Peace that Passes Understanding, Part 3: Something worth worrying about

The wait is almost over.  It’s almost time.  By the time most of you read this, I will most likely be in a drug induced coma, with tubes in more holes than I care to imagine.  This journey has been a surreal and almost unbelievable trip through some of the brightest and darkest places of my heart, mind, and soul. 

My thoughts and emotions are typically on my sleeve.  It isn’t often people have to ask what I’m thinking or feeling.  I like that way, mostly because I am a terrible liar.  I have found my experience with this tumor, has been very much like one of my favorite childhood movies.  The best way to describe it, would be like traveling through The Labyrinth. 

You are confused, you are shocked, you are completely disoriented by the fairy tale trouble you have found yourself in.  Lots strange people (your family and friends) come along to help you, but the truth is that they are all fighting their own battles, as well.  Then every time you think you are getting somewhere in this psychedelic, quirky, and terrifying maze of weird landscapes and strange creatures…David Bowie shows up in his uncomfortably revealing spandex jumpsuit and reminds you, just how lost you are.

Okay that’s unfair.  David Bowie has not visited me during the last month and a half, but for as many times as I have felt grateful and blessed by the unconditional love and kindness of my family and friends, I have also felt as if I was in the Bog of Eternal Stench.  It hasn’t been easy, but I must believe it is all worth it. 

I would never wish any of this on anyone.  I would not suggest any of you go out and get a brain tumor of your very own, no matter how great the salesman says it is, but I would be foolish not to recognize, how this experience has given my life a flavor, that others may never taste.  I hope I am not being overly dramatic, but no matter how close I am, or have been, or will be to a catastrophic brain event; you simply see life differently when faced with situations that shake your life and existence to the core.  You begin to think and re-think things that you have long assumed were galvanized steel.

Don’t worry.  This isn’t the part where I start telling you, how I have rethought my understanding of God.  This isn’t the part where I denounce my faith, and tell you I have been wrong all along.  On the contrary, I have felt closer to Jesus, then any point in my life.  Maybe it’s because I feel like I need him more than I ever have.  Maybe it’s because I finally realize what I have been searching for in my faith.

I have done a lot of soul searching over the last month and a half.  I realized how much I take my wife for granted, and how much I desperately need her.  I realized I make great big mountains out of things that are far less than mole hills.  I realized how easy it has been to pass offenses and bad attitudes down to your children, and how much more awful it sounds when it comes out of their mouths.  I realized that for a man with so many friends I can truly rely on, and so much family I can count on, with co-workers whom I can truly call family (not everyone is so lucky), and a church that I literally must turn away from coming to the hospital on surgery day to avoid overwhelming the staff and possibly the fire marshal’s suggested occupancy…I sure complain a lot.

I never felt as if I had ever truly felt the peace that passes understanding, as described in scripture.  I always felt as if God have left me for dead at times.  When I look at my life in hindsight, with tumor colored glasses, I can see what a huge baby I have. No, God did not give me peace in those times, mostly because I didn’t need it. God gives me peace now, more than ever, because I need it more than ever.  When my pleas and petition for peace from God, comes back empty and blank, then I now know, it’s time to check myself.

Is a one-hundred-dollar vehicle repair bill a bad thing? Not when you compare it to a three-thousand-dollar repair bill.  Is waking up at 3:15am so you can leave by 4:00am, and get to work at 5:00am, every morning, so bad?  Not compared to being laid off and without work for six months to a year.  Is having to treat strep throat, stomach flu, and sinus infections every single week in one of your kids the disease and pestilence described in Revelation in the bible?  Not when you have a child dying of bone cancer living in the hospital.  Is hearing opposing political, religious, and social views on Facebook or Twitter really going to make your head explode?  Not when you have a brain tumor causing blinding and debilitating migraines.

God gives you peace, when you need peace.  I can’t get angry at God, for not giving me peace for something that essentially is a “first-world problem”.  Do I praise him when my car gets me all the way to work, with no issues?  Probably not.  I sure get pissed off and beg for his mercy when it breaks down on the shoulder of the road. 

For the first time, in a long time, I am at peace.  I am at peace, when I should be freaking out.  I am at peace when I should be anxious and nervous.  This does not me I am with out concern, or allow worry to bubble up, but I am at peace.

