Chapter Nine: My Spiritual Side of Cancer

Chapter Nine: My Spiritual Side of Cancer

            My friend Carolyn's husband, Brent, got MS when he was twenty-seven. Brent died last year at fifty-four. (You met her in chapter two.) You’ll recall that when she heard about my cancer she called and asked if I'd like her to come do for me for free what she does at the hospital. I told her I would like. Carolyn came and talked to me for two hours about attitude, positive thinking, planning for the future, and imaging (seeing things in my mind I wanted to happen in the future.) She got to a point where she asked me to visualize in my mind how I looked and felt when I was healthy. Then she told me to visualize myself as I was at that moment. She told me to hold those two images in my mind. I saw where she was going and stopped her. I told her that as much as I hated the idea of having cancer, it already had been a college education. Then she interrupted me with a knowing smile and told me this story.

            A few years before Brent died Carolyn thought he could improve his health if he wanted to. She had patients at the hospital who accepted her positive attitude and imaging training and seemed to improve from the techniques she taught. She asked Brent if he would be willing to have her do for him what she does professionally. She went though her presentation. He seemed interested. She got to the part where he was to image how he looked and felt as a healthy person. Then she had him picture himself as he was at that moment. She asked him if he had the healthy picture and the unhealthy picture in his mind. Brent put up his hand and stopped her saying, "Carolyn, I see where you are going with this, but I can't superimpose the healthy Brent over the unhealthy Brent. You see, the sick man is so much the better man."

            Even though I was only a month into the cancer experience, I could see that I was already a better person in at least three ways. I was more concerned with things that really matter such as God and family; I felt drawn to the handicapped, the maimed, the lonely, the sick as never before, and I sensed my ability to love dramatically increase. Yes, I want to be well and cancer-free; yes, I want to live forty or so more years, but I don't want to give back the lessons learned.

            Barbara (not her real name) suffered with a husband who was a drug addict and dealer. He had even tried to kill her. The day the divorce was final, and he was on his way to prison, my friend told her father how grateful she was for the school she just graduated from. In a letter to me, she explained her feelings this way. "I believe I am a better human being because of the challenges I've encountered in my life thus far. I once told my father that if someone offered me the chance to remove all of the pain I have experienced in my life, but that in return I would have to give back all the growth and knowledge I have gained because of that pain, I would, without a moment's hesitation, turn down the offer and stay exactly where I am. If I were to give up the painful experiences or the tough stuff, I would be giving up part of me."

            That's how I feel. I'll share some experiences that helped me then and continue to help me now say, "Carolyn, I see where you are going with this, but even if it were possible, I don't want the never-had-cancer Marilynne back without the lessons learned. Cancer has made me a better person." These cancer experiences are some of the most spiritual moments of my life.

A Wig with a Name

In Chapter Five, I told part of my experience in purchasing a wig. Here is the rest of the story. You recall that my husband and I were choosing between two wigs. We both felt uncomfortable in this foreign experience. He gave his opinion. His choice told me he wanted me to look as much like myself as possible. I took his lead and chose the wig most like my real hair. Little did I anticipate that one of the most helpful and significant moments of my whole cancer experience was just about to happen. I walked to the cash register to pay for the wig. The owner who had helped me wrote out a receipt. I saw her write a word on the receipt that I couldn't read because I didn't have my glasses with me. "What did you write?" I asked. "I wrote the name of the wig," she responded. "Wigs have names?" I asked. "Yes. Most have women's names." "What's my wig's name?" I asked. "Faith," she answered.

            So out of those twenty or so wigs I had tried on, I chose Faith or Faith chose me. "It's a message from heaven," I thought, "I will walk in Faith; I will talk in Faith; I will pray in Faith; I will think and do and be and, God willing, get well in Faith."

