i am fast becoming anorexic and i do not know why

I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. (Job 3:24)

I am fast becoming anorexic. I have eaten so little that it is amazing I am still alive.

Now anorexic is one word that I never dreamed would be applied to me. It is one of those things that happen to other people. But here I find myself in that situation: if I do not figure out how to start eating again, I will starve to death.

I am not sure why I am in this situation. It isn’t like so many of the web-sites say, a matter of low self-esteem and fear of being fat. I never have liked being fat, but I have also never tried to address it by not eating.

My anorexia stems from the cancer somehow. For a couple of months I could not eat because the cancer was blocking my esophagus and nothing would go through then when it was fixed temporarily with the stent, the heartburn was magnificent and I had trouble there. It kind of evolved into anorexia. I never wanted it.

Oh, sure, it was fun at first seeing the weight go away. I have always wanted to be one of those people who just didn’t eat much. I have always wanted that thin aristocratic look, tall and slim. But, not enough to work toward it. What I wanted was for the food to just not look good after a certain amount of time so I could quit eating.

But whatever the reasons I came into this, I am tired of it and want it to be through so I can eat again. I have lost almost 100 pounds. There are parts of my body that look almost skeletal. I still have enough fat on me that I do not look skeletal all over, but there are visible bones now. When I lie on my side, my rib cage and hip bones are prominent. I have no rear end padding. The toilet seat hurts.

My skin is beginning to hang. My muscles are gone completely, or as near as can be. My legs have no padding at the knees so when I lie on my side, they are bone on bone now. My shoulders are bony. If it were not for the fact that I have shoulders that are wider, I would look horrible.

Dressed I look fine. But people who have only known me for a couple of months are commenting on the fact that I am losing so much weight. They see it in this short a time.

I am tired of losing weight. I sure never thought I would ever say anything like that, for sure. I am at a point now that I could be happy, but as it is I will continue to lose weight and could lose another 30 pounds if I were not careful and cannot get to eating again.

Weird problem for a fat guy, losing too much weight. If I could just eat.

daily java

Daily Java:

I am suffering and in pain. Rescue me, O God, by your saving power. (Psalm 69:29).

I have been in pain for rte past several days. It doesn’t seem to matter how much of my drug supply I take, I am still in pain. Today, I even went so far as to take double my morphine. It dulled it somewhat, but it has not gone away.

The cancer I have is in a place that is hard to control. It is in the esophagus where it meets the stomach. You can feel it in front of your stomach and touch it with your hand.

Sundays when I play my guitar, the guitar lies on it and it hurts.  It just seems to hurt all the time. And it takes my mind from what I want to be thinking about and puts its on the cancer.

It makes me tired in general, and when I finally get enough medicine to take it away a little, it makes me feel drugged and sleepy.

But the pain has surprised me. I read about people in pain and never knew what it would be like in a lifestyle situation. It is hard to overcome. It is constant and always present. You find yourself holding that part of your body with you hand, even though it does no good.

I determined at the beginning that I have the cancer, the cancer does not have me, but it has been harder than I thought.

I pray to God for strength and power, but I do not seem to have any right now. I have been asleep all morning from the morphine and I do not like that.

The hyper weight loss has bothered me a lot. I cannot seem to be able to eat. And the result of the weight loss is strong. When I lie on my side in the bed, I can feel the strong and sharp points  of my ribs and the hard bone of my pelvis. My skin hangs from my bones. I look truly wasted when undressed.

Dressed, of course, I look all right. But clothes do hide a multitude of sins.

And there is the nagging hunger. I thought for a while that it was all my cancer that was hurting. But I have figured that it may be hunger pangs. I am starving and cannot seem to eat. I fear that I will be come anorexic and not be able to eat again as a normal person.

The hair falling out I can deal with. It is, after all, only hair and I will grow back. I have had a burr before and can again with no real problem.

I just do not like being helpless in the face of all this. But I am. And whether I like it or not, it really does not matter, God has allowed me to go through this, and so I do. I just hope I make a better witness at the end than now.

daily java

Daily Java:

You must pay close attention to what they wrote, for their words are like a lamp shining in a dark place — until the Day dawns, and Christ the Morning Star shines in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:19)

There is a dark place inside me and it called cancer.

