Faith

Ugh…I don’t want to write this post. And I’m sitting here asking myself why I’m dreading it so much…and the only reason I can come up with is it exhausts me (and there’s no pictures). Literally over two years later, it still exhausts me thinking about the spiritual aspect of Mike’s cancer battle. And when I talk about this subject now, I often come across as a secular agnostic, because I’m a skeptic and a realist. I don’t know how to emphasize enough that a terminal disease makes you desperate. That’s the only way I can explain to myself how people fall for bizarre, alternative medical treatments, with little to no scientific evidence. I’m sure I’ll ruffle a few feathers here, because I know and love a lot of “alternative-medicine type” people who subscribe to these alternative methods. And they aren’t even desperate. It seems everyone knows someone who’s cousin’s husband’s mother’s half-brother’s aunt was “cured” of cancer by meditating, eating organic alkaline food, and giving themselves coffee enemas four times a day. I’d like to meet this person, read their medical records, and talk to their doctors. I’m not saying I don’t believe it or I think it’s impossible, but I think there might be another explanation for their “cure.” But despite my skepticism, I’m aware that there is a great deal that we do not understand. Plenty of unexplained “forces” are at work in the universe. Still, I have never read about one legitimate study that showed these alternative methods to be effective for cancer. If you have, please bring it to my attention. I also don’t believe there is any great conspiracy by the drug companies to keep cheap and natural cancer cures a secret so they can make more money, but rather I believe oncologists around the world are working very hard with drug companies to develop and provide cures for cancers. You, of course, are entitled to your own opinion, but there is no doubt in my mind that there are people working passionately and diligently to cure cancer. With melanoma specifically, they are making relatively huge strides. Are the drug companies cashing in? Sure. Do I believe there are natural lifestyle habits that can help prevent cancer? Of course. And I also know the medical community as a whole can subscribe to a certain treatment or practice that has no legitimate basis but it’s just customary or routine so they continue it. A good example is the practice of “bloodletting” for nearly every ailment for about 2000 years until the 20th century when they decided it was doing more harm than good. George Washington died after more than half of his blood volume was removed by bloodletting over the course of a few hours to “treat” his sore throat and difficulty breathing. Another example is calcium supplementation. It’s been commonly thought that we all need calcium supplements to prevent osteoporosis and fractures, but new information is coming out recently that calcium supplements do not prevent fractures in healthy people, and additionally may increase the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths. Calcium supplementation was one of the few things in pharmacy practice I felt comfortable recommending because it was so universally thought we should all be taking calcium. Now I’ve recently found out it was probably wrong. So the lesson here is we can all be collectively duped and nothing is ever for sure until it is. And it never is.

Okay, back to my intended topic: faith. To truly have a glimpse of what we were going through emotionally during Mike’s cancer battle, it’s necessary to discuss the spiritual battle and journey that we embarked upon very quickly after Mike’s diagnosis because it played an absolutely central role the entire time. I had a Christian upbringing. Not a strict one, but an occasional Sunday school attending, children’s Bible story reading, and pray with my mom in bed at night kind of upbringing. In high school, my faith became stronger and I had what I consider a “born again” experience. My spiritual life was an up and down cycle most of my life since then, but I never really questioned where my faith lied. And I never pushed Mike towards anything, but when he asked questions, I was eager to answer them. He was a skeptic and could never see himself as one of “those people” who went to church and talked about God all the time. And I understood his perspective; I had major spiritual apathy a lot too and often resented putting time and effort into it. I always had a hunch it would take a major life event to make Mike a true believer.

After Mike was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, we started having meaningful conversations about God, and although he was still a skeptic, he started keeping his little Bible someone gave him in high school by his side of the bed. About a week after he got out of the hospital and was newly diagnosed, Mike woke me up in the middle of the night after wrestling with a bout of insomnia. He told me he’d been awake reading his Bible and praying for a while and he’d essentially decided to believe and follow Jesus. And he was even excited about it. At the time, this was the culmination of everything I’d hoped for him for years, although not under ideal circumstances. From that point on, Mike was still a skeptic, but a seeking skeptic. 

