day for several months. And at roughly the same time, too. I was merely assuming she had come in earlier than me, and that she was “done” for the day.

She was done with much more than that. Her smile widened at my question, and she opened her bag to pull out a pink certificate signed by all the infusion nurses congratulating her on the completion of her course of chemotherapy. I gave her a good handshake and said, “well done.”

Her gladness dimmed just a little as she told me she expected to return someday. Relapse loomed as certain in her imagination as dusk does every dawn. But whereas the weather page of any local newspaper can tell you when the sun is going to set each day, she didn’t know when the next occurrence of cancer might be for her. She just had a hunch (and a statistically-informed one at that) that her cancer would relapse.

Nevertheless, for now, on this day, she was happy. And I shared her joy. For as she was walking away from her last administration of chemo, I was sitting down for my third-to-last: number 76 of 78. One year ago, as I headed into the final phase of my treatment, I wrote that the light at the end of this tunnel was so bright I was squinting. As it turns out, if I’d held my eyes open long enough, I may’ve seen the light to be the front of the oncoming train that it was, rather than the final release into wide-open spaces for which I was hoping.

Nice Hit

Somebody at church last Sunday asked me if I had been rehabbing. I had gone to the Y a few days earlier for a swim (which for me means aquatic stretching in the therapy pool), and so I was tempted to push out my chin and my chest and say, “Yup. Don’t it show?”

But the perpetual reality has been otherwise. If I may make another football analogy (sorry, Jesse):

When I was in junior high, I was a big kid. I mean, I had my growth spurt a year or two before nearly everyone else, and so I was five-foot-six, one hundred and thirty pounds in seventh grade. As such, I was one of the bigger kids in my class. I played football for two years. Football was fun for those two years. But when I showed up for conditioning in grade nine, every other ninth grader had gotten bigger over the summer months, and football wasn’t as much fun any more.

This was when I more or less decided to give my time to music rather than sports. I thought it’d be safer.

One great thing I remember learning in football was that, if you wanted to take down the guy with the ball, hit him low. It didn’t pay to jump on his back, especially if he was bigger than you - he might just keep on running. Nope, take him out at the knees and he’ll go down fast, and he’ll go down hard.

Trying to rehab this year - to build back strength and stamina - has been like running downfield with no offensive protection. The other team has twenty-one guys rather than eleven, and I am my team. What’s worse, the referee has a broken whistle. So when I start rising to my feet after a good tackle (as the tacklee, not the tackler) the other team hits me again - takes me out at the knees - rather than gaining ground, I’m losing yardage every time I try to get back up.

Weekly and monthly chemo (as well as this accursed week of prednisone) takes me out at the knees on a regular, almost predictable basis. I typically have two bad weeks a month (utter mental, emotional, and physical fatigue), and two good weeks (just the physical fatigue - and I can sometimes overcome this with Chai tea and Pepsi). If these two good weeks happen to be the two weeks I get sick with some sort of bug (like the head and chest cold I’ve been fighting these past two weeks), then these two good weeks are just “not-so-bad” weeks. But regardless of the adjectives I end up using to describe my two better weeks, once they’ve passed, I take the prescribed drugs that drag me into the bad weeks once again.

Train

This cycle, however, will soon be coming to an end. After yesterday, only two more chemo-infusions mark my calendar. Come mid-May, I will wait for my ride at the front door of the Cancer Care Center holding my certificate of completion (I do hope it’s a color other than pink), walking away from infusion #78, and into the first phase of this new life.

And while that day will hardly be an instantaneous resurgence of health and vitality, it will signal a stopping of the clock, in a sense. Time to get up and regroup. Time to fuel up and taxi round for another good run down the runway - perhaps this time, finally up off the ground and into higher places.

But for the time being, I have a few more dark places to explore. This week and the coming weekend are one of them. I have taken my first dose of five of prednisone, and will venture through the haze of withdrawal once again come Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Please be praying for Jen and me this week… that we would know what kinds of preparations to make so as to render these days easier to manage… and for the right help to make that happen. The experience a few weeks back detailed in my last post has us a bit wary.