It is kind of interesting (in a sense that I would like to be a psychologist studying someone in these circumstances) the way I feel about it.

I decided when I was diagnosed with this esophageal cancer that I refused to let the cancer own me. I told my church and I have told others, especially over Facebook, that I had a peace and a  calm about it that surprised me. I always felt that would happen, but this is the first time that I got the chance to put it to into actual practice.

Yes, I have the cancer. Yes, if the treatment goes wrong I will die. Yes, it is extremely painful. Yes – other stuff. You know what I mean.

So I go on living, ministering, helping, doing all the things I need to do as a gospel preacher and minister of the word. So I kind of bury it underneath all the other emotions and feelings, and I just don’t pay any real attention to it.

Except that I do. Underneath all the regular living stuff, all the ministering and things, there is that dark place. And you can hear the dark place thrum, a soft, low, almost inaudible sound that says: “You have cancer and you are dying.” Soft, yet enormously authoritative.

It is like a constant, low, soft, but very real thrumming noise. It is like when you live near something that runs a machine all the time. After a while you do not really hear it, but every once in a while, it is made apparent. And if you pay attention to it, it will drive you crazy.

And it would not be hard at all for that voice to begin getting louder and more demanding. All of the things I usually think about will be there but the dark place will no longer be on bottom. It will begin to creep closer and closer to the surface. Sooner or later, it becomes one of the dominant themes of my life.

So I cannot let it. And if all I had was my life, I couldn’t deny it. It would be impossible. My life would be my number one priority.

But my life is not my number one priority. That lamp is. God is, and his kingdom and the things of the work he gives me are. And I do his will to the best of my ability. However, I cannot if that dark place becomes dominant.

So what do I do? I decided to let God have control and to remember his grace, not my own death, his number one priority. His presence, his grace, his love is that lamp shining in a dark place. That lamp, when turned on and given free rein in my life will kill that dark place. After all, the darkness of satan cannot live in the light of the wonderful grace of Jesus.

You have one, too, a dark place that threatens to overwhelm you. The key is to allow him to live in you, to shine out that unwelcome darkness.

Try it and see what happens when the light of God destroys the darkness.

daily java

Daily Java:

These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. (James 1:14-16)

There is cancer in my body, death growing in a body that I fully believed was dedicated to the cause of life.

Of course, simply because you have given yourself to God as his servant does not guarantee good health, no matter what tele-evangelists will try to tell you. God does not necessarily have a miracle waiting for you. Sometimes he has pain waiting for you.

Job, a good man in anybody’s book, had pain waiting for him, even though he was a life-long servant of God. God even bragged on his faithfulness and bragged on the fact that no matter what the devil would do to him, he would remain one.

It was an unfair contest that, if we did not have the book of Job would have really shown nothing. Sure, God showed the devil the truth, but the devil didn’t care. God could have shown him the truth every hour on the hour and he still would have no cared. Job got nothing out of it because God didn’t even tell Job why.

But Job remained.

Why do I have cancer. I have come to a church that is a good one and I truly believe that I will make a mark here, do something great for God and his kingdom. But here I sit, sick and in pain and tired beyond measure.

There are two others in the church here and another in like circumstances that are suffering for something like my cancer.

It does not matter what we do nor who spiritual we are, we are stuck in this present world and as such, are subject to pain and suffering just like all the heathen.

But I still wonder. I can kind of understand someone who had not given his life to the Lord maybe getting sick, although I suppose that sound self-serving. I guess I figured that if I gave my life to the Lord and did all within my power to be an effective minister, I would be fine.

But I am not. And not only am I not fine, my wife is suffering from two different problems, one of which could be life-threatening.

It is enough to make a man jump up on a box and start hollering at God. Why? What is the point? What is the purpose?

Of course, again in the book of Job, a guy did just that and God told him to be quiet. So he did and God was in control again of his life. Of course, God was always in control of his life, Job just figured that he could help. And he couldn’t. Not only could he not help, he was helpless in the face of it all. All he could do was stand and choose either life or death.

He chose life and in so doing gave us an example far greater than anything he could have done otherwise.

So what do I do. I sit here in pain, discomfort, depression to a point (although not as bad as I thought) and I decide to serve him anyway.

