A longtime friend is battling his 7th cancer diagnosis and treatment of mouth cancer. He is a pastor, author, marriage counselor, nationally-renowned speaker, and head of the Center for Relationship Enrichment at John Brown University. I first met Dr. Gary J. Oliver when he taught a Bible Study on campus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and our friendship has stuck over these 30+ years. It didn't hurt that he married my college roommate, Carrie Webster, who died from Pancreatic cancer in 2007. Gary lost both of his parents, his only sister, one of their sons and his wife in the span of about two years. One of my questions for God is "Why was it that Gary had to endure so much hardship & heartache on his earthly journey?" Let's just say that Gary will be heavily adorned with jewels in the Eternal for the way he has managed his journey with grace. When you catch yourself saying "Who's the guy with all the BLING over there with the place at the Lord's feet?"... you can remind yourself that it might be Gary Oliver.
We just received Gary's April 28th email update letter and as usual, were moved by his faith through adversity. Gary's journey is such a perspective giver for both Mike and me, and makes our journey seem like a walk in the park (though a crummy & bumpy walk at that.) We asked Gary if I could share his words on our blog and he said: "Yes, I'd be glad to have my story shared. The pain and losses I've experienced become a bit easier for me to deal with when I know that the purposes of the evil one to discourage and defeat are being hindered by my (and others) testimony in the midst of very real storms to the faithfulness, goodness, grace and mercy of our Lord. Our circumstances don't have to determine our reality."
April 28, 2011 Letter from Gary J. Oliver Bottom Line:
Praise the Lord for significantly answered prayer. Last week Linda and I went down to M.D. Anderson for a CT scan and check-up and I was told that there is absolutely NO evidence of those two rapidly-growing tumors—both of them have gone. One of the doctors said “That’s amazing!” Even with this great report I’ve been told I’m not out of the woods quite yet but I have a lot to be thankful for and good reason to celebrate.
I don’t know how I would have made it without my dear Linda (who has been amazing and never once made me feel like I was an inconvenience), my team at CRE and faithful friends who sometimes said “I don’t know what to say except I’m so sorry” but went on to let me know they were praying for me. I’ve re-learned that when I don’t know what to say to someone . . . to just say that and let them know I’m praying for them. It’s more impactful than I ever imagined.
A number of friends have asked what some of the side-effects of my chemo were. Major fatigue (just walking up a set of stairs can exhaust me), nausea, loss of fingernails and toenails, sores and rashes on my skin, inflammation around my eyes that secreted a substance that made me have to actually pull my eyes open some mornings as I couldn’t just open them on my own, swollen tongue, a cognitive “fog” that impacted my ability to focus, decreased creativity, neuropathy which is a numbness in the tips of my fingers and toes, difficulty concentrating, decreased appetite . . . but one good thing is that I was still able to laugh at myself and laugh at my own jokes even if no one else was laughing.
THANK YOU for your prayers and your encouragement (texts, emails, cards, letters, voicemail messages, food, smiles, hugs, bad jokes) that have helped us navigate the discouragement and darkness of an uncertain, challenging but effective chemo regimen. Sometimes when it’s dark it’s easy to feel alone even when you know you aren’t. Thank you for reminding me that I wasn’t alone but that there were dear friends who were joined in their hands and hearts in this adventure.
Color Commentary:
Christ didn’t die and rise again for us to just survive by treading water. He says something about being “more than conquerors.” Regardless of our circumstances His heart for us is, according to Ephesians 3: 20-21, to do “exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ask or think.” My seventh bout with cancer hasn’t just been about me. So what are a few life lessons I’m in the process of learning that might be worth sharing?
In The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis wrote that “Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil.” So true. A bit further on in the same book he wrote that, “God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world . . . “ That is also true. I don’t thank God for the pain but I do thank Him that He is very present in the midst of the pain and that He can use the pain to teach us some wonderful lessons and continue the process of sanctification.
Oh, that’s another thing. I thank God for a vibrant theology of sanctification and passages like Isaiah 48:10, “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.” None of us wants to be spiritual “fool's gold” but becoming pure gold (I Peter 1:6-7) involves refining and at times the process can be painful.