There is an Afterlife

I was a visiting teacher for many years to a woman (I’ll call her Karen) who never came to church, not once. But she often had a treat or little gift for my companion and me when we visited. She came to see me often during the first several months. Her own situation was difficult. Her husband was an alcoholic and dying of liver disease. He died two weeks before I found the lump. One afternoon the doorbell rang and soon Karen cam to at my bedside. I happened to be on the telephone. She signaled to me that she wasn't in a hurry and to finish my phone call. She sat down on the bed beside my bare feet and started to massage them. To me this was a gesture of love. I was so sick no one could hug me and a physical touch meant much. I concluded my telephone conversation and we began to visit. Karen is an energetic, vibrant schoolteacher who has the gift of storytelling. She made me laugh as she told her latest round of third grade stories. Then I alluded to her husband's death and asked how she was coping. She stopped rubbing my feet, stood up, and with great conviction said, "Well, that's really why I stopped by today. I have something to tell you." She paused and with intensity said, "I want to tell you that if this thing with you doesn't work out like we all hope it will, I want you to know that I know there is an afterlife." She kept the details in her heart, but her conviction was powerful.

Asking and Receiving

            About three days after my diagnosis, I began having difficulty sleeping. I would fall asleep within minutes of getting into bed, but then I'd wake up in less than two hours and be awake for the rest of the night. I had less than three hours of sleep in two days. As nighttime neared, I felt panicked. I couldn't spend another sleepless night. I was totally, absolutely fatigued. I couldn't concentrate. Every muscle ached. My eyes were so tired that I felt I only could see out of one eye at a time. I begged in my prayers that night, "Please help me relax and sleep through the night." But the pattern of the two previous nights repeated itself.             

As the fourth day wore on, fear consumed me, as another night was just a few hours away. I didn't think I could survive another night without sleep. About one o'clock that afternoon my oldest daughter called from California and asked if there was something she could do for me. She even offered to get on a plane to come help me. I thanked her and told her just to pray for me. She said she was doing that already. Then feeling there was something more to my request, she asked, "Is there something specific you need that I could pray for?"

            I couldn't even get the first words out of my mouth before tears choked my voice. I cried as I told her that in the last three nights I'd had cumulatively less than six hours of sleep. She said that was something specific she could pray for, thanked me for giving her something she could do to help, and said goodbye. I didn't know until later that as soon as I hung up the phone, she called her brothers and sisters, my sisters, my in-laws, and my parents, asking them to pray that I would be able to sleep.

            That night I got into bed at 10:00. I fell asleep easily. But at 11:00 I was awakened by one of the children coming home. Horror of another sleepless night filled my mind. I couldn't emotionally endure.  What was I to do? The next thing I was conscious of was that I had been asleep. How long? I wondered. How long had I been asleep?  I got up the courage to look at the clock. It was 5:20! I was overjoyed, absolutely overjoyed. I'd had six hours of uninterrupted sleep! I immediately began to say a prayer of thanks when the words came into my mind, "The power of prayer."

How Prayer Works

            Not long after my diagnosis I read an article in Guidepost magazine titled, "How Prayer Works." The story told of a woman in her mid-forties who found a lump in her breast. She and her husband prayed earnestly that the tumor would be benign. She notified her pastor and the congregation prayed that she wouldn't have cancer. The tumor was benign. They expressed great joy that their prayers were answered.

            As I read the story I thought that some readers, like me, who had a similar situation in their own lives but with not such a happy ending might feel that they had not prayed hard enough or long enough. They might ask why the blessing of a benign tumor didn't come to them. They might feel they were not righteous enough or God wasn't listening or worse, doesn't exist.

            I write a monthly newsletter for our neighborhood and was looking for a subject for the November editorial. I found my subject in that Guidepost story. In the first paragraph I explained about the Guidepost story and then continued.

            "When I finished the story I thought some readers who had the same thing happen to them only with a malignant pathologist's report might feel they had not prayed hard enough or long enough. They might question why the blessing of a benign tumor didn't come to them.

            "In this month of Thanksgiving I want to say that I do not feel any less blessed or any less loved or that my prayers were any less answered than the woman who wrote to Guidepost. In the days of surgery and chemotherapy I have felt greatly loved by family, friends, and neighbors who prayed for me. I felt at times that there was only one set of footprints in the sands of my life because He was carrying me. I don't blame God or think he is trying to teach me something or that He gave me cancer because I did something bad.  God, according to Rabbi Kushner who wrote Why Bad things Happen to Good People is as outraged as we are when one of His children is wronged, wounded, terminally ill, handicapped, or killed. The reason ‘bad things happen to good people’ is because bad things happen to everyone. It's just part of being alive. God can prevent and cure any of life's unpleasant situations and tragedies, but if prayer fixed everything, if bad things only happened to bad people, how shallow our lives would be.

