Messages From An Illness

My diagnosis of cancer shook me to the core. How could this have happened? My annual physical examination only a few months earlier had shown that I was in good health. In fact, I had been remarkably healthy all my life. I couldn’t believe my diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. I couldn’t understand what had happened to change my body so quickly.

In their 2011 report, the American Cancer Society (ACS) predicted that more than 1,500 people would die of cancer per day during that year. According to the ACS, cancer is the second most common cause of death in the United States, exceeded only by heart disease. Cancer accounts for nearly one of every four deaths in this wealthy, privileged country we live in. It is little wonder that a diagnosis of cancer brings anxiety to the person who has been diagnosed with cancer, and to their loved ones. Everyone knows someone who has, or has had, cancer. Everyone knows someone who has survived cancer and others who have not survived it.

Since I received the diagnosis of cancer I have learned from the many people I know who are, or have been, cancer patients that my initial responses were not uncommon. Shock and disbelief are common first responses of all people who are suddenly faced with a life-threatening illness. After the initial shock, however, the responses people have are many and varied. There is no template for dealing with the onset of such a disease.

Although there are books and articles that may offer help in dealing with our disease, there are no guaranteed recipes, rules, or maps. Each cancer is unique and deeply personal. No one has ever been inside someone else’s cancer. No one has been inside my cancer, except me. There can be no one set of rules or guidelines to direct us through the new and untried experience of having a toxic disease. There is no Global Positioning System (GPS) to keep us from getting confused and lost on this journey.

For many years I have practiced meditation and contemplative prayer. When I received the diagnosis of cancer I immediately knew it was far more than a medical diagnosis. I realized it was a barometer of my mental, emotional, and spiritual life. Something besides my physical health was out of order and needed to be made right. I believed this was God’s way of getting my attention so that God could teach me something I had not learned--something I had neither seen nor heard in spite of many opportunities to do so.

As soon as I opened myself to the larger purpose of my illness, I began to receive messages in my prayer times. Many passages in the Judeo-Christian scriptures spoke to me in ways that were piercingly relevant to my new condition. Almost daily the thoughts, revelations, and guidance came to me. Since I’m not a theologian, my responses to the scriptures aren’t theological interpretations. Rather, I think they are more akin to those of the people for whom the authors of the Bible were writing--ordinary people with ordinary lives and universal human needs. I kept all of my revelations in a journal. That journal gradually expanded and unfolded, experience by experience, until it became the basis for this book.

My belief in the power of prayer has been reinforced over and over throughout my life. It has helped me in moving through personal struggles and making difficult decisions. When I became the receiver of intercessory prayers, my concept of prayer expanded. Prayer took on new meaning as I felt the intentionality of God’s caring people focused specifically on my healing. As I experienced prayer in a different way I began to look into studies made on the effectiveness of prayer. I have shared the findings from my study of prayer, religion, and spirituality in general and, specifically, as they relate to cancer.

My training and experience in the use of expressive arts therapies for bringing healing and transformation to others helped me enormously in the difficult days of chemotherapy and other aspects of the illness. With a degree in church music and a strong calling to use music in a more direct healing capacity, I had accomplished the long process of a career change some years earlier. After earning a graduate degree in psychology I became a licensed professional counselor. I trained in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (BMGIM), a remarkable depth psychotherapy that uses carefully selected music as the vehicle for healing and change. In addition I became a registered expressive arts therapist through the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association.

All of the modes of restoration that I had studied and practiced professionally--music, imagery, and other expressive arts--were natural additions to my cancer treatment. Because I had witnessed them as being profoundly helpful to the clients in my private practice, I realized how beneficial they would be to me and other people who have cancer. I describe my use of these healing arts in my recovery and speculate on their role in my unpredictably early remission. I have attempted to describe them clearly enough so that other cancer patients can use them in their own healing.

My deep faith in God and the communion with my church family at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Daphne, Alabama also were essential in sustaining me and keeping me from getting lost. The support of my immediate family and my rather large, extended family provided an unwavering anchor that would not let me weaken in my commitment to being a fully active participant in my healing process. The loving concerns of family and friends brought to me a feeling of responsibility to do my part in getting well.

I began writing this book when I was in partial remission and continuing treatment.in the form of a maintenance drug. I may have to live with this drug for a long time, but I am grateful for the spiritual growth this cancer has provided me. There have been many teaching moments I might not have experienced but for this illness. I trust in God’s mysterious ways of bringing things to fruition.

I have not attempted to give cancer patients and caregivers a tutorial on how to navigate through their cancer. My hope is that my experiences will offer perspectives that will encourage them to take hold of their healing journey, call on God for guidance, and find the teaching in their own illness. As long as we have our dreadful disease, why not grab hold of whatever good we can get from it?

As Rabbi Harold Kushner explained, we can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to painful events in our lives. He asks, “How can we turn all the painful experiences of our lives into birth pangs or into growing pains?” By being aware and committed to finding meaning in pain and illness, we can find what the illness does to us. What does it reveal about our relationship to God and God’s people? What revelations about ourselves will unfold? Who will we be because of the illness? How will it change us?

In the field of counseling I learned that every encounter has the potential for changing us in some way, though the change may be small, subtle, and slow to be revealed. An encounter such as a conversation with a friend or stranger, or with an event, incident, tragedy or illness--all can change our attitudes, understanding, and responses to life. This encounter with cancer has the potential for changing who I am and who I will be in the remaining years of my life. My hope is that I will be a better person, no matter the outcome of the treatments.

“Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” (2 Samuel 7:18)

I dare to hope that, in the words of 16th century St. Teresa of Avila, “God will take this insignificant contribution of ours (mine) and unite it with his greatness,” rendering it with such value that “his efforts and ours become one.