For my centurions

When a roman centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant, the Savior responded that he would come to his home immediately.  The centurion replied that Jesus need not come to his house for he was unworthy.  But he believed that the Savior had the power to heal his servant from where he stood.

I used this story for family scripture study tonight.  I feel a bit like the servant in the story.  I have many centurions asking with faith that I might be healed, and I know that the Savior has the power to answer those prayers.  I thanked our children for their faith and prayers in my behalf.

I love the gospel.  I love that there are new things to learn and apply to ourselves now matter what our circumstances or trials we go through.  I am so grateful for the comfort of the spirit which I feel.

I really think I'm going to make it.  I feel that is what the Lord wants from me.  But if not, I know that I won't be alone.  That my family won't be alone.  That the Savior will be there for us and that things will be okay.  I'd heard people say similar things as they went through trials and I always wondered if it were true or if people just have a tendency to grab harder onto their faith when faced with tragedy.

For me, it has absolutely been true.  Any cynicism, any lingering doubts have just been melted away by a stronger force.  A feeling that the Lord knows who I am and that he loves me and that things will be okay in the end.  I feel that His love is surrounding my family and keeping us safe.  I want to do whatever it takes to keep this feeling with us.  I know that there is a chance that it will fade as we get into a new routine of dealing with cancer and returning in some ways to normal.  But I want to keep it bright!

It's a wonderful life

I haven't seen that movie for a long time, but I remember that George was feeling so low he was about to take his life when a guardian angel intervened to show him how much impact he had on the lives of those around him.

This experience has been a little bit like that for me.  Not that I was feeling low before, but I've had so many well-wishes and people rallying around me.  I really appreciate it.  I've felt a lot of love and the influence of many prayers on my behalf.  It's very humbling.  I'm not used to being the center of attention.

I wish everyone could have this experience (minus the cancer, of course).

Though through the valley

It's been a week and one day since I found out I have lymphoma.  I've felt so many blessings during that week.  I've felt that the veil is a little bit thinner for me.  Maybe that's part of what it means to walk through the valley of death.  I really have felt the presence of the Lord through this.

To begin with, from the moment I heard the words, "Nathan, you have cancer," I've felt almost like there is a protective cocoon around me, helping me to feel secure, to deal with the potential awfulness of the diagnosis.  Christina has commented on this as well.  We've really felt the spirit reassuring us that everything will be right in the end.

I'm thankful that we didn't find out everything all at once.  We've been going through tests and narrowing down the diagnosis and treatment options over the last week.  This has made it easier to deal with the problem mentally.

I'm thankful for our bishopric, Brian Kreutz and Brian Howard visited us the first night in the hospital.  They gave me a blessing.  They also gave Christina a blessing.  It was a great comfort.  We were told that we would be given the resources to make good decisions that would lead to a good outcome for me.

Christina is amazing.  I have felt many times during our marriage the witness of the spirit that we were meant for each other, but it has been particularly strong during this week.  I know that this is very hard on her, but she has really rallied the family together.  She is my coach and team captain.  She is my researcher and counselor.  More than that she is my eternal friend and companion.  I cannot express the depth of my appreciation for her.

And so it begins

I'm not sure where to start.  I'm in the hospital.  They've told me I have lymphoma, a type of CANCER.  I'd like to sort my thoughts out.  I'll do it QA style.

When did it start?

Looking back, I've been feeling sick off and on for about 2 years now.  In February 2011 I finally decided that it was time to lose some of the weight I'd picked up over the years.  I cut way back on sugars and figured I'd see what happened.  I started to lose about 2 lbs a week, and decided I'd keep going until I got under 200 lbs. (I started at 224 lbs).  I reached my goal by August and kept going.  By February 2012, I'd dropped to about 185 lbs. and have been maintaining ever since.

So don't diet- eating healthy can cause CANCER!

Anyway, around April 2011 I started having some weird stomach problems.  I'd feel pretty normal throughout the day and then start feeling strong stomach cramps.  They would last for a few hours and then go away.  I had one episode in May 2011 that I went to the Emergency Room.  Aside from the intense stomach pain, I started to lose feeling in my hands, then arms and legs.  I found out at the hospital that I had been hyperventilating.  They gave me some pain killers, sedative, anti-nausea drugs (which I promptly vomited) and did an MRI and some bloodwork.  Looking back at the bloodwork now, the doctors have told me that some of my vitals were borderline normal.  So some red flags were raised, but not enough that I knew to do anything.  They could't tell me what was wrong, so I went home.

