Dealing With My Alter Ego: Worry

Whatever ones calls it, most of the time, I feel like I keep worry in check, but it is always present. It’s like another personality, an alter ego, if you will, lurking just beneath the surface of my cooler façade.

Coming to terms. According to The Free Dictionary (1), it means to begin to or make an effort to understand, accept, and deal with a difficult or problematic person, thing, or situation. Now that’s a figure of speech that sounds a lot like worry, and that’s something I have wrestled with a great deal, not just since my cancer diagnosis, but for at least the last 21 years or more. That’s a long time to struggle with worry. I have always considered worry to be sinful. The Bible doesn’t specifically call it that; it’s more of an inference we can draw from the words of Jesus Himself in one of my favorite passages, Matthew 6:25. He clearly states, “…do not worry…” Coming from the Master Himself, one can only take that as a commandment. As I contemplate the way my life has changed and will likely continue to change since my diagnosis last November, I feel compelled to examine my faith, because it is inextricably tied to this sin of worry or anxiety.

Whatever ones calls it, most of the time, I feel like I keep it in check, but it is always present. It’s like another personality, an alter ego, if you will, lurking just beneath the surface of my cooler façade. These days, whether it’s induced or intensified by medication or comes around via the natural ebb and flow of hormones, it’s a force to contend with, and I find myself too often feeling defeated by it.

This morning Shelly and I met with Dr. Selby and Nancy, the RN and Transplant Coordinator at the Stephenson Cancer Center. Dr. Selby carefully went over every detail of the process I will undergo over the next few months. We discussed the possibility, a 5% or lower chance, that I will not survive the high-dose chemotherapy that essentially destroys my marrow, or as Dr. Joudeh calls it, my blood factory. That means there is a 95% chance I will survive and my cancer will remain in remission for many years to come. Pretty good odds, I suppose.

As Shelly and I walked into the dimly lit parking garage and climbed into the car for the drive to her house in the rain, I brought up the inevitable question of survivability and the choices I had made with regard to my treatment.

I asked her, “What would you do, Shelly, if you were in my place? Would you do what I’ve done? Would you have had the chemo and then the bone marrow transplant, like I’m going to do?”

Without hesitation, she responded, “Yes, I would.”

The what-if scenarios remind me that there are many uncertainties in my future. When it comes down to it, none of us is promised tomorrow, but we have to assume we will be around when the sun comes up again, and if we are, we need to live responsibly, and take care of ourselves and our obligations. No one else will do it for us.

Thus, the alter-ego, Worry, rears her ugly head and fills me with consternation and doubt, sucking the spirit out of me, making me feel helpless and hopeless, weak and defeated.

She also starkly exposes my lack of faith. What lessons does God want me to learn? The Apostle James wrote that we are supposed to “consider it pure joy,” whenever we face trials of many kinds, because we know that the testing of our faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3).

Joy? I’m supposed to feel joy?

How can I feel joy when enduring the infusion of drugs that are damaging my body? How can I feel joy when I set my feet on the floor to walk, and I stumble because they feel like blocks of wood? When I climb into bed at night and stretch my legs under the covers, and it feels like the sheet has turned into a concrete block weighing down on my toes, and when I move my feet, they spasm into Charlie-horse-like cramps, I’m supposed to feel joy? When I think about my diagnosis, really think about my own body, which I cherish, producing cells that circulate in my marrow creating holes in my bones and eventually damaging vital organs, I am supposed to feel joy?

How does that work?

What about the death of John’s dog? Or the great divide in our country today? What about when I hear or read about someone saying or doing something so despicable, so profoundly immoral that my blood boils when I think of it. I’m supposed to feel joy?

I ask myself, where is your faith, Kelly?

If you were to ask me if there was a singular incident or happening in my life that may have been a catalyst for the faith struggle, I would tell you it was the death of my mother.

Even now, as I think about her life and how she died, the emotions I feel above all is profound sadness and loss. She was gone too soon, only 59, the same age I am now. As much as I love the written word, sometimes there are no words that are sufficient to describe what someone meant to us and how much we miss them. It’s the same when I think about Roy. These are emotions I keep in a special place in my heart, a sacred crypt that only God’s Holy Spirit can enter, for only the Holy Spirit can translate the emotions and convey them on my behalf to my Father, God.

I was in the hospital room with my mom the night she died. It was my turn to stay, and I will never forget it. I will never forget the way I prayed, how I implored and pleaded with God that the terrible wheezing moan of her labored breathing would grow quiet and steady, her eyes would open, and she would look at me and smile a reassuring smile. I prayed that a spirit from the Lord would enter the room unseen, touch her hand, and heal her from the cancer that had invaded her once vibrant body. I prayed for stronger faith to believe it would happen. I prayed for God to take away any doubts that I might feel, for I knew that if I prayed in confidence, I would receive what I prayed for. I prayed like I have never prayed before!

And I watched helplessly as the doctors and nurses attended to her in those last moments when no healing spirit came and her own spirit left her body.

Why did she have to go? Why were my prayers not answered? I believed! But there was no healing. There was no miracle for my mom.

And so, I struggle. For whom do the miracles happen? Is it my own weakness that prevents it from happening? Do I not seek His kingdom earnestly enough? Perhaps my understanding is flawed. My heart is good, and I strive to live as Christ lived. I fail miserably sometimes, but when I look at the wickedness that surrounds me, I know I have been redeemed by His blood and I am sanctified. I praise God for that! But when I ask in faith, and I don’t receive what I ask for, what does that mean?

Even as I struggle to understand, my love for God does not waiver. I think about the wisdom of God, of His omniscient, omnipresent nature, and I am reminded of how undeserving and foolish I am; yet He loves me enough that He allowed His Son to be crucified for me. So, tell me again: How much more valuable am I than the birds or the flowers?

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about

your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life

is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens:

They do not sow or reap; they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.

And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can

add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why

do you worry about the rest?

‘Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you,

not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how

God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown

into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not set

your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek

his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble

of its own.’” Matthew 6:25-34 (NIV)

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References

(1) “Come to Terms With.” n.d. TheFreeDictionary.com. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/come+to+terms+with.