Answering The Call #13: 25th Wedding Anniversary
It's now been more than 5 months since my last blog entry, and while I haven't posted anything about the year I got engaged and married, I have been thinking about that quarter century (that phrase makes me feel veryold. A lot of things have been happening in those 5 months, and I will share some of those. But for now I want to tell you about the first time I avoided death by disease.
Just to recap, my girlfriend and I got engaged on Tax Day, 1984. We had been friends for a year, and "hanging out" together for 6 months. Most of our evenings together were spend traveling all over the state of Connecticut, visiting churches where I would lead worship for groups ranging from 8 to 800. Before you get impressed, from where I lived I could drive anywhere in the state in 90 minutes or less (I think there are ranches in Texas bigger than the Nutmeg State).
Marie and I met at one of these churches. She enjoyed the music I programmed, and asked one of the ministers about getting a copy of the songbook. This man was my spiritual director, and he knew I kept extra copies for newcomers who aspired to play the same songs I played. He introduced us, and 17 months later he assisted our pastor at our wedding.
I'm not an easy man to get along with. The dysfunctional family I grew up in took turns encouraging each other in new ways to torment me. The defense mechanisms I developed in that setting don't work very well in family situations. My way of arguing, developed to protect me from abuse as a child, chases people away. This worked well as protective armor, but doesn't work well in building adult relationships. I was concerned that this would make it difficult for me to sustain a marriage. Actually, I thought it was impossible. But my wife is a saint, and our quarter-century together is a tribute to her patience and forgiveness.
On April 15, Palm Sunday, we went to talk to my spiritual director and his wife. I needed some encouragement as to my ability to make a marriage work. The statement I made was "I'm 95% convinced" and they assured me that this was better than average for those approaching a wedding.
So we got engaged. Marie's mother was waiting at Marie's house while we had our meeting, and when we got there, Marie and I told her we were going to get married. Marie and her mom went to the local jewelry store to pick out a setting, and I followed later to pick out a stone. I paid cash, and while I could have bought a bigger diamond, I did not want to borrow any money (as it turns out, later we borrowed money to pay for the wedding and our honeymoon).
The next Friday was Good Friday, and I began moving some of my belongings into Marie's spare bedroom. With a load in a friend's pickup truck, I stopped and picked up the ring, and carried it to our service that night. I considered sneaking up and setting it on Marie's organ keyboard at a quiet moment during the service, but decided that this would disrupt a normally quiet and mournful Good Friday service. After the service I took her into the Parish Hall and gave her the wing. Nothing romantic. In fact, Marie interrupted me to tell two children to stop running inside the building before I got her undivided attention. I handed her the ring, and she said "Isn't there a question that goes along with this?"
Fast forward to July. Marie went for a routine pre-marital physical examination which turned up a large ovarian cyst. We scheduled surgery, and I cleared my desk at work to be available at any time to help her get to the hospital, or visit, or whatever. I had been ignoring a problem in my groin, but took this time to get an appointment with a doctor my new boss had recommended. Marie entered the hospital on Monday morning for surgery and I saw the doctor Tuesday afternoon. He referred me to a urologist and suggest he would want to do a biopsy.
Instead of the normal wait of several weeks, I got an appointment for Thursday afternoon. The specialist said "I'll give you 80% chance that that's a malignant cancer, and we need to get in there as soon as possible." I said my calendar was free, and could go right over to the hospital from his office (which was across the street from the doctor's office). He got an appointment for 11:00 the next morning in the Operating Room, He asked about the cross I wore around my neck: "What does that mean?" I told him: "it means you'll have a lot of people praying for you when you operate on me." He said: "I can live with that."
It was quitting time, so his nurse walked out with me. She commented: "You're awfully calm for somebody on his way to surgery!" I was in shock, rather than calm, but I knew Who walked with me, and I did not fear death. So I moved my car from short-term to long-term parking, and went to Marie's room to give her the diagnosis. While I was there, the Admissions Office called to get me checked into the hospital to begin preliminary tests.
