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Chapter Two

Look for the Good

I will praise you, LORD, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds.

— PSALM 9:2

You may have had your doubts, but you have survived at least the initial shock of your diagnosis. No matter what you’re facing, though, there will continue to be challenging “aftershocks” and new things to learn about. Consider it a new school or a new unit study — one you probably didn’t intend to sign up for! You will need to learn the vocabulary, procedures, purposes, and potential outcomes. There will be side journeys, new people in your life, and new places. There will be choices to make. Somewhere between recognizing your diagnosis and accepting it, there is a space where God can enter and help you tremendously. Here are six tools that make a difference.

Travel Light

Considering that this is not an unexpected, all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii or Europe or Australia, it may be hard to imagine it as a journey of any sort — but it is. Any new journey offers an opportunity for a fresh start. You make a new packing list. You set aside clean clothes. You keep necessary new purchases in a special place. You may even clean your house or apartment so that it is neat and tidy when you return. In addition, it is usually best to travel as lightly as possible. The less and lighter the luggage, the easier it is to travel through an airport, by a ship, or even just to a hotel. Traveling light also leaves room to pick up souvenirs and gifts that help you remember the good things that happen along the road.

So, before you start this new journey, consider making a fresh start and traveling light. You can begin by turning to the Lord to ask for forgiveness. If you are Catholic, this means going to the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. Don’t close the book! Remember: “Be not afraid!” Confession is a great gift. It is not preparation for the end. But it can be preparation for the journey you’ll be taking, courtesy of a serious medical diagnosis. Confession lightens your load by taking away all your sins, and it gives you the grace you need for a fresh start. It is free, doesn’t take much time, and it will recharge your spiritual life.

This is even more important if you have been away from the Church. On the practical side, if it has been years since your last confession, there are options other than just showing up at the scheduled times. It’s possible to call and make an appointment. You can consult the websites of nearby parishes to see when confession is offered. No one will even know. Maybe just write down the phone number, or ask someone you know to pick up a bulletin from a local church. If you do decide to go, don’t worry: no one is going to yell at you. Every priest I know is thrilled whenever someone comes back to the church. If you cannot bring yourself to go to confession right now, just keep thinking and praying about it. Sooner is better, but our good God understands when we need to take baby steps.

Find a Focus

You will find that there is always more to learn about the illness that is affecting your life. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was homeschooling our children. So we did a unit study on the basics of cancer. Weird, right? But it was a great decision. It helped the kids (and me) learn the new vocabulary that we would soon be hearing and using. It helped us all take a step back and treat cancer as a subject, one which could be discussed in a scientific way. In general, it just helped to diffuse some of the emotion and to encourage more analysis — even on an elementary level. It also enabled us to compartmentalize, or set boundaries around, the illness.

Boundaries are important because any major illness tends to engulf your entire life, quickly becoming the soundtrack that plays behind everything you think, say, and do. Gathering information will show you the numbers of people affected by serious diagnoses and the countless variations of these illnesses. That, in turn, can help us to resist the normal tendency to focus on one’s self. Studying whatever disease has interrupted your life also empowers you to process the entire situation. Catholicism is known for bringing faith and reason together. Now is a good time to use both of those to the fullest in your own life.

The life you are living at this moment in time, with extra everything — more phone calls, more doctors, different foods, more exhaustion plus the normal requirements of life — is likely to leave you gasping for air. This is true for friends, family members, and caretakers as well. It can feel like a crazy theme park filled with terrifying thrill rides, rollercoaster highs and lows, and lots of screaming — at least internally. In the midst of all this, you need something else, or better yet someone else, to focus on.

Finding more time for prayer when you’re struggling to squeeze more into your calendar than ever seems almost laughable. However, many will find that they are already praying more than ever before. The trick is to gradually move from constant prayers of desperation to other types of prayer. You can do this slowly and with gentleness. Your prayer does not need to be memorized, scheduled, or regulated. Just as after the initial shock of a serious diagnosis, one moves into acceptance and a new routine, so your prayer life can also move from panic to peace. Reading a sentence like that last one can drive me crazy. The fact is, it’s not that easy, and I do not intend to present it as if it is.

When learning to do repetitive 360-degree spins, ballet dancers are taught to focus on one stationery point, just one, while they are spinning. This technique is called spotting, and it is the only way to keep balance and stability. In the same way, you can find more balance in the midst of medical nightmares when you keep a focus, not on yourself but on God. There are many ways to do this — and the more options you can develop, the better.

Be Grateful

A simple place to start is to be grateful. Grateful? This seems counterintuitive at best. What is there to be grateful for when you or a loved one has just received horrible news; maybe even news of a terminal diagnosis? No one is asking you to be happy about what is happening. But you don’t have to be grateful for your situation to be grateful in the challenges you are facing. If you can look around you and find something, anything, that is good, it can change your whole outlook.

In the midst of trying and failing to gain some control of my life after my stage III cancer diagnosis, a dear friend sent me a gift of a blank journal. The short note that came with it simply said to write five things every day for which I was grateful. This was nice. But I cannot say that I appreciated it at first. I had no idea how life changing that small journal would be.

The first few pages of my gratitude journal are blank. Then I wrote Luke 12:4-8:

I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. I shall show you whom to fear. Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one. Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God. Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God.