Puny little thing, my decision. Big fat deal, the devil says. He probably would consider me a masochistic little twerp, allowing a sadistic God to put me through all this and serving him anyway.

But, of course, I look at it differently. By my refusal to give in, I magnify God anyway in my life. Like the three Hebrew men in Daniel 3 said when they were about to be killed, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up. (Daniel 3:16-17)

It is an attitude that says, So what?! Even if I die I will die serving and praising God. Will I like it? No, only an idiot would like it. The apostles rejoiced in Acts 5 that they were counted worthy to suffer because of his name. But you know, they surely didn’t like it.

Even Job said that same basic thing: God might kill me, but I have no other hope. I am going to argue my case with him. (Job 13:14-16). Even if he kills me, even if I die of this cancer, I will still praise.

I can always leave that attitude. And I plan to. I believe what the scripture above says. When we start questioning God and decide it isn’t worth it, it becomes sin and it gives birth to death.

I want to give birth to life. And will with my dying breath.

daily java

Daily Java:

So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. (Ephesians 5:15-17)

I have always been the kind of guy who liked to be in control, who preferred to be in charge.

It isn’t that I minded taking instruction, or even that it bothered me to be under someone. But if I had my druthers, I would prefer to be in charge. And I especially hate being in a position that causes me to need someone else to help me. It is a helpless feeling I detest.

It is just that I have liked to be able to do things myself. If it was broken, I liked to work on it until I could get it fixed. I recognized that there were things I could do nothing about. If the car was broken, there was generally nothing I could do about that. That was usually out of my league.

Electrical things too. I could fix electrical things only to a point. I know the basics of electrical  knowledge, but only that.  If I came to an stopping point, I had to stop and either get someone else to do it, or just live with the problem.

But I hate living with broken things. Of course, most of the fixing was more of the jerry rig variety. I fixed it but it may not have been the right way. However, it worked.

But I could almost always figure out how to make something work. And if it was borken, I could fix it.

But then things come along that you cannot fix. No matter how hard you may want to, you cannot fix them.

When Ella got MS, there was nothing I could do to help her. With my daughter, she had some problems and there was nothing I could do. I was helpless.

Then comes the ultimate broken thing. I contracted cancer. And I have to have someone else be in charge and help me. I am helpless. If I want to live, and I do, someone else has to take me by the hand and lead me somewhere. I have no control, other than the fact that I could refuse and die.

I hate it. But there are options.

One is that I can rage. I know people who do, that when they discover they have cancer, they get mad and destroy things, they curse and rant and rave. They blame God and the universe and everything else. And in so doing, they show their helplessness strongly. They think they look tragic and sad, looking for sympathy, but they look foolish.

Another is that I can sink into self-pity. I can look tragic and sad, I can cry a lot, I can go about with  black clothing and my hair uncombed and all. Again, I think I look tragic but I don’t. I look foolish when I do this.

The other is that I can accept it. It is not that I want it. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I can recognize that I have no control over it and I can try to make the best of it.

How do you make the best of cancer? A strange question. There is nothing good about cancer. Nothing. There is no beauty, no glory, no majesty. It is ugly and destructive. It is bringing something bad and evil into an otherwise good life filled with the glory of God.

How can I bring something good out of something so bad?

The apostle Paul says this in the passage above. He says to be careful how you are living, not foolishly. When you rage against the storm, when you live a life of anger, you have missed the point of life in Jesus.

In Romans 8:28, again the apostle Paul says And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. The way to make the most of every opportunity, as he said in Ephesians 5, is to recognize what good can come from your trials, your problems.

There is no glory in raging, there is no glory in overwhelming sadness. Of course, there is no glory in cancer either, but glory comes from it, or rather from the way you deal with it.

There is first of all a recognition of the fact that your life is not all that is important in this world. Paramount in this world is the glory of God and his will for you.

While he didn’t send that cancer, nor cause it to happen, he did cause you to happen. And he gave you his grace and his glory to use in showing others his grace and glory. When you accept what has happened and when you give him glory in your life, when the glory of God is seen as greater even then what has happened to you, then you show his power.

He has power over life. It is the kind of power that says, even though I die, I will not despair. And it is the power that says that Jesus is in control. As Jesus himself said: I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. (John 11:26-17)

I cannot be in charge of my life right now, so I gladly give it over to him. It is kind of like the old saying about making lemonade when life gives you lemons. Cancer is the lemons; Jesus is the lemonade.

