What Are You Waiting For?
One of the hardest parts about cancer: constantly waiting on something...
I have a confession: I hate waiting. For anything. At all.
You can sympathize with that, right? . After all, who hasn’t had to wait in a seemingly endless line—especially at the airport? Or had an online order that kept changing the delivery date? Or endured a car ride with a kid (or kids) who can’t stop asking, “Are we there yet?”
While we might share those experiences in common, I doubt you understand how I feel when they happen. After all, most people feel minor annoyance at those kind of things; it might raise your BP for a moment, but the moment passes and you’re back to your regular life.
I envy that.
Because for me, it feels more like someone searing my soul with the coal that started the fires of Hell. It just eats away at my brain. As a result, there’s very few things are fast enough for me; I constantly feel like I’ve been relegated to the back of the line, forgotten and overlooked.
It’s kind of like this Beetlejuice clip:
Everyone else gets to be the 4s of the world, the ones whose blessings are coming up next. Meanwhile, I’m stuck with a number that even Einstein would struggle to comprehend, which just adds to the feeling that I’m being put upon while everyone else is being served tout suité.
How else do you explain Netflix taking 15 seconds to load a show on my TV, but only 5 seconds to load the same show on a friend’s?
Or why the Amazon Prime guy drives the entire neighborhood first, saving my street for the very end, where my house is one of the last you come to?
The universe hates me and wants me to suffer. There’s no other logical answer. I’m exaggerating (slightly), but you get the point.
Any time I have to wait, it feels like a cosmic injustice, a great disparity within the universe. While I’m not proud of this, I am man enough to tell you the simple, selfish, shameful reason I hate waiting:
I have come to believe I don’t deserve to wait.
It’s a spin on the classic comparison trap: when I look at the lives of others, mine looks better by comparison. So if they don’t have to wait more than three seconds for their Chick-fil-A curbside pick up, then I shouldn’t have to wait at all. I’ve spent a lot of my life sacrificing for others, going out of my way to ensure that the people around me were served promptly and well. I did it, in part, because I wanted to serve well; but I also did it because I believed it would be revisited to me in spades.
Call it karma, call it the Golden Rule, call it common courtesy or whatever your epistemic framework labels it, but the idea is the same: sacrifice today, get rewarded tomorrow.
I believe that’s true without question because I’ve seen the principle work. Heck, that principle practically pays my salary—it’s one of John Maxwell’s foundational beliefs about life and work. Where I get messed up is adding in the element of speed: sacrifice today, immediately get rewarded tomorrow.
This is not a helpful belief for a cancer patient to hold.
Cancer means waiting. In fact, cancer requires waiting because the alternative is rather unpleasant. Thus you have the Cancer Paradox: simultaneously wanting life to slow down while also wanting answers immediately. Add in my toxic notion that I don’t deserve for this to happen to me, and you’ve created a perfect storm for some ugly days.
Lately I’ve had a few more ugly days than I’d care to admit. After nearly 18 months of battling cancer, I’m tired of waiting. Tired of trying. Tired of taking a couple of steps forward only to take one more than that back. l want to move forward, faster, in my recovery and restoration. I want strength back in my legs and body and the ability to move around without getting winded.
I go out of my way to point out the positives of my journey when I write these newsletters because I understand that everyone is fighting their own battles, and while it’s helpful to know we’re not alone in the fight, it’s less helpful to be burdened down with the ugly details of someone else’s struggles.
I also don’t like writing about the tough days because it takes me to a dark place. A place that’s tough to come back from once you’re there. As I said, I’ve flirted with the edges of that place a lot more in recent weeks simply because the process just keeps chugging along without a lot of change in one direction or the other. And having grown up in a community that thrived on negative thinking, my natural tendency is to drift towards the negative outlook.
Add in the fact that Rachel watched her sister and father die from cancer over the past six years, and you have two people who can start seeing signs that maybe aren’t there. So I choose positivity to offset that broken default.
I don’t know why I’m sharing all of this with y’all; I’ve struggled to sleep well lately, which just adds another worry to the pile because it makes concentrating a challenge, so maybe my guard is just down and this is what comes tumbling out. But there’s also been a few close friends lately who’ve encouraged me to share with the community more of the struggles and challenges as a way of better contextualizing the choice to look for the good around me.
