Ash Wednesday’s Whisper

This year, I skipped Ash Wednesday. After the months of suffering through PTSD, I didn’t feel like one more reminder of the fragility of our mortal lives.

But this morning, Ash Wednesday tracked me down in an oncologist’s waiting room to whisper in my ear the words I have heard time and again:

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I have cancer. Skin cancer. Merkel Cell Carcinoma. It’s described the way I had hoped college football scouts would describe me: rare and aggressive.

I’m reeling. Aaryn is reeling. In January, there was a small bump on my forearm. I thought it was a spider bite. By the time I got to my doctor, it was about 1/2 inch wide. By the time the surgeon got to it a month later (last Monday), it was almost 2 inches wide. No one knew what it was. There’s only 3000 cases of this in the U.S. every year, it usually doesn’t look like mine, presents on the face and neck, and almost exclusively in people over 65. It’s so statistically improbable, it’s virtually impossible…until it isn’t. No one ever thinks it will be them, and yet I know too many of you who have heard Ash Wednesday’s whisper…who have felt this bitter mixture of disbelief, sadness, and angst.

This is the plan as of today.

• I’ll be doing a PET scan to see if it’s spread beyond my arm.
• They’re gonna’ open my arm back up and clean out any other signs of cancer. The wound will be wide. There goes my forearm modeling hopes.
• While I’m on the table, they’re going to biopsy my lymph nodes as another check to see if it’s spread.
• All of this should happen in the next 2-ish weeks. I’ll update again when I have more info.

Baylor may want my degree back, but I have no theological reflection for you, and no artificial meaning to impose upon the brokenness and suffering of this world. And I don’t need you to do that either. There’s this really poignant moment in Job where, after his internet-expert friends espouse verifiably wrong theology about why Job is suffering. Job asks them if they are really comfortable whitewashing his plight with lies on God’s behalf. Then they zip it, and just sit with their friend in his pain. Do that for me. Wherever you are. I believe through the Spirit we can just sit together in this, and that, along with your prayers, will be a balm to me. If you want to reach out, don’t be shy, but at no point should the following be discussed:

1. crystals
2. sage
3. essential oils
4. God’s wrath
5. God’s testing
6. hot yoga
7. Radish-based diets

And if you want to tell me this is “all part of God’s plan,” don’t. Unless you want to explain to me how possibly leaving my wife widowed and my five and eight year-olds without their dad is a) a good plan and b) not irrefutable evidence of a God with an impoverished imagination. (Cards on the table: I don’t believe either of those is true).

Let’s just sit together – even across the miles – in the dust of this world, silent before Ash Wednesday’s whisper.