At about the same time, a Christian family friend took it upon herself to be something of a mentor to us on healing in the Bible. She’d bring us books, CD’s, Bible verses, DVD’s, etc., all of it directed towards God’s promise of healing and deliverance from sickness based on scripture. There are multitudes of verses stating basically that a prayer of true, mountain-moving faith will heal the sick. This wasn’t a new concept to me; I’d been exposed to it in high school but had never had a reason to think much of it. But with Mike’s cancer diagnosis, we essentially chose to make this perspective the very foundation of the next 5 months. It was all we had. We clung to it; or rather I clung to it with every cell in my body, every beat of my heart, and every breath I took. I plastered these promising verses all over the refrigerator, the microwave, the entire bathroom downstairs where Mike and I stayed, on the wall by his side of the bed, and on the dash of the passenger side of our car where he rode. It was my most important mission on this earth to make sure we both believed with all our souls that he was going to recover because God said he would and because we believed. I wanted to have God’s promises become our internal dialogue. It was emotionally exhausting. And the whole point wasn’t that we should have to try to believe or to convince ourselves that Mike would be okay; the point was that if we truly believed, then there wouldn’t be any effort involved at all. But it’s like rewiring your brain to essentially know that when you step on water, it will hold you up and you can walk on it. My scientific brain couldn’t believe that Mike was healed of cancer when he was puking his guts out half a dozen times a day, although I tried. Maybe this all sounds far fetched to some of you, or maybe you think the Bible shouldn’t be taken so literally. Or maybe you think the “healing” that the Bible speaks of doesn’t necessarily mean disease. But with particular verses, when you look up the meaning of the original Greek or Hebrew, they specifically mean healing related to health ailments and disease. And in the Bible, never did Jesus turn away one person who came to Him in faith asking for healing.

Mike’s mom and I both exuded confidence and certainty of a positive outcome for Mike. Anything to build him up, give him hope and confidence, and prevent that terror and panic of impending death. Mike just seemed to go right along with it, not nearly as confident as we were, but I think our confidence eased his anxiety, the way his promise to never give up eased my anxiety. We took turns being each other’s rock and depending on the other for strength and reassurance. He wanted to learn as much as he could and he wanted to essentially be convinced that this was the truth. He needed hard evidence. We would lie in bed for hours watching Netflix documentaries on Biblical history, historical accounts of Jesus, and more. It was actually quite fun and I loved his enthusiasm. But all they served to do for me was make me have a faith crisis. I started asking myself more questions and doing research on the origins of the Bible and history of the Christian church late into the night while Mike was sleeping. The more I questioned, the less sure I became, and the more I panicked. But I didn’t want to tell Mike for fear of causing doubt and confusion for him. I felt incredibly alone. I finally needed to talk to someone about it so I poured it all out to Mike, after asking him not to let it shake his new found faith. He listened to me and suggested I go discuss it with someone who really knows what the hell they’re talking about. So I went and met with the pastor of the church we were going to and discussed what felt to me like a crisis. Obviously no one could “fix” my predicament but that’s what I wanted them to do. I didn’t have a lot of time to waste on figuring out if I even believed in God; I needed to believe with all my heart NOW. The pastor did help ease my mind a bit with a statement of something along the lines of, “There’s nothing anyone could ever say or do that could make me doubt that God exists. I’ve had too many experiences in my life that couldn’t be explained any other way,” then went on to give examples of those divine experiences. I trusted that was true. People I trust being so sure of something was enough for me then at that point when I didn’t have much time. So I let my crisis pass and just delved back in.

I constantly had to have something resembling the word of God in front of me. If I wasn’t reading the Bible, I was watching a DVD, listening to a CD, or reading a Biblical-based book on healing. I read everything the Bible has to say on healing, referencing a concordance to make sure “healing” actually meant physical illness. I couldn’t find one spot in the Bible that says disease and sickness is something we have to succumb to. I was obsessed with not missing a moment of faith-building. When Mike had certain unbearable pains I would often lay hands on him as Jesus or His apostles did in the Bible and pray in faith and command the ailment to go away. I felt ridiculously silly doing it, but somehow, Mike always seemed to get relief when I did it. I think my praying just bored him so much, he would finally fall asleep. But whatever works. We’d often pray in bed each morning before getting up; it was our time to prepare for the day and set our hearts and minds on a positive path. In my last post, I wrote about meeting with the pastor in Colville who runs a faith-based healing ministry. We kept in touch with him throughout Mike’s treatment. He even came to my mom’s house at Waitts Lake and baptized both Mike and I during that summer. When Mike was in the hospital days before he died, I had the pastor come to Spokane and we cleared everyone out of the room that may have lacked faith for Mike’s healing. We prayed, he spoke in tongues, and I continued to have hope.