And my body hurts so badly. I swim and it feels good when I’m wet. Then the next day, I’m sick and achy and fatigued. Almost thoroughly unable to move. I remember those days in ninth-grade, conditioning for football: each day’s workout caused aches and pains greater than the day before, but each workout developed an otherwise unknown and unrecognized strength. Endurance. I need this still. And I’m eager to be able to work in such a way that I do nurture endurance, rather than this destructive atrophy (and consequential apathy) that seems to greet me on the far side of whatever efforts I muster.

Current

It’s a humiliating thing for humans to know real weakness - when you just can’t make things better - but it is eventually as much a part of our lives as dusk is a part of every day. Unless the Lord returns first, we will all die. And there is both greater courage and fuller joy living in the recognition of that fact, than there is in pretending it’s not the case.

This morning, Catherine demonstrated to me that she gets something not all of us do: she lives in hope and momentum in spite of the anticipated end. Some people spend their lives frantically swimming against the tide, denying at the same time that the tide exists. But the swell is taking us in, either way.

When in the surf, one rises to the surface with much less effort when willing to agree with the water. It is both humbling and wise to recognize mortals cannot compete with the swirling waters of mortality. To live well, we must acknowledge that living life each day brings us one day closer to death. To surf well, one must know which way the wave is going. Point your board in the right direction and the wave will pick you up and give you a view like no other. And you can do tricks. The guy fighting the current just gets water in his face.

So I pray I will surf into this new and (if the Lord wills) stronger season of my life with the awareness that I will yet someday die (again, unless the Lord returns). And I will trust that this awareness will cause me to receive the Love of Christ and His Call all the more, in the hope that His fortitude will bring life to and through my fragility, until at last I journey through one last valley, and land safely on heaven’s bright shore.

Voices

It’d be fun to unpack this more specifically, and maybe I will someday, but for now these metaphors will have to do. The writing I’ve done already has taxed my wrists more than what makes me stronger. And I haven’t yet written about much of what I intended to.

The last few weeks have been more the “not-so-bad” weeks rather than the flat-out good, but there have been a few things in the midst of them worth mentioning that were flat-out great.

I spent the good part of these weeks preparing two different messages for two different occasions. I’m coming to enjoy the entirety of this process more and more. One was for a Valentines Banquet hosted by Living Hope Church in St. Michael. Jen and I were invited to do the program, so I spoke and we sang. A recording of much of it can be downloaded or listened to at the Living Hope Website. We closed the program singing “Love Real” from To Entertain. I played guitar. It was so good to do this again. But it was just as disappointing to be reminded of how much my wrists hurt in the days that follow. Ten minutes of guitar. Ten days of tender wrists.

The second message was for the Ash Wednesday service at Emmaus. This ended up being one of the most necessary messages I’ve ever prepared (for me and for others, too, it seems), and I’m excited about it. I will end up posting it for download on this site eventually, but for now, I’ve posted a rough transcript as a post on the musings blog of this site. It’s called “Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” and it’s a narrative meditation on Psalm 23. Read it while listening to Ginny Owen’s “If You Want Me To,” and you might even cry like I did when I gave it.

The last web thing I’ll make note of is a new downloadable mp3 we posted last week of a studio track that never made it to an album. It’s a recording of Psalm 142 that Ben Monseth and I did a few years back. Piano, cello, and vocals. There’s a link to it from my homepage and the music page. I figured it was fitting to give it away in light of some of the experiences I’ve shared from this last month.

Finally, along with a reminder to pray for us this coming weekend, I’d like some of you to know that I’ll be speaking at a FLY District Day Retreat at the YMCA up in Fergus Falls on March 11th. The theme is a common one for me: “In Uz With Abba: Trusting God Works All Things For Our Good,” and the content I’ve presented at least twice before - once in five sessions and once in three. This time I’ll be doing it in two. Please pray as I prepare. I know I’ve said it before, but I really like doing this. Nevertheless, there are certain days when even the appealing nature of this task isn’t enough to call forth the strength to do it. I need more.

Your comments on past posts have been very helpful in encouraging me to this end. Thanks each of you for taking the time to read and respond. I pray you are blessed.