This is way too detailed.  If you're bored, I'll try to use good headings to you can see where it gets interesting.  If it does.

Later that year, around August, the stomach cramping episodes turned into violent vomiting episodes.  I would throw up every 10 minutes for hours.  This would occur every 2-3 weeks, then I'd feel normal again.

I went to see a gastroenterologist.  He did an endoscopy on me in December 2011 and didn't find anything out of the ordinary.  By January 2012 I stopped having the episodes (no vomiting, no stomach cramps), so I didn't follow up with any more doctor's appointments.  I'd occasionally feel some light nausea, but otherwise felt normal.  I'd lost a lot of weight, I was going on hikes with the Boy Scouts and generally feeling pretty good.

Looking back, Christina and I both wonder if all of that stress on my immune system either left me open to cancer or was a sign that cancer was coming.

In October 2012 I started waking up most mornings with sore hands and leg muscles.  It felt like I'd clenched my hands all night.  I thought maybe I was developing early arthritis and so I went to Costco and stocked up on Joint Juice, fish oil, and other vitamins.  I started feeling nausea pretty frequently, so I thought maybe I had developed a gluten intolerance.  I tried going gluten-free but it didn't seem to correlate to the nausea very well.

By December I was waking up every 2 hours to go to the bathroom, I was always thirsty, and I started to wonder if I had diabetes.  I finally decided that my flailing around trying to find the right nutritional answers to my problems wasn't working so well, so I went back to my primary physician to see what they could tell me.

We ruled out diabetes.  My bloodwork showed that my kidneys were really struggling, I was anemic, I had a low thyroid output and my liver was weakening.  Still no diagnosis, but the bloodwork ruled out HIV/AIDS and hepatitis A and B.  Whew!

Then things got worse.  I was breaking out into sweats, feeling too nauseous to eat, not drinking enough water (though I tried) and spending all day in bed or on the couch answering Christina's questions in the shortest way possible and feeling miserable.

More tests on Monday February 4th, including a chest x-ray and a CT scan.  I also mentioned to my physician about the lumps I'd been feeling on the back of my head.

Dr. Vaughn called our cell phone while we were driving home.  He asked me if I was driving.  I said no, Christina was.  He told me he had bad news, that I had cancer and it was in all of my lymph nodes.  Don't go home, turn around and go to the ER.

The end of the beginning.

I remember Jared

My son refused to go to Scouts tonight. He just got braces today and is worried about getting teased by the other boys. I let him stay home.

Shortly after Christina and I were married I was called to be a Sunday School teacher. I was excited to have my younger 13-year old brother Brian in my class. His best friend was a boy named Jared. They had a lot in common. A similar sense of humor. Lots of energy. Active imaginations. And neither quite fit in with the other kids. Brian was a late bloomer. He didn't learn to read as early as his peers. He mumbled when he spoke and had a hard time pronouncing some letters. In some ways, Jared was the opposite of Brian, the yin to his yang. Jared was hyper and excitable. I remember once when he was 7 or 8 he came up to me in the church hallway and kicked me in the shin. Not out of malice but an awkward attempt to say hi. Both of the boys were teased a lot.

Jared wasn't fitting in well at school. He was getting into fights with the boys who teased him. The school authorities were placing the blame on him. One day he called his Dad to tell him goodbye. He shot himself moments later. His Dad arrived too late to do anything. Even 15 or so years later, this is the saddest day of my life. I can only imagine how much worse it was for his family.

I don't think Jared knew how much he would be missed. I don't think he would have taken his life if he could see how much pain it would cause to others. But that day he was only thinking of his own pain. Why are we cruel to one another?

Michael is getting tired of being teased for knowing the names of all of the Pokemon characters and none of the football players. He's tired of being called gay because he finally has a friend at church who can relate to him. He's tired of being laughed at and always feeling on the defensive. He's tired of being spoken down to by his peers every time he makes a mistake.