I sit here in this hotel room, my wife.  I have finished my second to last anti-microbial/viral/bacterial scrub.  I have put the last application of inter-nostril anti-biotic ointment in my nose, and we have finished one of our last pre-op pray/crying sessions.  Now I keep typing, to avoid going to sleep. Not because I am fearful, but because that is what I do.  If I sleep, I might miss something.  There will be plenty of time to sleep when I am dead, which I have full confidence in all mighty God will not happen anytime soon.  I know my body needs rest, but every moment is more precious than the last, because it’s the one moment you can do anything about.

I want to live.  I want to love.  I want to fight.  I want to eat. I want to cry.  I want to laugh.  I want to create.  I want to win.  I want to lose.  I want to share the gospel, and be Jesus to every human I meet…every one.  I am ready to do that.  Life must be different from now on, otherwise this was all in vain, and I am just a stupid sack of meat, that got the short end of the stick.  I don’t believe that at all, and neither does the one created me, fearfully and wonderfully.

See You Sooooon.

Peace that Passes Understanding, Part 2: The Waiting is the Hardest Part.

         It has been about a month since my wife and I received the news, about my brain tumor.  It has been two weeks since I shared the news with everyone.  Today my wife and I travel to St. Louis for a couple of Doctor’s appointments, for lab work, and some more imaging, that is more specific to the surgery.  We are less than two weeks out from the surgery day, and it can not come soon enough.  The waiting has the hardest part.

For the most part, my migraines have been pretty tame, since the diagnosis.  The meds have done a pretty good job at curbing most of the symptoms, but yesterday I had to eliminate what has been my lifeline, since the beginning of this battle.  Excedrine Migrane is the sweet nectar, that blooms forth a pain free day.  In the coming weeks I will have to remove the other painkillers that have become a food group for me, out of my diet.  With the help of my wife, who is a registered nurse, and nursing professor, we have kept the painkillers in a healthy quantity and rhythm, but I still am a bit uneasy of the long term damage the constant flood of these chemicals through my liver, kidneys, stomach, may have.  I have become somewhat dependent on it, when the headaches comes, and I am ready to depend on something stronger, and more complete.

Today is full of clinic visits, and paperwork.  The amount of trees the medical community murders is astounding.  I understand the need to document everything, and I appreciate how the checks and balances of information keep me, the patient, safe…But Dear Lord, that is a lot of paperwork.

Today they drew blood, to check for infections or viruses, that we might need to take care of before the surgery.  I also had the joy of urinating in a small clear cup, and handing this very full, very warm, cup of goodness to a lady nurse, as if to say, “Look what I made!”  This exchange is never comfortable, for a guy who was taught by his parents from a very young age that you should never pee in a cup and show it to girl.

The nurse practitioner who saw me prior to my fluid theft, helped to remind me of the great care I will receive once I am back at home, recovering from surgery.  The young nurse practitioner recognized my wife as soon as she walked into the room.  She was searching for Kim’s name, but eventually she found it, and remembered my wife as her practicum instructor and nursing professor.  Our Nurse Practitioner was really excited to see Kim again, and told her she was one of her favorite instructors.  They talked for a bit, reliving their time at Central Methodist University, where my wife teaches.  They talked for a bit, across me, above me, and around me.  Eventually I had to interject and remind them I was in the room.  This is a good problem to have, when you have a wife as impressive as mine.  Though I joke about it, I never get tired of being called, “Kim’s Husband” or “Payton and Ben’s Dad” or “Joyce’s Guardian”; these titles hold much more pride and distinction for me than “Reverend”, “Pastor”, “Officer”, or any of the other prefixes that may describe me.

It is a joy for me to watch someone not just remember, but be excited about their time with Kim, as her student.  I will never get tired of observing the legacy she is building, in the Mid-Missouri nursing community.  It is kind of funny, however, that we travel two and a half hours from our home to visit doctors about my upcoming brain surgery, and Kim is still the star of the show.