Then more blank pages. Finally, I began and actually made a list of six things for which I was grateful. Then I kind of ruined it with a written rant of self-pity (only one sentence, really) to Jesus. On that first attempt, I started each line with “I am thankful.…” My words, when I read them now, sound as if I had to force myself to be thankful for things I know I really did appreciate. Many days it was simple things — a warm house, hearing my kids laugh, sunshine. Other times, I did not have the energy to write even five words. But eventually, almost every night, I managed to add a short list in my gratitude journal.

The result was that during the day, I began to look for good things to be happy about. And you know what? I found them! It is twenty years later, and I am still grateful for those things. Without the gift and encouragement from my friend, I would never have been able to see all the good that was in my life at the time. The lesson of the journal was to look — actively look — for good during a miserable time and to thank God for that good on a daily basis. Writing in it motivated my search and led me in a kind of gentle accountability to God.

We cannot always control what happens in our life, but we can control our attitude toward life. When we start finding the positives, we become more positive ourselves. Give it a try! Caregivers and loved ones can benefit from this just as much as someone who is sick. Make it simple: pen (or pencil) and paper. Start with a list of five things. As you start this simple habit, see where the pen leads — prayers, petitions, outpourings of anger, questions that may only be answered in heaven. You may find that writing can assist you in many ways. Writing allows you to tell your concerns to God at midnight. It can help you process things you may not want to discuss with those closest to you. Writing can release the tears you may choose to bottle up in public. The investment is worth a hundred or thousand times the five dollars and five minutes it will cost you. But don’t stress over days you don’t write, your penmanship, grammar, spelling, or frustration. Your journal is a no-guilt, no-perfectionism zone. It is just you, pen, and paper. That’s it. See where it leads you.

Connect with Jesus

After my chemotherapy failed, I had surgery. As I left the hospital twenty-four hours later, I was handed a sheet of instructions of things that were supposed to have been done within the first twenty-four hours to avoid complications. Just great. I left the hospital with two drains around the incision that removed my breast. Not fun, and yucky to boot. But my sour attitude was soon tempered by an insight I never expected.

Suddenly, I thought of Jesus’ crucifixion and remembered a sentence from Saint John’s Gospel that “one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out” (Jn 19:34). This Bible verse helped to balance me immediately, and in the months thereafter.

It was a grace-filled moment. The realization that Jesus had been through something like what I was experiencing gave it all meaning. It helped me to identify with Jesus on a level I never had been able to do before. My sufferings were nothing compared to his, but now I had something in common with my Savior. Connecting my wounds with his reminded me that it was possible to offer up my sufferings for others, just as Jesus did for me. Remembering what the Son of God endured helped me to look at my own troubles in a different way, a holier way. For me, it was more of a this-is-still-terrible-but-now-it-has-meaning kind of way.

Jesus wants to connect with us. I guess I needed something this major to strengthen my connection with him, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Hopefully, you are already closer to him than I was. But whether you are or not, know that Jesus is already reaching out to you. If you are suffering mental anguish, think of his agony in the garden the night he was betrayed. If headaches are a problem, reflect on how he was crowned with thorns. If diabetes or neuropathy limits your mobility or increases your risk of falling, contemplate him carrying the cross, uphill, through the rocky streets of Jerusalem. No matter what your ailment or distress, Jesus has gone before you in some way. He is already there waiting for you to join him. When you look for a connection that can bring you closer to him, you will find one.

Trust God

My situation also brought to mind an image of Jesus: The Divine Mercy. This picture is present in many Catholic churches and can easily be found on the internet as well. Devotion to Divine Mercy has spread throughout the world in the past few decades. It began in the 1930s when Jesus appeared to a Polish nun, now Saint Faustina. Jesus instructed her to have someone paint what he revealed. In the image, Jesus is dressed in white with red and white rays of light coming from his heart.

The simplicity of the image allows us to see whatever we need to see in it. For me, at first, it was the red and white rays of grace. For others, it may be his eyes. Later, I noticed how he was taking a step toward the viewer, showing his desire to come to us. There is a set of prayers that can be prayed as a chaplet on rosary beads; a nine-day novena; and the actual diary of Saint Faustina to read. The entire devotion can be boiled down to the image itself and the five words inscribed at the bottom of it: “Jesus, I trust in you.”

Those five words are so simple, so beautiful, and so consoling. They are five words to cling to when confronted with heartrending news, or when we feel confused, lonely, or even in despair. Five words that are easy to memorize or say, yet hard to live. There are times when we believe and trust because there is nothing else. That is why the picture shows Jesus taking that step toward us. Because he is the Good Shepherd, Jesus is always looking for us — and inviting us to trust in him.

Let Go of Big Plans

But sometimes with illness that “always” disappears. Sometimes the burden is overwhelming, or all the medication tears your memory away. There was a time when the only words I could remember of the Hail Mary were those first two words: “Hail Mary.” That was it; the rest was gone. It made me frustrated and angry, even though I did not have enough energy for those emotions. But as I accepted that those two words were all I had, a peace settled in my soul and reassured me that it was all okay. My plan to pray three Rosaries a day (and try to catch up for years of not saying any) was a no-go. I had seldom taken an over-the-counter pain reliever, and it was obvious that I had grossly underestimated the impact of modern drug therapies.

The thing I finally realized is that neither God nor Mary cares about those details. God is our loving Father. He wants to provide for and protect us. And Mary is our mother — better yet, our mom. She wants to console us and hold our hand and reassure us. She always wants to bring us to her Son and teach us how to have trust in him. So, if the words disappear, don’t worry or despair. Hold the image of The Divine Mercy in your mind and just rest in his peace.