This from a reader:
Praise God for his faithfulness and loving kindness - to both of us. Though you have a tumor in your brain that is discernible by doctors we all have tumors. I have mine, and it eats at me too. The one thing I envy of you, is that your tumor is "socially acceptable." You can send emails talking about your treatment and get encouragement. But my tumor is not kosher to talk about - hardly even in church. My battle, though, like yours, "is between faith and fear, between imagination and promise, between hope and discouragement, between excitement and dread." Can God heal me? Will he? Does he want to? Why doesn't he? I dare to have faith to. I dare to have hope. But I doubt a lot too.
I think a true church is one where any problem, any sin, any tumor is open for discussion because absent that it really isn't a church but a collection of religious people singing songs.
"my tumor"
Saturday March 3, 2007
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Hearing about both your tumors touched me. I wondered if either of you have read Bill Banks' book "Alive Again" (c1977, Impact Christian Books, 332 Leffingwell Ave., Kirkwood, MO 63122, (314)-822-3309). I got "Alive Again" about a year ago and have recently been re-reading it. Bill was an insurance salesman, a Presbyterian, with a wife and two small boys, who was diagnosed with cancer. It became advanced enough that at one point was given no more than 48 hours to live (and that only if they could get him on a kidney dialysis machine immediately.) But within a year he was completely cancer-free. Woven through it, he asks many of the same questions you just asked today - and gives his answers. He's very honest about all his up, downs, doubts, fears, belief, unbelief, and his better times. Since he's alive and well over 35 years later, it's an encouraging book. If you haven't read it, you might contact him for a copy. I don't recall the cost, but not much; it's a paperback. May God walk with you both "and supply all you need from his riches in glory." (Philippians 4: 19.) Pete Ahlstrom, Rock Springs, Wyoming
When my four year old began treatment for her tumor many years ago - she insisted on wearing her "Ghost Busters uniform and backpack to the clinic. Her little friend Keven would occasionally come with her l- both in their coveralls with Ghostbuster patches, their special weapons and cool "blues brothers" sunglasses. Oh, yeah, and Margaret always wore he lucky hightop converse tennis shoes - the bright pink ones. You could see her imagination working as they injected the poison that is chemo. She would vanquish those ghostly cells and put em in the "trapper". When she relapsed, her mind turned from Ghostbusters - to Henry V and the Battle of Gettysburg (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain at "little Round Top). She could stand in the drive way and quote Henry on winning an impossible battle and she watched the video's of Ken Burns "Civil War" and of "Gettysburg" on a daily basis. She was the only third grade to be able to discuss the battles of the civil war, the folly that was Gettyburg and yet still didn't know her multiplication tables. Once again, you could see the metaphors she had chosen to fight and destroy her tumor. We laught about it these 15 years later, but those stories were deadly serious in her imaginary world. She understood prayer and wondered "why God did this to me". It took a long time for her to come to the conclusion that God was with her and all of us in the scary journey, but that the tumor was an accident of nature. It remains hard.
David, I do hope and pray that you live a very long and very healthy life. Hopefully you can become an influential religious leader. /// Then, as you see that in Liberal and Progressive "Churches," there is no debate, or discussion, or any dissent allowed, you can reach out and save the lost souls entering into eternity via a perverse and evil road.
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