Still His (and hanging ten),
Jeremy

PS. Thanks to the Wiley’s, the Barlands, and Ed for digging us out of the snow this weekend!

A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness,
But a crushed spirit who can bear?

Football

Imagine me standing side by side with Peyton Manning. He’s in uniform, holding one of those huge official NFL pigskins. I’m in sweatpants and slippers. Peyton plays football. He says so. And I say, “I play football, too.” As proof, I hold up my 70’s-vintage, hand-held, push-button Classic Football by Mattel with the green screen and the little red light bulbs.

I play football, too.

By comparison, it’s not really football. I know there’s a Madden game out there with a rumble feature and pretty realistic graphics and all, but I get dizzy watching the screen, and too much telly hangs heavy on my heart.

Once in real life I tackled Benjy Deubner on a full sprint. Wes Patterson took me down during a game of two-hand touch at Camp Kitchi-Khanis, and both Wes and Ben are big boys. So I know what real football is, and I know this game isn’t it. But it’s as close as I can get right now.

Runways

My friend Dave Roise and I have something in common (besides music, faith, frame, and our aging taste-buds): we both love flying. Dave actually had the guts (and the time - before eight kids) to get his pilot’s license. By the time I came of age, I’d read too many stories of young aspiring musicians dying in plane wrecks to spend time learning how to read the gauges.

But when I was a kid, my uncle Mike would take me up in his yellow Piper Cub. Mike would let me fly. My dad’s duck-hunting buddy, Bob, would land his green Cub on the road in front of our house, taxi down our driveway, and ask mom if he could take me for a ride.

How cool is that?

Once Bob offered to take one of my dad’s aunts up. She was a big lady. A Piper Cub is a fairly light, front/back, two-seater (technical jargon) with sticks and pedals coming up out of the floor for control (more technical jargon). There’s one stick in front of both seats. When one is moved, the other moves with it.

So you’ve probably seen enough movies and heard “Pull back!!! Pull back!!!” enough to know one pulls the stick back to go up. And you probably know where this is going. (I find it intriguing, but irritating when tangents hang unresolved - a useful writing tool when making a point, which this story may not - so here’s what happened…)

Bob taxied onto the road and picked up speed for a quarter-mile or more - whatever it was, it was significantly more than it’d usually require - and he pulled back on the stick to take off. The stick only went so far. And instead of the sudden silence of the landing gears leaving gravel, Bob heard the sound of my great aunt grunting oddly behind him.

Fortunately for them in this case the runway went on for quite a distance (as roads typically do). But most runways aren’t like that. Runways begin. And runways end. If, when accelerating down a runway, you aren’t off the ground before a certain point, you must throttle down your engine, stop, turn around, and in some cases, taxi all the way back to the other end of the runway (if you’ve flown you know how painfully long this takes) to try again.

Empathy

One of the more difficult aspects of having a chronic illness (or cancer, or pain, or loss, or a handicap, or a hardship of any sort) is this nagging sense that no one really understands. This is both a reality and an exaggeration. It is true that my suffering is my suffering and not someone else’s. My pain really can only be known by me (with God being the exception - He knows).

But it’s also true that all of us hurt in some way at some time, and our hurts help each of us understand the suffering of others, which, by the way, may be incomprehensibly more horrid than any thing we may endure. So there are people who really do understand. People who get our pain better, perhaps, than we do.

The real wicked thing is how subtly a genuine need and our desire to communicate that need becomes an incessant demand to be understood. I’ve experienced this in others and in myself firsthand. It’s childish and completely uninviting. I can smell it in conversations and the words of others like a dirty diaper. Perhaps because I’m sitting in it so often myself.

Nonetheless it is necessary to let those who love us know how and when we hurt and how they can help - THOSE WHO LOVE US. What they do with the knowledge of our need is up to them. And how we respond to how they respond is up to us. We as much have the opportunity to love in the absence of love as they have in the presence of need.

So I have a hard time sometimes coming to the keyboard and tapping out the details of my pain (or even my descriptions of the good times) for the general public (versus my closest friends and family), for fear that I’m playing to the adolescent mantra of ME-ME-ME, whether by my whine or by my whinny. But I’ve come to recognize recently why it is that I must do this.