I cannot fix this, but he can fix me. And I praise him.

cancer pictures

Here are pictures of the cancer from a couple of weeks ago. They were taken in the office by my camera.

This cancer has had some strong effects on my life

He has sent fire from heaven that burns in my bones. He has placed a trap in my path and turned me back. He has left me devastated, racked with sickness all day long. (Lamentations 1:13)

This cancer has had some strong effects on my life, some of which I would never have guessed.

First is an odd effect: my eyes have gained a haunting look to them. Ella says it is disconcerting. She has that same look at time and she tells me that people in severe pain gain it. I have been in a lot of pain since this whole thing began. It seems that the temporary fix the doctor put in – the stent to hold my esophagus open – has hurt more than the other. It has been a considerable amount of pain, more than I ever dreamed of having. and I suppose it shows in my eyes.

I don’t particularly like that, but it is too bad. My eyes have always been a bit on the intense side. I was always able to stare people down because of it. But now they look like some kind of Old Testament prophet, especially with my hair longer and gray. She says I have to learn to set my face in a smile. Since she has done a good job herself with her own pain, she knows what she is talking about. Never had to control my eyes before.

Second is my weight loss. Since I couldn’t eat at all for a while and only sparingly now, I have lost a lot of weight. All of my clothing fit differently now than before. Most of them are too big and I had to give them away. Otehrs are just right. Some of them are older clothing that I have kept around hoping one day I could fit them again. And now they do. However, my suit is almost too big and I haven’t hardly worn it. It has always been too small.

This is part of the third thing too. My bones are becoming more and more prominent. It is odd to feel them. If it were not for the fact that my stomach seems to be distended and bloated, I would be gaunt looking. My stomach is not particularly big, but it has something going on inside it that makes it swell just a bit. I need to work out, which I plan on doing after I get all the stuff underweigh for the chemo-therapy. This is a great town for walking so that is what I will do.

Fourth is general fatigue. I am so tired all the time. The pain leaches your strength nad makes it hard to do what you need to do.

Along with that is the fact that I sleep a lot. Again, the easiest way to deal with pain is to sleep. Couple that with the sleepiness that  comes with the drugs I have to take and I take them in mega-quantities and I am always a little looped.

I guess I am just going to have to live with it. If I had known cancer was such a hassle, I would never have gotten it.

daily java

Daily Java:

A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones. (Proverbs 14:30)

I found out Wednesday that I have cancer of the esophagus. It is fairly advanced and it is what has been causing me difficulty in swallowing .

There is a mass 2 inches in length and 2 inches around that is completely blocking the entrance to my stomach.

On the bad side, I have not been able to eat for a while. On the good side, I have lost 50 pounds in the past three months. Hard diet though.

It is stage three so I will have to begin chemotherapy before the doctor can remove it. The prognosis is good for me.

In the meantime, he placed a stent between the entrance to my stomach and the end of the esophagus so I can eat. For the two or three days before I went in, I was not even able to drink water.

This changes things in my life considerably. I have never been really sick, except for pneumonia 25 years ago and a gall bladder attack in 1997. Otherwise, I have been in great health. This is only the second time in a hospital for me, so it is a little hard to complain.

Someone asked me how I felt about it. My answer: I feel a great deal of peace. I know that God is with me and I know that he will take care of me. The passage from John 11 also comes to mind. I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.

That is how I feel.

I told my church about it this morning during my sermon. Since I was talking about peace, it seemed fitting. 
They had been wondering about it and some suspected it. And they are good people who care about me.

Will I die? Yes. In forty or fifty years I will be dead as a hammer. Maybe this will kill me, probably not. An awful lot of people recover from worse cancer.

Do I like it? No. I hate it, because it is an invasion of my body.

But it is not the end of the world. That will come when God decides to come again. And while I consider myself to be the center of the universe (as does everybody), my living or dying will not tremendously affect the world.

I do know that God did not send this, nor is it his will. God does not send bad things.

Sometimes things happen for which there is no purpose. Look at the book of Job. But I know that he will use it if I allow him to his glory and that is fine with me.

I praise his name in my life and even will in my death.