Hi Friends (and HEWHOMUSTNOTBENAMED)
Happy Sunday! Or at least I hope it is.
Dennis had asked me to write you a quick note each week to let you know how Ali and I and the boys are doing. It’s only the second week and I’m already worried you’re going to get tired of hearing from me, both here and through my blog. But, then again, someone’s got to comment on the Director’s Cut Edition of the Gospel that Dennis chose for you for this weekend! I mean, what’s with Jesus complaining “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?”
Could Jesus sound any more like an irritable, compassionless jerk wad here?
Maybe it’s because of my recent diagnosis and the fellow-sufferers and their families I’ve encountered this past week in the hospital but lately my sympathies lie with the father in Luke’s story not, if I can get away with saying it, Jesus.
Parents and children and seemingly incurable illness is a problem with which I can empathize.
I’ll leave it to Dennis and Hedy to account for Jesus’ mood swings in the passage. I’ll only comment that, just before this text, Jesus comes down from the Mt. of Transfiguration where he’s met full-on with the breadth and depth of the world and its need. That breadth and depth of the world – that’s something of which I can speak.
It’s cliché for people to comment that when something like cancer hits you, your world rapidly shrinks around you. To just you and your immediate circle and putting the next foot in front of the other. Since it’s a cliché, I suppose it must be true for someone out there (or for a great many people possibly) but it certainly hasn’t proved anything close to the case for me.
As counter-intuitive as it might sound, my cancer has enlarged my world to a degree I could never deserve.
It’s only been two shorts weeks since I learned, post-op, that I have Mantle Cell and in that time I’ve been inundated by cards and texts and emails and gifts and even daily, pick-me-up kitten photos by virtually all of you. You’ve burned me bootleg albums and fed my family and sent me a Barnes and Noble card from Africa and called the charge nurse at 11 PM to see how I was doing. I’ve received well-wishes from churches in Cambodia and prayers and videos from our partners in Guatemala.
I’ve heard ‘from poets in Michigan and a monk in France that they’re praying for me. And so many old friends and teachers whose friendships I’d neglected have reached out with a compassion I could never earn. Just think, this time of year is normally my annual season to get chewed out for some immature misdeed by our bishop, but just the other night he was texting a different sort of concern to me.
At a time when my world could well shrink and isolate me, quite the opposite has happened and I’m not only grateful I’m humbled by what better Christians you are than me.
Just a heads-up:
This Friday I finished my first A cycle of chemo and got to come home. As of today (Saturday), I feel great actually though the doctor assures me I’ll feel like death-warmed-over by Sunday evening. I’ll begin my first B cycle of treatment in about 8-9 days. My white counts get a little lower each day, which means I less and less energy…which means it’s on you to give Dennis a hard time and keep his ego in check.
Blessings,
Jason
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