One reason is the obvious and often stated desire to inform the prayers of those of you who do pray for me. I’m not hesitant to say that I need to be prayed for. And I’m rarely hesitant to say how. At least for most things.

But the other that has come to mind is the fact that not everyone can put his or her hurts to words. I can. And perhaps my words will give voice to the needs that others have but cannot express. And perhaps this voice will speak into each of us a deeper longing to love well. And then perhaps we will do it.

So for those of you who read my last post and wondered what in the world was going on, I hope this clarifies. I’m writing to nurture empathy. Not for me, but in us, for others. If my method was too abrupt an aversion from my normal writing, I apologize. Please be certain there is no numbness to the kindness I’ve been shown in so many ways.

God has allowed me to experience in these passing moments what other people live with daily. I write what it was like so that those who can’t put their pain to words can be heard and perhaps understood. Then maybe the rest of us will be able to love them better, and maybe their pain will subside just a little.

Prednisone

Prednisone may cause euphoria, insomnia, mood changes, personality changes, psychotic behavior, or severe depression. It may worsen any existing emotional instability.

How many sci-fi plots have revolved around a weapon of some sort that fries a person slowly from the inside out? The kind of thing where there’s no evidence the person is being killed until he’s dead - except this tortured look of panic on his face right before he goes…

Mental maladies are like this. And those that are brought on by medications that doctors say are necessary to cure other illnesses are particularly diabolic. It is, as they say, the cost of the cure.

I have swallowed more narcotic and prednisone pills in my life than I would have liked to. But the evidence so far says I’m probably better off for it, considering the damage an unresolved Crohn’s flare-up can wreak on a guy’s gut, the immobility that is brought on by untamed pain, or the typical outcome of an unaddressed cancer of the terminal sort.

Nonetheless, the residual and cumulative effects of these drugs and repeated withdrawal episodes have nurtured in me a deep hatred for The Zone and OxyCrawl. I am thankful that these drugs do what they do to keep me alive and “well,” but every trip through is harder than the last.

This last weekend was one such journey.

I’ve explained this before, but the treatment protocol I’m on includes five days of high dosage prednisone every four weeks. This is a drug that one would typically be weaned from, but not with this protocol. It’s what I think is called “pulse” or “shock” therapy. I’ve done it twelve times now, and am scheduled to do three more. The 2 to 3 days after the 5 are the toughest ones for me. Other days I may be very tired, but these are days of fatigue plus - extreme fatigue, plus mental/emotional fragility of the obscene sort.

One might ask why this has not been so much of a problem before, and I wonder the same myself. While I have noticed the emotional upset in months past, these last few have become more and more difficult.

The only thing I can say is that I don’t think we fully understand the effects of these drugs on our bodies - the chemo, narcotics, steroids, and anti-depressants. I’ve noticed, particularly with the chemo, the same dose of any particular drug can trigger two different reactions at different times. It’s as though the last dose somehow changed my body, and this dose is dropped into a new pool (considering the DNA-bashing qualities of chemo, this may actually be the case).

Losing It

Whatever it may be, there were a few hours Saturday and Sunday that were just plain scary. I was home alone with Aedan both times - which for the most part was a good thing, as when he’s happy he helps keep me sane and anchored. He was sick and had just woken from a fever and Tylenol-induced nap. He asked me for a glass of water, and when I tried to rise to get one for him, I had a debilitating anxiety-attack. My vision went fuzzy, my ears rang, my limbs tingled, my chest went numb, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t get out of bed.

By God’s grace I was able to keep this from Aedan’s knowledge. And after awhile, it passed. But I had to call Jen and ask her to leave her sister’s baby shower to come home. Later that evening, I was finer than a happy summer day.

Sunday, a similar thing happened, only the physical symptoms weren’t as intense. But both times, what was going on in my mind was the most terrifying thing. I was hearing overlapping lies and accusations said about me, and by me about others that I just couldn’t make go away. It was like I was in a car going too fast down a loose gravel road, with rocky ravines on both sides, dangerously close to careening out of control. As I paced the living room floor Sunday afternoon I prayed. I prayed simply but sincerely. And it took every ounce of my being - every calorie spent - to hold it all together. It felt like I was losing my mind - like I was just a breath away from going insane. This is a scary thing.

