Reasons to be cheerful, part three

I said to Fiona (my first wife) that if people hadn’t heard from me, no news was good news. She reminded me that it could also mean that I was either dead or close to death. Yup ok. So due to overwhelming popular public demand, here is some news.

The cancer treatment is working very well, thank you. It’s not chemotherapy, which is good, because chemotherapy really means poisoning everything and hoping that the poison hits cancer harder than it hits teeth, hair, fingernails and parts of you that actually matter. The treatment is targeted therapy (BRAFTOVI) and as a result and after initial severe nausea, I’m stronger and healthier. I’m walking with a limp, because I tried to jump while playing with some kids at church. They are safe, their parents are safe, my leg hurts.

Despondency

When the likely possibility of death advances by 10-20 years, the initial response is ‘oh well’. Then, in my case, you start to think of what is and what might have been.

At the age of 20 and if you have worked out that you are good at things, you have the world open in front of you and even the parts that you’ve chosen not to explore will wait. You are great (you actually are), your achievements lie ahead of you, you can choose and whatever path you choose will reveal greatness. You will not win Wimbledon but hey, you chose not to at age 8 and your regret is long past.

At age 60 you think hm, I now have a lot of regrets that are long past, and some of them were quite important, and now due to a diagnosis I could be gone in six months. The ‘so what’ response at age 20 has vanished into the concrete of ‘uh oh. This could be it’.

Christ

My answer to my own despondency has been, so far, to feel despondent. But also to look to Christ. He is our great king. Every failure of ours is a victory for him (and therefore, for us), because as we trust in him and in his kindness, mercy, and grace, he wipes out our failure for eternity. And he reminds us that we, his little children, are doing exactly the things that he would want us to be doing, and that we are created for.

I am also reminded daily of the grace and kindness of friends. In your grace I see and experience the work of Christ himself. You did not need to ask after our family and our wellbeing. You did not need to pray or offer kindness in so many ways. And yet you have.

Other matters.

More to say, but let me immediately say that at this time: no news is actually good news. Treatment progresses. I am stronger and here is some proof, just a bit of Q and A after yesterday's sermon. Sorry about the collar malfunction, the rest of it I stand by.

And here is a song. Reasons to be cheerful, part three.

It is well with my soul. Is it well with yours?

 This is what prevents me from worry.

"Even so, it is well with my soul."

Thankful as always for the kindness of friends (2 April)

 All sorts of people have phoned or sent messages, some expected friends, some unexpected friends, some with memories from long ago. Here is a song for you, an old song that you may have heard before and I hope will hear again.

I'm feeling a lot better. The nausea has been whipped into shape and is now wishing its mother had never met its father. The BRAFTOVI treatment is working, as in, I have physical evidence that tumours are shrinking. Saw my oncologist Prof Clarke and he was pleased with progress, or in the case of tumours, regress. During the week of nausea I lost four kilos, I've put three back on and am eating lots. This weekend or soon after Matilda our eldest moves out to a room (that is larger than two of ours back here in our house) in the inner city; two other daughters have scored part-time jobs, and our dogs are happy thanks for asking. I walked up the steps at Meadowbank station two at a time and made it to the train, the hamstrings remain intact today. So many good things, or new things, or both.

Here are some thoughts that friends have shared, not necessarily with me in mind. 

The first friend was considering COVID isolation and how, as many know say, it is not as bad as being a refugee from Ukraine or a flood victim in Lismore. Truth! But, said the friend, we are not necessarily helped by comparing suffering of one with another, and it is not how the Bible teaches us to think. Your stubbed toe is not as bad as Freda's amputation, but in the moment of pain and even after we are not competing with each other to see who is worse off. 

And what if (as said friend said) the specific suffering we are going through is actually the means of God's blessing?

William Cowper wrote: 

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, The clouds you so much dread,
Are big with mercy, and shall break, With blessings on your head.

In other news, it's coming up to Easter, so here is a song about Easter. 

The crucifixion itself was the lowest moment of all, yet through it the Lord Jesus' glory was revealed. 

[as we learn in Acts 4:24-28] 

And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
    and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers were gathered together,
    against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.