God has continued to teach me how to be thankful for things I’ve never thought to give thanks for. Case in point are fingernails and toenails. Yeah, you read it right. Due to my chemo I’ve had to have 9 fingernails and 8 toenails removed. Not a fun process. Plus, I never realized how important they are. When I lost my thumbnails then my index-finger nails I discovered how simple things like reaching in a drawer to get something, buttoning a shirt, putting my pants on etc. can become almost impossible. The slightest bump to the exposed nail beds causes a remarkable and immediate pain. There have been days I’ve had to have Linda or Andrew button my shirts because I absolutely couldn’t button them. That is humbling! There have been days I could barely walk because I’d had a few toenails removed and it was just too painful. They are starting to grow back and I find myself giving thanks for them.
I don’t quote Nietzsche a lot but I think he’s the one who said that “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago” and that can be so true. It’s interesting. In my journal I wrote, “I fight an almost constant battle with weariness and discouragement but I’m not depressed or overwhelmed by it . . . but I’m still adjusting to this reality of my “handicap” and discovering what it will mean in my life and how it will redefine the rest of my life and having to plan my days in terms of how I will get the amount of nourishment I’ll need to make it through the day. It’s a whole new way to have to look at life.”
When my chemo symptoms were at their worst and I was at my weakest I wrote this: “If I can beat this cancer it will be a great victory for the kingdom. If not, then how I go down will be a great victory for the kingdom. Either way my Lord will be the victor.” That may sound a bit cliché but I really meant it. I’ve learned what it is to pray for daily survival, the grace to be thankful when I didn’t feel thankful, the ability to choose hope and joy when there was little of either and to be still and know that He is God, not in spite of but in the midst of the stuff.
One day I wrote in my journal, “Every morning I wake up ready to do battle.” That was so true. When you can’t do much of what you’ve always done and love to do it’s easy to feel so useless and when that happens, a full-blown pity-party can be right around the corner. Satan loves that. By God’s grace and lessons learned from previous adventures with physical and emotional pain I knew enough to acknowledge the painful reality of my situation and then praise God for whatever I could and by doing that I was able to avoid much of that dangerous self-pity stuff.
I’m blessed that I don’t dread each day and I’m very aware of how well I’m doing especially given the nature of the chemo I was on (coming the tail of a major surgery with major recovery needed), but while counting my blessings is a very effective and legitimate way to maintain perspective and fight the assaults of the evil one and ward off the almost constant emotional, psychological and spiritual warfare, I also know that it doesn’t change for one second the fact of the new realities I have to learn how to live with throughout each and every day. This is hard stuff. Glad I’m not alone, glad that I have a wonderful wife, family and friends . . . and I’m glad that all that I’ve been through hasn’t lessened one iota what I believe . . . that my faith is as strong if not stronger than it ever has been. God continues to prove Himself faithful regardless of circumstances and throughout every situation and circumstances we can experience sovereign joy.
Over the months I’ve thought about things that cancer can and can’t do. Here is my list so far . . .
Cancer can:
Be very painful
Lead to very painful emotions
End my life earlier than I’d anticipated
Add new limitations to what I can do
Get me to focus on what I’ve lost and what I can’t do
Distort my perspective . . . if I let it
Make me aware of my “inattentional blindness”
Help me place a new value on relationships
Force me to focus
Make me slow down and be still (which energizer bunnies find difficult)
Make me realize the “end” may be closer than I thought
Allow me to prepare accordingly
Remind me to do things I haven’t done
Help me notice things I haven’t noticed before
Give friends a unique opportunity to be “real” friends
Help me see some new blessings I wasn’t aware of
Teach me new things to be thankful for
Introduce me to new friends
Give me new eyes to see the hurts and needs of others
Increase my appreciation for things I’ve taken for granted
Help me become a better listener to God and others
Cancer can’t:
Rob me of my joy
Keep me from learning
Keep me from loving
Keep me from growing
Keep me from encouraging others
Keep me from being loved
Keep me from laughing
Keep me from claiming God’s promises
Keep me from praising God for what I still can do
Rob me of my friends
Shatter my hope
Destroy my faith
Suppress the many precious memories I have
Defeat the power of God’s spirit that lives within me
Cannot take away my eternal life
THANKS AGAIN for your love, prayers and encouragement. Here is some final food for thought:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. "But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. "For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope."
(2 Corinthians 1:3-10 NASB)
It is on my Bucket List to meet Gary's new wife Linda, and thank her for loving Gary through his most recent trials - and to have Gary meet Mike. We will find food that is easy for both of them to swallow.