I was rescued by a few well-timed phone calls, a handful of well-placed prayers, and a couple chuckles with my dad. Again, come Sunday evening, it was as though the whole thing had been just a bad dream.

And while there are still daily aches and the hanging propensity for sadness, it is bearable and not unlike being human - something other than the medicine-induced mess I stumbled through last weekend. It seems at least for this month, the worst is behind me.

The Little Beast

But the thing I want to be really clear about is how covert mental-emotional volatility can be. It is a sneaky machine. And it is especially important, at a time in which it and the broken lives left in its wake are so common, to understand how hard it is to detect. And how easy it is to dismiss.

While my mind was near the edge, my body was well-dressed and groomed. While my thoughts were falling apart, my words held together in conversation. I could be polite. I could be coherent. Yet with my closest friend, I had a hard time being frank about the urgency of my need for help.

Another thing to note is that it did not matter to me that the emotions I was experiencing were rooted in thoughts that were not true. It did not matter in the moment that my inability to master those emotions was due to the chaos of chemical reactions caused by medications. The pain and the panic were just as real as if I’d just watched my legs get crushed in some tragic accident.

Lastly, it was horrifying to realize in weakness how easily the recognition of something true (few really could know exactly how I hurt) was twisted into falsehood (no one cares, this will never change, I’m all alone…) and turned into the opportunity for some very destructive emotions.

Traditional doctrinal language for this is “carnal nature, the old man, the flesh…” When our will is weakened, this beast of a thing thrashes about as in the throes of death. Even, I believe (not all doctrine teaches this, though I believe the Bible does), in the minds of those who have been redeemed.

Lifeline

We are all utterly dependent upon the grace of God to keep it together, and the mercy of God to hold us when it all falls apart. And I believe that the evidence of this grace and this mercy is most often more than merely an esoteric, internal experience. It is a very visceral, practical outworking through the words and actions and prayers of people just like you and me. It may end in an experience of the spiritual sort, and it most definitely begins there (love starts with God), but it is most often articulated through the concrete acts of compassion in flesh and blood conduits of God’s choosing.

For me this weekend it came through the likes of my boys Aedan and Eli, my mom and dad, good friends Dan, Debbie, Bruce, Mavis, Mark, and Ben, and my beautiful bride. The rescue God gave came through them. I’ve gone to great lengths this last week to chronicle the details of this experience (not all of it posted here), partly so I’d never forget, but mostly to help fortify the resolve of folks like you reading this to become the rescue in the lives of those you may know who suffer in these ways.

I journey through these wicked wastelands a handful of days each month, but some people live there. A few have taken up residence because they don’t want to leave. But maybe others are still there because there’s nobody who knows where they are, or how much they hurt, or how they can be helped. If nothing else, I hope my words this week have served to give voice to the answers to these questions, if not the answers themselves.

Another fun trip down the runway.

There’s so much more I could say, and I hope to, but not here. Not now. I appreciate the attention you’ve given to have read this much already, and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve already pushed this blog well beyond what blogs were made to do. Any more would be material for a book, not a blog.

But briefly, for those of you who read these updates to know what we’ve been up to, I must tell of some real good times between the bad. Better said, the bad came between the good: Christmas with both families; a New Years solo retreat at Mount Olivet Retreat Center; a handful of speaking opportunities; a three-day trip to Michigan for a pastors/leaders conference at Mars Hill; a cold weekend at the Fargo Ramada with family (two trips down the water slide); a weekend at the Cotton Mansion in Duluth for our five-year anniversary; and plenty of life-shaping one-on-one with my boys.

There has been much good.

That said, at least twice we’ve throttled down at the end of the runway and turned around to take another run. It is hard to get off the ground. And with three more courses of this chemo/prednisone combo on the calendar, it’ll be summer before we’re able to do something more than spend fuel running back and forth down this runway.

