JANUARY 2022
Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and mind.
Psalm 26:2
someone around us is trying our patience, or we congratulate ourselves for resisting the temptation of another piece of cake. Te idea of being tested is largely abstract until something truly challenging happens in our lives. If we consider the possibility that we may someday experience a devastating loss, a terminal diagnosis, or some other life-changing event, we retreat quickly, telling ourselves we could never handle something like that. But none of us knows how we will react until it happens.
W
Each January my thoughts turn to Epiphany and to the year God tested and transformed me in ways I could never have anticipated. On January 5, 2014, I experienced neck pain severe enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. I had spent hours watching prescreening videos for the upcoming auditions at Boston University, where I serve on the music faculty. Neck pain from computer overuse was not new to me, so I assumed that the doctors would give me some painkillers and send me on my way. I also presented with stomach issues and a fever, so the ER doctors suspected I might have meningitis. After doing a spinal tap (which was negative), they did a CT-scan which indicated that I had suffered a stroke. I was fully functional, however, so they decided to admit me to Neurology. During my second full night in the hospital (the evening of Epiphany), they did a brain MRI.
Te next morning I awoke to a room full of doctors, the attending physician in neurology and all of the residents he was teaching. “We found an abnormality on your brain MRI,” he said. “Do you have family who can be here today?” Later the same day they did a full body scan to make sure I did not have cancer elsewhere in my body that might have spread to my brain, and found that I had a perforated colon. Te neurosurgeon told me this was a more emergent problem (worse than a brain tumor?) so they treated it first with industrial-
e often pray this verse, and other similar verses, without thinking too deeply about what we are asking. We joke about how
strength antibiotics. Te following week I returned to the hospital to have a craniotomy (brain surgery) to remove as much of the tumor as they could.
My spiritual test turned out to be twofold. First, I endured three weeks of knowing I had a brain tumor but having no information about how serious it was. While the doctors kept saying that my neurological tests were “very encouraging,” they couldn’t formulate a diagnosis until the biopsy results came back. During this liminal time I began to pray for the tumor to be found benign, but over time the Holy Spirit led me to pray for the strength to accept whatever came. I felt a serenity that surprised me when this happened. I was unable to conceive of anything more complex than an all-or-nothing scenario: either the tumor would be terminal brain cancer, or I would walk away unscathed. Neither happened.
In the end the diagnosis was oligodendroglioma, level II. Tere are many different kinds of brain tumors, and this is not one of the most aggressive. But it is not exactly benign either. Te tumor has fingers in my brain that they couldn’t safely remove, so they opted to do pill chemotherapy in order to keep the tumor from growing back. At the end of the seventh cycle my body stopped tolerating the chemo pills, and in December 2014 my doctor told me we could stop treatment, and I should “forget about this”.
Te second part of the spiritual test was more difficult by far. After treatment ended, I had to find a way to live my life without constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Te average survival rate for an oligodendroglioma, level II, is eleven years, but there is no way to predict what will happen in my particular case. My doctor has been quick to say that he expects me to do “better than average,” but he always qualifies that by telling me that “anything can happen.” I had to learn how to accept my new reality. Peter’s words jumped off the page: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12).
We all know that we cannot predict what will happen on any given day. None of us are promised even one more day of life. And yet we cannot spend our lives dwelling on the worst-case scenarios. I struggled to understand why I was spared a more dire prognosis
9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34