Vulnerability and authenticity require not just admitting that things go bad from time to time; they require walking through those times with candor and openness. If I’m going to invite you in, then I might as well throw the door all the way open and share the details of the challenges as opposed to just the existence of those challenges.
And I’m going to ask you to do the same.
If I’m right and we’re all going through things that are challenging and difficult to us in some way, then this newsletter has the potential to be something greater than just an information dump. After all, there are nearly 400 people who’ve signed up to receive this, in part because they want the updates, but also because they desire to be part of the community. We all come to the table with a desire to share something in common.
So I will continue to be the guinea pig and share what’s going on with me and my fight with cancer. But I am going to create a space where you can share your challenge/hardship with the group and ask them for advice or prayer, or to simply provide you with a place where you can unload your burdens and leave them behind for a while.
I do this because it’s the only thing I can think of to push this newsletter forward. I’ve struggled to find the motivation to write it the past several issues, simply because it just felt like more of the same: no new developments, no new breakthroughs, no new anything.
I need to see some kind of change happen somewhere, and if that means evolving this newsletter into something else, then so be it. I have made growth and change a significant part of my life since 2013, and being stagnant these last 18 months has done more to hurt me than even the cancer, I think (Rachel might disagree, however).
Starting this week, I will ask that you please leave a comment on this post that shares some kind of challenge or need you’re enduring and how the people who read this blog might specifically pray for you or otherwise help you.
As you were reading, chances are you thought of someone who would benefit from being part of a group like this. Use the button below to share this post with that person and invite them to subscribe to the newsletter and join our community.
I’m begging you to NOT be shy; this is part of what I call “soul medicine,” the intangible human connection that is so vital to our mental and emotional health and flourishing.
I will personally pray for each person who leaves a comment in good faith and will ban each person who attempts to use this forum for selfish reasons. This is going to be a place where healing can begin, or continue; it is not going to be a place where others take advantage of those who are hurting.
Thank you in advance for helping me to find another avenue to fight my cancer, and for giving me an opportunity to pour into you. I’m moving the prayer requests to the end of the post so they are close the comments that y’all leave, so you’ll see them in just a moment. You can leave your comment there so everyone can see it.
For now, I’m going wrap this edition of the newsletter by saying thanks, as always, for your willingness to read and participate in this community. It means more to me than I can say, and I hope that by inviting you into an even deeper community experience, we call will benefit and grow as a result.
Thanks for reading, and God bless.
Best,
Jason
Prayer Requests:
Jason—to find the right anti-anxiety/depression medication; for improvement in physical strength and stamina; for better sleep, preferably in my bed; for bloodwork to come back positive; for chemo to prove effective;
Rachel—for increased strength and stamina physically and emotionally; for God to open some doors for progress in some areas; for patience and wisdom as a mom and caretaker; for my condition to visibly improve and help alleviate some of her anxiety.
Ella—for rest and strength; for energy and passion to continue chasing excellence in all she does; for multiple creative outlets to open up based on her talents and hard work; for continued peace and success with friends and peers.
Jon—continued commitment to doing his best in school and life; for deeper, more impactful friendships and relationships as school and in life; for his relationship with Jesus; for his physical growth to continue to be consistent and relatively pain-free.
You—using the comments section below, share a prayer request or need with the community. Be as specific as you can be without violating your comfort. If you’d rather leave a comment that only I can see, then click the button below, which will generate an email to my personal account with your message.
- I pray for our community. That we stop seeing people as “groups” and see them as individuals, no matter their background, “raising”, or lifestyle. We are approaching the 20th anniversary of 9/11. We came together as a nation in those dark hours. We need to do it again, without having to go through the horror we endured. We should pray for each other; just because. We get to know our neighbors again. We help the elderly. We enjoy listening to children play. That’s what weighs on my heart.
Our oldest daughter has left the faith. Says she doesn’t believe anymore. It saddens us so much. She is at her 1st year of college and we are praying God will use people, circumstances, and even more so the Holy Spirit to draw her back. It’s the hardest thing we’ve ever experienced.