My 11:00 appointment with the scalpel was postponed several times, and it was 7:15 p.m. before I got in. The surgeon was going to make an incision in the fold of my leg, pull the testicle out through that hole and examine it carefully. If it was malignant, he would cut it off and stuff the tube back in. if not, he would put everything back.
After the procedure, I was wheeled back to my room, and it took 3 orderlies to get me in position to crawl back in bed. They woke me up and told me to lift my butt off the gurney, and they toppled me over onto the bed. My roommate told me the next morning that it sounded like they were docking the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner!
I woke up Saturday morning and wondered about what they had found. I reached down to my groin and counted: "One, uh One, uh, only one." That's how I came to know it was a malignant cancer that had taken over my right testicle. It was several hours later that an intern visited me to tell me to bad news. My surgeon came to my room on Monday. But he had called my fiance and my mother Friday night, so they knew before I did.
I had dozens of visitors each day, while I stayed in the hospital for 5 or 6 days. My mother-in-law-to-be drove me home when the time came. Marie went home before I did, and supervised the setting up of two twin beds in the only air-conditioned room in her house, so when I was discharged I moved into her house. Friends packed up my belongings from my house and moved them to Marie's garage.
There's a story about my father I remembered while recuperating. He was a missionary in China before he married my mother, and was arrested by the Communists when they took over the country in 1948. They wanted him to sign a confession, and threatened to kill him if he didn't sign. He told them to go ahead, because it would merely send him home to his Heavenly Father. They didn't kill him. He was deported to the U.S., and met my mother. They were married in 1950.
It was this story, which my grandfather had written, that eased me out of the anger-filled rage at Jesus that had marked my adolescence. And it was this story that comforted me when I was recovering from surgery for Testicular Cancer with less than six weeks to go before my wedding.
And during this time I was reminded, in prayer, that I frequently told my youth group about having committed ALL of my life to my Lord. "You say you trust me with your life, will you trust me with your body?"
There is more to say about this run-up to my wedding, but that's for another post........
I'll pray for you, and will you please pray for me? Pray that we can place our full faith in the Lord who knew us before we were born; that we will each share the faith we have that death is not to be feared; that we will be faithful to trust God when that last journey comes upon us, that each of us will, even in facing death, Answer The Call. In Jesus’ Name!
Thanks for the time you took to read this!
Stevene
Just to recap, my girlfriend and I got engaged on Tax Day, 1984. We had been friends for a year, and "hanging out" together for 6 months. Most of our evenings together were spend traveling all over the state of Connecticut, visiting churches where I would lead worship for groups ranging from 8 to 800. Before you get impressed, from where I lived I could drive anywhere in the state in 90 minutes or less (I think there are ranches in Texas bigger than the Nutmeg State).
Marie and I met at one of these churches. She enjoyed the music I programmed, and asked one of the ministers about getting a copy of the songbook. This man was my spiritual director, and he knew I kept extra copies for newcomers who aspired to play the same songs I played. He introduced us, and 17 months later he assisted our pastor at our wedding.
I'm not an easy man to get along with. The dysfunctional family I grew up in took turns encouraging each other in new ways to torment me. The defense mechanisms I developed in that setting don't work very well in family situations. My way of arguing, developed to protect me from abuse as a child, chases people away. This worked well as protective armor, but doesn't work well in building adult relationships. I was concerned that this would make it difficult for me to sustain a marriage. Actually, I thought it was impossible. But my wife is a saint, and our quarter-century together is a tribute to her patience and forgiveness.
On April 15, Palm Sunday, we went to talk to my spiritual director and his wife. I needed some encouragement as to my ability to make a marriage work. The statement I made was "I'm 95% convinced" and they assured me that this was better than average for those approaching a wedding.
So we got engaged. Marie's mother was waiting at Marie's house while we had our meeting, and when we got there, Marie and I told her we were going to get married. Marie and her mom went to the local jewelry store to pick out a setting, and I followed later to pick out a stone. I paid cash, and while I could have bought a bigger diamond, I did not want to borrow any money (as it turns out, later we borrowed money to pay for the wedding and our honeymoon).
