This is a testimony from Tony Snow, President Bush's Press Secretary, and
his fight with cancer. Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced
that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemotherapy,
Snow joined the Bush Administration in April 2006 as press secretary.
Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007, Snow, 51, a husband and father of three,
announced the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen,
leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back
to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but has resigned
since, "for economic reasons", and to pursue "other interests".
"Blessings arrive in unexpected packages, - in my
case, cancer. Those of us with potentially fatal diseases - and there are
millions in America today - find ourselves in the odd position of coping
with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although it would be
the height of presumption to declare with confidence "What It All Means",
Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time
trying to answer the "why" questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why
can't someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the
questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than
to solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care.
It is what it is, a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring
into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our
maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are
imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this, - or because of it, - God offers the
possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our
lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now
and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere
thought of dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system... A
dizzy, unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You
think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the
impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into
death, but into life, - and that the journey continues after we have
finished our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith
is nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many non believing
hearts - an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be taken
away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being
able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live fully, richly, and
exuberantly - no matter how their days may be numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want
lives of simple, predictable ease,- smooth, even trails as far as the eye
can see, - but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and
turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance; and
comprehension - and yet don't. By His love and grace, we persevere. The
challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably
strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not
experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'. Picture yourself in a hospital
bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your
feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. "It's cancer," the healer
announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to
serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything
simpler." But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your
quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to
the issues that matter, - and has dragged into insignificance the banal
concerns that occupy our "normal time".
There's another kind of response, although usually
short-lived an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying
moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed
before us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy,
passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn
of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness,
danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul,
traipsing through the known world and contemplating trips to what must
have seemed the antipodes ( Spain ), shaking the dust from his sandals,
worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, -
for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies
and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and
the most we ever could do. Finally, we can let love change everything.
When Jesus was faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for
himself, but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city.
>From the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and
weakness, and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us, that we
acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others.
Sickness gets us part way there. It reminds us of our limitations and
dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister
friend of mine observes that people suffering grave afflictions often
acquire the faith of two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two
peoples' worries and fears.
'Learning How to Live'. Most of us have watched friends
as they drifted toward God's arms, not with resignation, but with peace
and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to
live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of
love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a
wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928
edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his
family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a
humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain
because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his
equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm
going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he
died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even
though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity, -
filled with life and love we cannot comprehend, - and that one can in the
throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will
help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we
believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to
serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our
limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so
that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way.
Think of the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those
of us who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and
intercessions know it. It is hard to describe, but there are times when
suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge
of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen, when talking to
the Author of all creation, to lift us up, - to speak of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the
ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The
mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness
more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness
will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know
much, but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no
matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us
who believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable
place, in the hollow of God's hand."
T. Snow
