A Strong Why Can Endure Any How

Quick Update:

Elizabeth, Debbie, my Dad and I are currently on a plane bound for Sonoma, CA, where my Dad and I will be attempting the Napa to Sonoma half-marathon! Hannah and Cal will be meeting us out here Friday, where we will all be getting some much needed R&R!

We have been to B-ham twice since the last update, so I will quickly recap both:

• My Dad picked up Liz and me in Chatt and drove us down to give Liz a break from driving, which she throughly enjoyed. We received our MRI results back and the tumor remained stable and maybe even decreased in size! Yay! Finally some good news. After my MRI results, they gave me the minimum dose (1/3 of the optimal dose) of the oral pill (Epacadostat), since any dose less than that would essentially be doing nothing. I had about 1/3 as bad of a reaction, so they decided to take me off of the pill for good.

• This past Monday (6/11), Liz and I just drove down for the day for the infusion only. Praise the Lord there were no side effects from the Nivolumab, besides a mild headache! We will really see how the Nivolumab by itself is working when I get my next MRI the first week of September.

Now, I have to mention Liz for a second. I know I have said she has been my rock of stability through all of this, but what does that even mean? She continues to be an amazing Mom and wife through all of this. When I am not feeling well and have to lay down, she never hesitates to say “go lay down! I’ll take care of Jack”—not to mention she is having to deal with the anxious thoughts of me possibly passing away, which I maintain is harder than the position I am in. She never complains when I ask her to drive me somewhere and I take that for granted. It is obviously hard to rely on someone else for transportation, but you don’t think about the person having to drive me around town—and I am a terrible backseat driver! I am in constant awe of how she continues to handle a really bad situation. I love you Liz.

Which brings me to a little devotional:

Everyone is going through some sort of suffering in their life, whether it be an illness, a broken relationship, unexpectedly becoming a caregiver, money problems—it is all relative to that specific person, and they have a choice of how to deal with it.

My mom steered me towards a book written by Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, called Man’s Search For Meaning, that discusses how we handle suffering. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless. We give our suffering meaning by the way we respond to it. 

Let me explain using a great example from Frankl’s book:

In Frankl’s book, he discusses his time in a concentration camp and how he made it out alive. Frankl describes a man who he is in Auschwitz with. This man is the essence of worldly success. He has a great job, multiple degrees, and respect from his peers. He is then taken by the Nazi’s to a concentration camp, where he is stripped of everything—his dignity, job, degrees, all that he has worked his entire life for. This man, whose self-esteem had been so wrapped up in worldly possessions, would go on to die. He would no longer be able to get back to the social class that he was in before he became a prisoner. In short he was humiliated. It was how he handled the suffering that killed him—not the lack of food or lack of medicine.

Frankl argues that we are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we respond to adversity. In the example above, the man chose to respond by essentially rolling over and losing hope. He put all his weight and hope in how the world perceived him, and once that was gone, it killed him.

I love this quote:

“We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”

—Harold S. Kushner

So what does this mean?? If we put our hope in God and trust that He has a reason for our suffering, we will survive—maybe not on Earth, but where God has gone before us and prepared a room in heaven to spend eternity in. If we truly believe in eternal life, then why do we put so much stock in this life? Remove work or financial security from your life. Who are you now? 

It’s like a being young NBA prospect who has a great high-school career. Every one is his 'best friend'… until he doesn’t make the NBA. Unless he has a great relationship with God, his identity is going to be so wrapped up in being the next Michael Jordan that he fails to see the big picture. Everyone that was his ‘friend’ has now vanished. If he doesn't have that relationship with the Lord, he is going to fail to see there is a life away from this one—a life that is better. And if he could see how God is going to use his failure to make it to the NBA to mold him to be more like Him, he would want it to happen too.

To sum it all up, what Frankl is trying to say is, putting our hope in our eternal future is something no one can strip away from us. So, why are we so scared of death or failure? The way I see it, we are here on Earth for a brief period of time to love God, love others and make disciples—that is all we are called to do.

Thank you to all of those who continue to keep our family in your thoughts and prayers!

Much Love,

Nathan

Beautiful pic of the Goodspeed Trail to Mt. Hood Summit. This is on my running short list while I am here! Short little 6.6 mile out and back.