The next Friday was Good Friday, and I began moving some of my belongings into Marie's spare bedroom. With a load in a friend's pickup truck, I stopped and picked up the ring, and carried it to our service that night. I considered sneaking up and setting it on Marie's organ keyboard at a quiet moment during the service, but decided that this would disrupt a normally quiet and mournful Good Friday service. After the service I took her into the Parish Hall and gave her the wing. Nothing romantic. In fact, Marie interrupted me to tell two children to stop running inside the building before I got her undivided attention. I handed her the ring, and she said "Isn't there a question that goes along with this?"
Fast forward to July. Marie went for a routine pre-marital physical examination which turned up a large ovarian cyst. We scheduled surgery, and I cleared my desk at work to be available at any time to help her get to the hospital, or visit, or whatever. I had been ignoring a problem in my groin, but took this time to get an appointment with a doctor my new boss had recommended. Marie entered the hospital on Monday morning for surgery and I saw the doctor Tuesday afternoon. He referred me to a urologist and suggest he would want to do a biopsy.
Instead of the normal wait of several weeks, I got an appointment for Thursday afternoon. The specialist said "I'll give you 80% chance that that's a malignant cancer, and we need to get in there as soon as possible." I said my calendar was free, and could go right over to the hospital from his office (which was across the street from the doctor's office). He got an appointment for 11:00 the next morning in the Operating Room, He asked about the cross I wore around my neck: "What does that mean?" I told him: "it means you'll have a lot of people praying for you when you operate on me." He said: "I can live with that."
It was quitting time, so his nurse walked out with me. She commented: "You're awfully calm for somebody on his way to surgery!" I was in shock, rather than calm, but I knew Who walked with me, and I did not fear death. So I moved my car from short-term to long-term parking, and went to Marie's room to give her the diagnosis. While I was there, the Admissions Office called to get me checked into the hospital to begin preliminary tests.
My 11:00 appointment with the scalpel was postponed several times, and it was 7:15 p.m. before I got in. The surgeon was going to make an incision in the fold of my leg, pull the testicle out through that hole and examine it carefully. If it was malignant, he would cut it off and stuff the tube back in. if not, he would put everything back.
After the procedure, I was wheeled back to my room, and it took 3 orderlies to get me in position to crawl back in bed. They woke me up and told me to lift my butt off the gurney, and they toppled me over onto the bed. My roommate told me the next morning that it sounded like they were docking the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner!
I woke up Saturday morning and wondered about what they had found. I reached down to my groin and counted: "One, uh One, uh, only one." That's how I came to know it was a malignant cancer that had taken over my right testicle. It was several hours later that an intern visited me to tell me to bad news. My surgeon came to my room on Monday. But he had called my fiance and my mother Friday night, so they knew before I did.
I had dozens of visitors each day, while I stayed in the hospital for 5 or 6 days. My mother-in-law-to-be drove me home when the time came. Marie went home before I did, and supervised the setting up of two twin beds in the only air-conditioned room in her house, so when I was discharged I moved into her house. Friends packed up my belongings from my house and moved them to Marie's garage.
There's a story about my father I remembered while recuperating. He was a missionary in China before he married my mother, and was arrested by the Communists when they took over the country in 1948. They wanted him to sign a confession, and threatened to kill him if he didn't sign. He told them to go ahead, because it would merely send him home to his Heavenly Father. They didn't kill him. He was deported to the U.S., and met my mother. They were married in 1950.
It was this story, which my grandfather had written, that eased me out of the anger-filled rage at Jesus that had marked my adolescence. And it was this story that comforted me when I was recovering from surgery for Testicular Cancer with less than six weeks to go before my wedding.
And during this time I was reminded, in prayer, that I frequently told my youth group about having committed ALL of my life to my Lord. "You say you trust me with your life, will you trust me with your body?"
There is more to say about this run-up to my wedding, but that's for another post........
I'll pray for you, and will you please pray for me? Pray that we can place our full faith in the Lord who knew us before we were born; that we will each share the faith we have that death is not to be feared; that we will be faithful to trust God when that last journey comes upon us, that each of us will, even in facing death, Answer The Call. In Jesus’ Name!
Thanks for the time you took to read this!
Stevene
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