Church should be a place of refuge. A place where we are truly brothers and sisters. I know it's human nature to point at people who are different than ourselves. I know that 12-year old boys learn a lot as they grow up. I know the boys who are teasing Michael aren't doing it out of any true malice. I know that many of the boys are just on the sidelines. I've taught most of them, spent time with them, gone on campouts with them. I love them, but I hate to see what they are doing. I know where it can lead.

The official language of the USA

The other day I was in the line at the grocery store and I heard the person in front of me asking for ten dollars cash back in English. Look- I'm not a racist, but I was slightly offended that the person in front of me hadn't taken the time to learn how to talk about money in Spanish. I mean, here we live in a school district where 70% of the population is Hispanic, and a county that has a clear Spanish-speaking majority, and some people can't even buy groceries using the language of the land. It's high time that we make Spanish the official language of los Estados Unidos.

It's also time we got serious about our immigration policy. Let's say one night un ladron (that's a robber for all of you gringos out there) broke into your house. It's a nice house with a full pantry and so the thief decides he'd like to stay awhile. When you awake the next morning and complain, he sends you to live in the garage. It turns out that he's a pretty industrious robber, and pretty soon he fills your house with some nice furnishings of his own- a big plasma screen TV, a remodeled kitchen, even a new Mercedez. The trouble is, with the new car and boat, there isn't much room for you in the garage anymore. It's time to send the encroacher back to his native land- Europe.

Some mornings, when it is my turn to drop the kids off at school, I see a sign proclaiming "this is a gun free zone." Let me tell you that this doesn't do much to reassure me. If you have to say it, it probably isn't so. This same principle applies to legislating an official language for the country. If you have to say it, it probably isn't so.

Do Hispanic immigrants spell doom for our borders, language, and culture? I hope not, because if they do, it is probably too late to do anything about it. We've simply had a porous border for too long. Our community is one that now has a Hispanic majority. Can we send them all home? By now, most of them are here legally. Many of our neighbors are Latino, and they seem like good hardworking citizens. Most of them value their families and religion. Most of them speak English. In fact, almost all second-generation immigrants speak English.

Ultimately, borders are really just lines on a map. We draw them, we fight over them because it is in our economic self interest.

Shared language is important, but I notice that most businesses are more than willing to hire bilingual employees if they see a profit in it.

Culture is in constant shift anyway. Can anyone argue that we have the same culture that we had in 1776 anyway? Do we have the same culture in rural Eastern Washington that exists in Savannah, Georgia? Culture isn't static, it is fluid- we've always borrowed from other cultures in an evolution from one generation to the next.

During my mission to Guatemala, I saw first hand the poverty that most immigrants are trying to escape. Let me tell you that I would do almost anything to not raise my children in those circumstances. I've heard the arguments for enforcing harsher anti-immigration policies. These arguments center around economics and politics. Mostly politics. In fact, it seems like the discussion always becomes a little more urgent during an election cycle. I'm more interested in hearing an argument based on values. Values such as faith, hope, and charity.

I think Hispanics are here to stay. And I'd like for us all to be friends.

Consumer society

I'm reading Culture Jam, a book by Kalle Lasn. One of the arguments that the author makes is that our society has become a spectator culture. We don't sing or play musical instruments in our homes- we listen to the radio and buy other people's songs. We don't play sports- we leave it to the professionals. Often we don't make our own meals. We don't live our own lives- we watch others live on TV. With the rise of pornography in the last few decades, we can assume that many people spend more time watching others rather than investing in their own relationships.

Lasn writes from the perspective of the left. He places the blame for the rise in consumerism on the corporation and laissez faire capitalism. And yet I think that he raises issues that we should all be concerned with. What happens when you take a people that for millenia worked the land for their livelihood and transplant them into an urban environment where they have much less contact with the natural world and communicate with each other more often than not through electronic devices?

Looking to the future, it is not hard to imagine a society in which we all exist as cyborgs. Perhaps that future is already here as we depend on technology for transportation, for entertainment, for remembering, for learning, and even for communicating.

It's too late to stop the clock (and who'd want to give up their ipods, anyway?) and yet it seems that as we go forward we are oblivious to the changes around us. So quickly do innovations become part of what we see as the "natural world." It is hard to imagine life without the internet- we take it for granted. But how will the cyber-world interact with the "real" world? In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury imagined a future in which the people were pacified by the television, where no one read books anymore, or had meaningful conversations with each other.
Oops, gotta go- the Office is coming on.