In early summer 2018 it appears that Penny began a project that was intended to be a follow-up to the Cancerland essays. I’ve found a table of contents for two additional volumes, and several files with various drafts of just a few things. I spoke to a member of her writer’s group, and she doesn’t recall these, so I’m guessing most of the planned essays were never written. But there are a few things that seem to be in shareable, if not final state.
The first draft of this essay appears to be from June 2018. Penny was in “remission”, but we knew that was about to end. Another round of chemotherapy began in early August. We planned a brief pre-chemo get-away for late July, and picked up our new puppy on the way home.
In some versions, this essay appears in a document along with the table of contents, so it may have been intended more as an introduction to Volume 2 (God from Stage IV) than as one of its chapters.
God is dead.
God isn’t exactly dead. He just doesn’t care.
Or maybe he isn’t into reaching down and healing people miraculously. At least not anymore. At least not me.
That’s how it feels some days. That thinking leads me places I don’t want to go. So my entire first attempt at wrapping my head around my disease never mentioned God. That first volume,Cancerland, was about life management. Trying to channel the very little energy I had into something that felt productive. Not writing for or against prosperity gospel and how that relates to me being Stage IV, but rather keeping things super practical: how to help sick people, sharing perspectives and experiences to help patients know what to expect and that they’re not alone. Giving the family and friends some of the patient perspectives on having cancer – a really nasty cancer.
I figured if I didn’t fill that book with Christian jargon, it might help more people. It’s not that I didn’t think about God or that I lost my faith. I’m not good at theology, so it was just easier to fall back on what comes more naturally to me: managing life and encouraging people with a “Kindness is everything” motto.
But here I am in between terrible, miserable interventions to beat back the cancer. As I begin volume 2, I’m in remission. I’ve got just enough energy and still enough brain to be over-committed at work. At the same time, I want to figure out how better to do faith – right now, in the midst of a life lived between quarterly CT-scans. Maybe I’ll discover something that will help me get through the next chemotherapy or the next surgery. I might die before I finish this. That sounds flippant, but death is real and isn’t nearly as far away as I had always hoped.
Even if I don’t find what I’m looking for, I hope you do. Neither of us – me, the writer or you, the reader – has more perspectives than the other, but we necessarily have different vantage points. I’m planning on digging around in the weeds and the muck of horrible surgeries with long painful recoveries, nausea-inducing therapies, lost dreams, and questions about faith and God and why. That’s not always the best position from which to see the big picture. Which is why I need you. Writing for you will keep me from getting hopelessly lost in those weeds.
Two weeks ago, a friend suddenly fell ill. Gravely ill. Okay, Stop. “Grave-ly ill.” Think about that. Anyway, his family quickly started an on-line, subscribe-to-it blog to get updates out to everyone who cares. They include insights they gleaned during personal devotions. They quote the Bible. They are the perfect Christians paddling like crazy in a perfect storm.
Don’t panic about my theology: I know there’s no such thing really as “perfect Christians.” (Some of you are saying, “Amen!” with sardonic enthusiasm.) These friends of mine are staying afloat. Their faith helps them. They are sharing this all to comfort and inspire the rest of us. And to comfort themselves. They stand in a long tradition. Martyred saints. Devoted mystical nuns. The Apostle Paul, for Pete’s sake. (!) Imagine if any of them had had social media. #eye.on.the.prize.
My storm, if I may be so egotistic as to claim a personal natural disaster, is like being caught in a tornado. After getting sucked in, everything moves in slow motion. I dodge. I try to dodge the crap that is swept up and cycloning with me. This tornado will kill me. Is it possible from these dangerous heights just for a moment to get that 30,000-foot view? It’s not worth it, you know. Dying for a glimpse of the landscape below. But since I’m stuck in the tornado anyway, I might as well try.