            "When we make our mental lists this Thanksgiving of all the things we are thankful for, after the blessings of living in a free country, after the blessings of family, friends, employment, education, health, homes, cars, food, clothing, travel, and opportunity, leave a little space to be thankful for the great teachers of despair and disillusionment that come in times of sadness, sickness, injury, heartache, and death. For in the lessons in life we have but wouldn't choose, we are yet blessed."

To me there is another incorrect implication in the Guidepost story. If the pathologist's report had said she had cancer, would that mean that her prayers were not answered? Do only affirmative answers mean God has heard and responded? To me, that's illogical. If a child asks her mother for permission to go to a movie, mother can say either yes or no to answer the child. A "no" doesn't mean the mother didn't hear and answer. The child was heard. I believe God answers all sincere prayers. His answers may not only be yes or no. He may answer not now but in my own due time, or I know this is difficult but it is my will or much good will come from this heartache or pain or sadness or seeming injustice, or be patient and in faith watch the blessings unfold.

When Your Neighbor Prays

            My neighbor Marti is active in her religion. We have our differences in doctrine, but that doesn't stop us from being good friends and neighbors. One day I went to my oncologist to have blood tests. I wasn't scheduled to see the doctor. While I was in the waiting room, Dr. Prystas came over to me and asked if I had a minute. She took me into an empty examination room and said, "Do you have a neighbor named Marti?" "Yes, of course, I do," I said. "She's my next door neighbor." Dr. Prystas continued. "Marti and I go to the same church. Once a month we have a prayer meeting where we put names on a list and then pray for those people. Sunday, as we were about to have prayer in our prayer meeting, the pastor asked if there were any more names for the prayer list. Marti raised her hand and said, "Yes, will you add the name of my neighbor, Marilynne Linford."

            I felt a flood of warmth. My first affectionate thoughts were of Marti who volunteered my name in her church. How very sweet. Then I saw in my mind Marti and her prayer meeting praying. I saw in that group my doctor with her eyes closed praying for me too. How blessed I am to have a doctor who is not only religious, but on this occasion prayed for me and told me about it. 

            Prayer works. It may work as a cure or a lifesaver. It may be that you are given peace to reduce fear and uncertainty. It may be that God is helping you do a puzzle a piece at a time. It may be like going as far as a flashlight illuminates the path before you—encouraging you to go the edge of the light and perhaps a step or two beyond. Prayer is the privilege of asking for blessings that God is willing to grant but predicated on our asking. Prayer is a source of power that supplies the energy to cope, to pull through, to bounce back, to keeping going. That's how prayer really works.

The Messenger and the Message

            Our ward shares the responsibility with the other wards in two stakes for taking Relief Society and sacrament meetings weekly to a rest home that is within our ward boundaries. After I had grown back enough hair to go without my wig, I was asked to give the talk at one of these Relief Society meetings. In my talk I told about knowing how it was to be sick and have others help because of my cancer. I told about keeping a positive attitude and about trusting in Heavenly Father to help in whatever way was needed. I told them that Heavenly Father and Jesus love them. After the meeting a women walked up to me with her walker and asked, "Do you think your cancer will come back?" I thought that was a strange question from a stranger. I answered that I hoped not. She didn't say anything else—just sadly turned and went on her way.

            The next Sunday I was at the rest home again playing the piano. After the meeting, I was playing the postlude music and felt someone standing behind me. When I finished, I turned around and saw this same woman waiting to talk to me. She said, "I was so worried about you last week after your talk that I went back to my room and prayed to Jesus. I asked Him if your cancer is going to come back." She paused and whispered, "He told me ‘no’ that it won't come back." I had a twenty-year reprieve.