There’s not much more I need to say about the “Christian” aspect of that time in our lives. There’s so much more I could say, but it’s not necessary. Bits and pieces of it will arise in future posts. The only thing left to mention is the change in my perspective since Mike’s death. When he was sick, I remember being by myself and saying out loud to God or Satan or whoever was listening, “My faith does not depend on Mike being healed. I will follow God regardless of the outcome.” I’m ashamed to say I was wrong, because if Mike had been healed, my faith would have been solidified. Instead, I’ve been in a place of doubt and confusion since his passing. I feel like either one of two scenarios are true. Either A) The Bible is true, everything I believed is still true, Mike and I just couldn’t muster up enough unwavering faith for him to be healed or B) None of it’s true, it’s all a bunch of crap that so many have been duped into believing. I hope scenario A is true. And although I acknowledge that there could be other possible “truths,” I find myself believing only one of these two are likely. I guess I’m narrow minded. Since Mike’s passing, I’ve noticed that I have the the mentality of both a Christian and an atheist at the same time. I feel defensive of Christians and feel in my heart I still love a God who loves me. But at the same time, the things Christians say have become so repetitious to me, it sounds like a broken record and I find myself wanting to roll my eyes. I’m tired of the “If it’s meant to be, it will happen” and the “Everything happens for a reason” cliches. Is it possible that nothing is meant to be? That things happen as a consequence of our actions and we actually have to make decisions and take action? Sometimes, I wonder, with the vast majority of Christians being fed the same stuff over and over, if they’ve ever stopped to really think, “Why do I believe this? Have I ever experienced anything that confirms this? Is there any proof?” And some of them have had experiences that confirm it for them. I could go on and on for hours about the concepts that baffle me. Like the concept that there have been tribes of indigenous people all over the world that never have or never will hear the gospel. They don’t go to heaven because they didn’t know Jesus? You don’t have to answer these questions; they’re rhetorical, and obviously no one can. The thing that holds me to God is all the years of thinking that I was in a relationship with Him have made me truly love Him and feel loved by Him. But that doesn’t make it real. Yes, I have cried my eyes out during worship countless times, in fact it’s nearly impossible for me not to. I get chills and a supernatural feelings of divine presence. BUT, so do the Buddhists, the Hindus, and the Muslims. People have experiences during meditation, sex, child birth, etc., all kinds of people, people who don’t believe in God at all. Isn’t it possible that if we believe in something enough, we can create these experiences? I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. If you’re a Christian, maybe you’re feeling sorry for me. “Poor Jessica, she’s so lost.” And if you’re not a Christian, you may be thinking, “Good for her, she’s finally figuring it out.” We all think we have figured out the truth, and that the other person is lost. But I’ve said it before, being sure of something doesn’t equal truth. Plenty of people who have “known” something to be true, have turned out to be wrong.

So here’s where I’m at: I’m cynical. When you tell me something like, “I just know this is what I’m supposed to do with my life!” or “I feel like this is part of God’s plan for my life,” a little voice in my head says something along the lines of, “You could get hit by a semi and die tomorrow or be diagnosed with terminal cancer next month. So how are you so sure there’s a plan?” Additionally, I’m still exhausted. Those 5-6 months of feeling like Mike’s life depended on my ability to have enough faith and get him to have enough faith exhausted me. After Mike died, I was not necessarily mad at God, but rather confused, like a friend who made me a promise and then just never showed up, I felt like I wanted nothing to do with Him for a while.  In that time of wanting nothing to do with Him, I started questioning things, like had I ever really felt His presence at all? And the answer is, no, not really. I wanted to, and thought maybe I did, but it could easily have been in my head. I want to get back to a place where I believe, but just believing without seeing isn’t possible for me the way it once was. I know the definition of faith involves believing in what we don’t see, but to truly believe, with all my heart, I need more than that. After more than two years, I think I’m ready to start talking to Him again so I just recently started trying to pray again.  I’ll talk to Him, but that doesn’t mean I really believe anyone is listening. But maybe that’s a start, and eventually maybe someone will answer. 

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