Letters From Beyond

When it Rains, It Snows


As many of you know, Tony Snow was President Bush's former Press Secretary
who died recently from cancer.

Here is Tony's testimony about his experience. It is too well done not to
read and then to share with others. My Mom sent me this one-and like all nuggets of wisdom from the motherland it's golden.

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Blessings arrive in unexpected packages, - in my case, cancer. Those of us
with potentially fatal diseases - and there are millions in America today -
find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying
to fathom God's will. Although it would be the height of presumption to
declare with confidence 'What It All Means,' Scripture provides powerful
hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to answer the
'why' questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't someone else get
sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions themselves often are
designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is what it is, a
plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly,
great and stunning truths began to take shape. Our maladies define a central
feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give
out.

But, despite this, - or because of it, - God offers the possibility of
salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of our lives will end,
but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we
meet our Creator face-to-face.

Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of dying can send
adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy, unfocused panic seizes
you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You think of nothingness and swoon.

You fear partings; you worry about the impact on family and friends. You
fidget and get nowhere.

To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death, but into life
- and that the journey continues after we have finished our days on this
earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is nourished by a conviction
that stirs even within many non-believing hearts - an intuition that the
gift of life, once given, cannot be taken away.

Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege of being able to
fight with their might, main, and faith to live fully, richly, exuberantly -

no matter how their days may be numbered.

Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise. We want lives
of simple, predictable ease, - smooth, even trails as far as the eye can
see, - but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns.
He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance and
comprehension - and yet don't. By His love and grace, we persevere. The
challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably
strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not
experience otherwise.

'You Have Been Called'. Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of
anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet, a loved one
holds your hand at the side. 'It's cancer,' the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic
Santa. 'Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler.'

But another voice whispers: 'You have been called.' Your quandary has drawn
you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that
matter, - and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy

our 'normal time.'

There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived, an
inexplicable shudder of excitement as if a clarifying moment of calamity has
swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before us the challenge
of important questions.

The moment you enter the 'Valley of the Shadow of Death', things change. You
discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and
soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution.

The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals,
triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world
and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain),
shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only
about the moment.

There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, - for it is through
selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the
most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever
could do.

Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was faced with the
prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself, but for us. He cried
for Jerusalem before entering the Holy City. From the Cross, he took on the
cumulative burden of human sin and weakness, and begged for forgiveness on
our behalf.

We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us, that we acquired
purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for others. Sickness gets
us part way there. It reminds us of our limitations and dependence. But it
also gives us a chance to serve the healthy. A minister friend of mine
observes that people suffering grave afflictions often acquire the faith of
two people, while loved ones accept the burden of two peoples' worries and
fears.

'Learning How to Live'. Most of us have watched friends as they drifted
toward God's arms, not with resignation, but with peace and hope. In so
doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to live. They have
emulated Christ by transmitting the power and authority of life.

I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took
him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book
of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old
friends, and at least one priest. Here was an humble and very good guy,
someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made
his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally
until his last conscious moment. 'I'm going to try to beat [this cancer],'
he told me several months before he died. 'But if I don't, I'll see you on
the other side.'

His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't
promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity -

filled with life and love

we cannot comprehend, - and that one can, in the throes of sickness, point
the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future
storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose:

Do we believe, or do we not?

Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to
submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations?

Can we surrender
our concern in things that don't matter so t hat we might devote our
remaining days to things that do?

When our faith flags, God throws reminders in our way. Think of the prayer
warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us who have been on
the receiving end of their petitions and intercessions know it.

It is hard to describe, but there are times when suddenly the hairs on the
back of your neck stand up, and you feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you
just know: Others have chosen, when talking to the Author of all creation,
to lift us up, - to speak to Him of us!

This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and
appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death
somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and
intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have

felt the loving touch of God.

'What is man that Thou are mindful of him?'

We don't know much, but we do know this:

No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no matter how bleak
or frightening our prospects, each and every one of us who believes lives,
each and every day, in the same safe and impregnable place: The hollow of
God's hand!

---Tony Snow

Rest In Peace and Joy.