Dear God,
I’m having a bit of a hard time focusing these days so I
thought I’d take some time to write you a letter. This way I can get all my thoughts in one
place.
God, my wife Shannon is dying. Yes, I said that. My brain believes it (most days), but only
sporadically does the reality sink in.
For 11 ½ years she has endured ovarian cancer treatments,
but she’s had cancer longer than that.
Before we moved to Minnesota she went to her doctor with all the classic
symptoms of ovarian cancer. (bloating, cramping, etc). She was sent home with a pat on the head and
a, “Tut tut, you’re over 30 now. The
body changes.” Four months after we’d
moved to my new call at Peace Lutheran Church she felt a lump in her abdomen
one morning. At first they assumed it
was a hernia but sent her for a CT scan to be sure. The doctor called us back into her office as
soon as the results came in.
Cancer. Ovarian cancer. The cancer her mom has. The cancer that took her grandma’s life.
That diagnosis hit me hard.
My mom Edee passed away when I was seven. I have few memories of her, and she’s very
sick in every memory. At the time our
son Ben was five. Would the same thing
happen to him?
Shannon endured that first surgery and the heavy
chemotherapy that followed and received a clean bill of health. She’d beaten it! For about five months we celebrated, but then
a scan revealed it had come back. More
surgery. More chemo. Another celebration of victory followed a
couple months later by a reality that we’ve had to live with. This cancer wouldn’t go away. The focus of treatment changed from remission
to management.
Some day we’re going to look back on our current cancer treatment
options with horror. Basically, we
poison the body and hope it hits the cancer worse than it hits everything
else. It seems barbaric, but it’s the
best we have. It’s like looking at the ‘tools
of the trade’ for dentists from 150 years ago.
What made sense then seems downright evil to us today. For years we have pumped chemicals through Shannon’s
body to keep the cancer at bay. We
retained some control. We planned the
treatments based on the time of year.
When summer would come we’d try to have something that required fewer
trips to Mayo Clinic and had fewer side effects. We learned to plan our trips to the lake around
when she would feel good. When one
chemo would quite working we always had more in the hopper. Some made her miserable. Some were tolerated well. Our hope was that she’d have enough options
for treatment until they could find something really good to take the cancer
out once and for all.
Last fall is when things started to unravel. She had a great summer including three
straight weeks at the lake. We walked a
couple miles a day. We lived in great
hope. But last fall she had a hard time
getting her breath on a walk. The scan
showed that cancer had spread to the lining of her lung. We never expected this! Unlike breast cancer (and some others), ovarian
cancer tends to stay put. It doesn’t
show up in other parts of the body, yet here it slipped over the
diaphragm. This lead to new treatments
which proved ineffective, which led to more new treatments. Her tumors started reacting in different
ways: a chemo would do a great job on the cancer by the lung but let the tumors
in the abdomen grow. We’d switch to
another drug and the opposite would occur.
Despite all this Shannon and I kept hope. We knew we were one good drug away from
knocking the cancer back. This wasn’t a
completely vain hope. We’d seen it
happen before. We knew it could happen
again. God, we’ve experienced your
healing touch through all of this. We’ve
prayed and prayed for healing.
Yet in the midst of this hope a knife of pain began to stab in
my soul. I started having moments of
doubt. Was my hope simply a denial of
reality? Every time I explained Shannon’s
situation to someone it sounded worse than I expected. What seemed so ‘normal’ to me usually shocked
others.
For the past months it seems that my entire faith life has
centered around Shannon and her cancer.
When I pray she’s on my mind.
When I read scripture I do it through the lens of cancer, pain, and
suffering. When I worship I think of
little else. Last Easter I found myself
in tears on many occasions with all the talk of death and resurrection. It seemed to hit close to home.
God, my life with you has always centered around
resurrection. My earliest memories of
faith are of my mom’s funeral and the words of hope that I heard there. I have always reveled in the book of Revelation
with its portrayal of your victory over evil and death. Frankly, I have missed having the opportunity
to preach at funerals and proclaim to the world that death does not have the
last word.
Yet the word from the doctor last Friday still hurts. After 11 ½ year of this, the time for fighting
cancer has ended. The scan showed that
in the past two months the cancer has grown rapidly. We didn’t expect this! Ovarian cancer has been slow growing and we
expected it to stay that way. I suspected
the day would come when the cancer would become life threatening, but I wasn’t
prepared to hear ‘You have weeks to months to live.’
God, after the initial flood of emotions I’ve become numb,
which is why I’m writing this letter to you.
It just doesn’t seem possible that my time with Shannon is so
short. Sure she sleeps much of the day
but it’s like she’s on chemo. I feel
like we’ve been here before. I’m just waiting
for things to improve and we can get back to life. I have to face it. There is no getting back to life. Shannon is on hospice. The goal is to keep her comfortable. How can this be?
I want to revel in Your hope. I want those words of victory from Revelation
to inspire my soul. Right now they do
nothing for me. Some are ‘praying for a
miracle.’ I know You can do that. I also know You usually don’t. I’m not going to spend these last days
pretending that everything will be fine.
Deep down I know that I must face reality. As a pastor I’ve walked down this road with
many families. It’s time to walk the
road myself. Thankfully I’m not on this road alone. I have family and friends alongside me. My brain knows that You are there too, even
when I’m not feeling it.
God, right now
I’m not feeling it. I have to trust in Your
promises. I guess that’s what faith is
all about.
Be with me!
Your servant,
Pete