Following the great fluid exchange, I headed two floors up for an MRI.  The last MRI I had yielded the discovery of the tumor, so I have a love/hate relationship with the MRI process.  I am very grateful that in 2017, doctors can take a picture of my brain without removing my skull.  I am glad that this is possible.  On the other hand, I absolutely hate small confined spaces.  Though I am a fire fighter and have been in some scary situations where I had to fit into a tight spot, I always felt like I had the tools to get out.  For some reason it is just not the same.  The MRI, is like being in a coffin.  They let you listen to music to calm your nerves and put you at ease, while they spin a giant magnet around you at 150mph, while injecting your body with radioactive material, so your insides light up like a Glow-Worm.  They typically allow you to pick your own music, but inevitably the first song never does much good, in relaxing you.

My eighty year old grandmother had an MRI following a fall.  They asked her what type of music she wanted.  She advised them she would prefer Gospel or Country.  She said the very first song, once she was inside the machine, was “Amazing Grace”.  She said this song in tandem with the fact that she already felt she was in a coffin, did not give her much R & R while she was inside.  Likewise, when I went in for the MRI that discovered my tumor; I had requested some nineties alternative rock.  I always find comfort in the music of my youth; Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers; what could go wrong? The very first song that played was The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Soul to Squeeze”.  If you remember, this song starts out with Anthony Kiedis singing, “I got a bad disease…”.  Well Anthony, you were correct.

This time the nineties rock became, late nineties rock/rap, really fast.  Milos, the Radiology Tech who was caring for me, even broke into the headphones to ask if I had had enough Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit, yet.  The music was not the main source of my anxiety, this time.  

For some reason, I could not stop opening my eyes.  I could not stop noticing how close my face was to the actual machine, and how if I tried to raise up, the cage around my head would restrict me from doing so.  Then for no reason, and at the worst possible time, it happened.  The scene ran through my head.  In my opinion, it is the scariest scene in the history of film making.  For some reason, while sitting in the plastic and metal coffin, all I could think about, was coffin scene from Kill Bill Vol. 2, where Uma Thurman’s character (Beatrix aka The Bride), is placed in a coffin, and buried six feet deep.  She wakes up in the coffin, and realizes her situation, and resorts to her Kung Fu training to punch her way through the coffin lid and escape.  I have had no formal Kung Fu training, for such a situation.  I would have to scratch and claw and chew my way out of my coffin.  I know my heart rate was up.  I know my breathing quick.  I need to calm the hell down.  I needed some peace.

I took the biggest deepest breath I could muster, and I exhaled…hard.  I prayed.  I prayed for peace.  I prayed for calmness.  I prayed to peace that would quench and overcome any thoughts or worries that were not from God.  The scene in my head changed.  The next thing I thought about was home.  My back yard.  My screened-in porch.  I thought about how freeing it is to be there; with my kids playing in they yard, my wife, unable to sit and relax for long periods of times, clipping dead grey hydrangea heads off of their long stems, so the new green heads could grow, and then turn into big white snowballs by the beginning of Summer.

I thought about the blessings God had given me.  My wife, my boys, one of my best friends in the world, Joyce.  Joyce, Who has became so grafted into our family, though being the most unlikely of candidates to do so.  I thought of my mom and dad, who have been the source of strength and encouragement, and words of Godly wisdom, they were created to be. I thought of our church family, who I am literally having to ask NOT to come to the surgery waiting room on the day of the operation, to keep from overwhelming the staff and my wife’s sense to constantly make sure everyone is entertained and fed.  I thought of my little brothers, both of whom live out of state.  One in Kentucky and one in Alaska, and both said the same thing after I told them the news on the phone, “When do you need me there?”  I thought of the blessings that continue to shower over me.  Even me.  Even a wretch, like me.

People continue to ask me, how it is I can be so calm, and fearless in the face of this diagnosis, and the prospect of this surgery.  I have had a few people tell me they wish they could be as “brave” as me.  The truth is.  I am terrified.  I am scared.  I am fearful.  I am anxious.  I honestly have never been more worried or nervous about anything in my life.  That is the truth.  However, there are other truths that eclipse all of these things;  God is sovereign.  God is faithful.  God is Good, and God is enough.  These truths give me confidence, and peace.  Because I believe these things to be true, it makes my job in all of this a lot easier.  Please understand.  There is peace in knowing Jesus.

We are now, eleven days away from my procedure.  My support system continues to prove itself, with well wishes, encouragement and prayers. Friends, family, church family, and literally hundreds on Facebook and Twitter.  Every word, you share, gives me strength to keep fighting and move forward.  Keep them coming!

-Ao