Questions and Answers

Have you ever in complete despair looked up at the heavens and asked the unanswerable question, Why would God let this happen to me? That question is really three—Why me? Why now? Why this? If you’ve ever thought this question, you are in good company because even Jesus asked why when he felt that he had been abandoned and forgotten on the cross. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” C.S. Lewis, in his book The Problem of Pain, says that Jesus knew all the answers but had to experience the pain himself.  We all know that “personal loss brings truths from head to heart.” It seems to be academic when it happens to someone else. Only when it happens to us do we begin the path to understanding. It is then we search for reasons and at some point realize that we can’t “find answers without finding God.”

The problem is that God created beings with free will. If one of God’s children swears or lies, God could take the bad words away before they were even uttered; no one else would hear; there would be no consequences. He could stop every war and prevent every disease. But if God is to be God, he must allow his children to learn and grow by experiencing the pain caused by abuse of their ownor another’s free will. He must let the consequences of disobeying him happen.

C.S Lewis has some wonderful comparisons about pain:

“God whispers in pleasure and shouts in pain.”

“Pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world.”

“Pain plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebellious soul.”

“Some regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”

Lewis makes a classic statement that human beings don’t really want God to be their father—exacting, specifying, judging, rewarding, chastising. “What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, What does it matter so long as they are contented?  We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all.” He concludes that “God is something more stern and splendid” (The Problem of Pain, 35).

C.S. Lewis gives more examples, explaining that the glory of God is in his plan for us. The glory of God is in his omniscience. The glory of God is that he loves us more than an artist loves his art, more than a man loves his dog, more than a father loves his son, more than a husband loves his wife. From Lewis again, “The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word love, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest well pleased. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable” (The Problem of Pain, 43). So there really is an answer to Why me? Why this? Why now?  God allows pain in the world to make us loveable, loveable by his definition.

Scriptural Comfort

            I am fond of reading scriptures. I love the history and the human relationships portrayed in them. But when faced with my own mortality, I found comfort in the scriptures as never before. One afternoon I was reading in Exodus chapter six verse six: "Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm . . ..”  Those are the words in the Bible, but I read them this way: "Wherefore say unto Marilynne Linford, I am the LORD, and will bring her out from under the burdens of cancer, and I will rid her out of cancer's bondage, and I will comfort her with my stretched out arm." In my mind I saw the Lord with his hand stretched out to me. I saw his gentle eyes and felt his love. It was a sacred moment. Every time I experienced a sleepless night, felt fearful or sad, or wondered if I'd ever be well again, I pictured the Lord in my mind with his outstretched arm and felt his sustaining influence.

            Another day I was reading in Psalm 6:2 which is a prayer: "Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed." In this verse I only had to change one word to have it apply to me. "Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my body is vexed.”

            Every scripture seemed to have personal meaning. Matthew 11:28-30: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." I felt heavy laden with the burden of cancer. I would welcome rest and relief. I believe the Lord can do exactly what he says—lift and lighten my burden.

            I ponder what it means to have a burden made light. I don't believe he necessarily takes the burden away, he just makes us stronger so the burden feels lighter. As I believe in the Lord, as I picture him in my mind extending his arm towards me, as I feel my prayers are being heard, as I sense His peace quietly assuring me that no matter what happens, He will make me equal to the challenge and help me cope, my burden is lighter.

The Perfect Body

            In reading the New Testament description of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I understand that all people will be resurrected. I have been taught this since I was a child. I always thought that it was a very nice and amazing thing for Him to do—to die and then have the power to come back to life. But it wasn't until cancer that I understood what being resurrected means. It means I will be whole again. I will get my breast back; my scars will be gone, my hernias will be repaired. The blind won't be blind. The deaf won't be deaf. The paralyzed will run. The mentally retarded will learn and reason. Resurrection restores and makes each body perfect.

            "Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him… (and) said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die, Believest thou this?" (John 11:20-26). I believe this.

Support Session #9: My Spiritual Side of Cancer

1.       If you would like, record your spiritual feelings about your cancer experience. You can record them into a tape recorder, have someone video tape you, or write them in your history.

2.       You can’t pray too often. Try opening and closing each day with prayer. Pray throughout the day.

3.       Read scriptures that bring you comfort.