But the run is still a rush. While it’d be as wrong for me to say I’m well now as it’d be for me to say I play football like Payton Manning, I sure don’t mind pushing these buttons. There’s no doubt here that when God has done what He means to do in and through this junk, it’ll pass.

Trusting that I am forever…

Still His,

Jeremy

“No one understands. No one gets how much I hurt. No one gets how lonely I feel. No one cares enough to understand. No one has ever suffered this much. If only they knew how hard this was, they’d surely do something to help. I have a right to be understood! I have a right to be cared for! I have a right to be mad when I’m not!”

No, they won’t understand. They can’t understand. Your pain is unique. But it is unique only in that it is yours. It is extraordinary suffering only in that it is your suffering. But it is not unlike the hurts of others who’ve come before you. It is not unlike the pain of others who suffer now. You can’t know their ache. They can’t know yours. This is true. But we can share the work of bearing this burden. We can lend our legs to the load. We can carry together.

Pain is hard to quantify. It is hard to measure. It is difficult to place suffering on a scale and come up with a rating that gives bragging rights to some and weakling labels to others. Good thing, too. But consequently most of us end up feeling misunderstood. We wish the world could walk in our shoes for just a minute. We want others to feel our pain.

But this is not right. We don’t need more pain. We need more healing. We need less people hurting and more people whole. Let my lame legs be bound to the strong frame of another, and I will walk. Break us both and we will die in the ditch together. Together, but we will die.

You can’t feel my pain. I’d prefer you didn’t. I need you well. The world needs you well. But might you bend a little lower to lift me up if you knew just how close to the ground I’ve come? I don’t want you to hurt, but I want you to know how I do.

Most of us can’t put our sorrow to words. Most of us will never get the degree to which you’ve suffered. Most of us will struggle all our lives to understand or be understood. And most of us will never do either. None of us ever could fully.

But we can try. You may not be able to find the right adjectives for your hurts, and I may feel that those I choose reach to grasp the fringes of my pain, but perhaps my words will become your words. Perhaps what I’ve said in seeking to communicate my need will give voice to what you’ve been trying to say for years. And suddenly, they will get it. Suddenly, you will get it, and you’ll be able to help. How good would that be?

So have I said it plainly enough? Can I say it now? We must trust the grace of God enough to speak the reality of our hurts to those closest to us, however close or unclose they may be. It is the grace of God’s infinite understanding of our pain that will catch us if our words fall on deaf ears or indifference. And it is the grace of His revealing and meeting those needs, to and through the flesh and blood bringers of His goodness, when our words create the context for a response of genuine compassion.

And it is the grace of God when, though our humble request for help is really a childish demand to be heard, it is met by the forgiving and giving embrace of the people and the Lord who love us most.

God places the lonely in families, and it is adversity for which the brother is born. We are a race and we are a people. The conversation of need began a long time ago. The final word of provision was spoken on a cross, and the final word was the first. Need is the opportunity to love. Speak your word, and let your need for another become the opportunity for the other to love.

Then once you’ve spoken. Listen. Maybe this time the opportunity to love will be yours.

This will be no work of art. Things have been a little tough here lately.

I’ve been battling a virus since Tuesday. Stayed home this week, in bed most the time. Seems this morning it’s finally letting up a bit. But I’m somersaulting from that right into prednisone-withdrawal… a sort of mini-adrenal-crash. It’s my least favorite part of the four-week cycle. 2 to 4 days of utter fatigue… like move-my-head-in-bed-and-feel-like-I’ve-just-run-a-marathon kind of fatigue. Today it was topped-off with what I think might have been an anxiety attack (brought on by medicines, fatigue, and other things not as easily described in a word or two) - it was the same sort of thing that sent me to ER via flashing-lights in December. A bit perplexed by this. And bugged.

And Aedan came down with a nasty fever last night. It’s worse today. Eli’s recovering from an ear-infection. We brought him in to Urgent Care last Sunday night, and we may be making another such trip with Aedan yet this weekend. But this time, I’m in bed.

All that and it’s really cold.

Winter’s just plain hard.

Hope these words (saying what they say) and the spaces between (saying everything else) serve as sufficient fuel for your prayers in these days to come.

Stay warm.

Jeremy