In faith, there is enough light for those who want to believe; and enough shadow to blind those who do not.
- Blaise Pascal
Sitting in late night silence, gazing upon a waning moon, the clock strikes twelve. Midnight: the most tenuous hour, straddling the boundary of light and darkness, between clarity and obscurity, hope and despair…between faith, and its absence.
When last I wrote, a series of unanswered questions confronted me regarding possible next steps my surgeon would take to hopefully eradicate the aggressive cancer embedded on my right vocal cord. Two days later, he scoped my throat down to the vocal cords…and found the virulent substance lurking there. It had moved and morphed a bit. Without saying so, I could tell he was concerned that the direction it had moved suggested something less random, more deliberate: it was migrating the length of my vocal cord from posterior to anterior…subtly toward my esophagus.
His words and demeanor took on a purposefulness, as he described his next step. “Okay, Carl…at this point, it appears that we may need to return to the OR, and this time perform a partial cordectomy of the right vocal cord. I think we need to treat this more aggressively.”
“Understood,” I replied, “…and will I ever speak again?”
“Oh, you likely will, though your voice may be raspy, your throat will be sorer, and you’ll be on extended vocal rest. I also want to get a CT scan. Let’s find out how embedded this really is, before we do this.”
Ominous as that sounded, it seemed logical. Determining the size and shape of the monster sounded like a solid piece of evidence with which to arm ourselves prior to surgery. I’d already given up on ever singing again…having made the decision to preserve life over voice. It was a more difficult decision than you may think.
Wednesday last, March 4th, I entered the hospital, resolved that I’d done all I could to prepare. Accompanied by my wife and daughter – buoyed by an army of fervent prayer warriors – I entered the hospital at UT Southwestern, downtown Dallas. As other procedures took longer than scheduled, we waited…and waited. Though the time appeared idle, my mind and heart were not. Offering my wife and daughter words of hope and humor, my soul wrestled demons…and I prayed. Just as I resolved to hand over my spirit, the O.R. nurses appeared, whisking me from waiting chamber to operating room…
Time suspended, rapid-fire “Hail Marys” flew from my soul at a furious pace, while the surgical team strapped me in place, applied the oxygen mask, prepped the general anesthesia, and I heard a voice, “Any moment now…almost there…you’ll soon be asleep…
…two hours later, I awoke to fragments of quiet conversation between my surgeon and my wife. The fog of anesthesia hung heavily over me, as I struggled to make sense of what I was hearing: something about excessive, thick mucus coming from an unknown source, a thorough suctioning of this stuff off the glands and throat tissue, only to have all tissue enlarge, enflamed, blocking visual access to the vocal cords themselves. At one point, I distinctly heard him say to my wife in a hushed tone, “I’ve taken enough samples for biopsies. Frankly, given the degree and texture of this substance, I’m not even sure that what we saw in my office was cancer!”
“Well, you do know, from his records,” she asked, “that he has chronic sinusitis…yes?”
Doc’s response: “Oh…? I want to see him in my office next week. I’ll laser it, as before, take samples, and biopsy as well. This is very confusing.”
At least, he is honest.
_______________
Over the next two days, I nursed a sore throat while corresponding with my doctor’s office. The response I kept getting was to reconvene…on Friday, March 27! Hardly the timely follow-up that we’d discussed. Pressing the matter further with him into Friday, he wrote back in some detail about his findings…and his plan to reconvene with me on March twenty-seventh. I responded immediately, urging him to reconsider.
His reflective ponderance still echoes: “Frankly, given the degree and texture of this substance, I’m not even sure that what we saw in my office was cancer!”
Bear in mind, the first four extractions of similar-looking substance were cancerous: “Squamous cell carcinoma, In-situ.” About that, there is no doubt. But now, through some bizarre anomaly, this surgeon harbors precisely that…doubt.
He knows the monster that lurks within me is virulent, aggressive and driven to achieve a certain outcome: the demise of this mortal coil. Still…this delay. It is midnight as I rest uneasy in this tenuous oasis, pondering the imponderable…as jackals howl and demons taunt at the perimeter. The jackals are doubts; the demons are real…
________________
Many years ago, I was confronted by Christ. He presented himself in the form of two desperate souls, staggering from the Greyhound bus station in downtown Dallas. The confrontation was so haunting, my response so lacking, that I have never been able to forget. Perhaps I don’t want to forget. Maybe that’s why I composed a poem of the revelation less than a year later:
Samaritan
Summer swelter, ’99 – Dallas. Tar
boiling in streets, two ebony
ghosts drift from a Greyhound
station, early July, stumbling,
clutch their cross, gasping,
agonizingly muster courage, beg
for money: “something…anything,
brother.”
Their leathered skin glistens, tells
tales of apostolic betrayal, dares
me to believe in miracles. But
Christ is nowhere
to be found around this cathedral.
Street corner Judas taunts, swinging
the blood-stained noose, gloats
at these clueless vagabonds, pressed
into service by occupiers.
Sweat-stained armpits
of tattered, soiled polyester
shirt throw a scent of boiled
cabbage when he lifts
his arm, points in the direction
of Wayside Inn where –
he tells me – they were staying
amid whores and centurions,
pimps and pontificators…
a Bible in every drawer.
Nervously, I promise to call
the innkeeper, pay the toll. Hours
later, the voice of immigrant
porter coldly declares, “…those
lodgers have left.” Moving on –
having not produced evidence
that someone gives a shit
if they live or die – they
fade into ash, names
seared in blood and
concrete…liquid
faces stalking
a guilty conscience.
Son of God,
wherever you are,
you should know
I am still
searching
for you.
He introduced himself as Sam Watkins…he and his wife were a black married couple from Alabama, whose only possessions were the clothes they wore. He explained that he had a job waiting for him on Monday morning…and just needed to make it till then. In 1999, cell phones were still a luxury that many didn’t yet casually carry – us among them. On that Saturday morning, we had entrusted our nine-year-old daughter to a children’s choir program at Fair Park…and were due to return there to pick her up when Sam and his wife staggered our way.
The truth is, I should have offered them a ride to the flophouse where they had found lodging. In fact, I should have taken them someplace safer, offered them money for food and lodging. They desperately needed showers and clean clothes that didn’t smell like they’d just spent two days on a sweaty bus.
Whatsoever you do for the least of these…
But I didn’t do that. Oh sure, hours later, I called the hotel where they’d hoped to find lodging for the weekend. It was too little, too late, and I tried to rationalize having done what I could. It was a lie, and I knew it. In fact, it was the least Christlike thing I could have done.
I think a lot about Sam these days…an opportunity to bestow kindness for grace. That word – “Christian” – yeah, that’s not me. I am a hypocrite. Half-measures and platitudes are merely cowardice. I failed an opportunity for grace. I failed God’s own son, Sam.
I left Sam and his wife straddling the uncertainty and fear of midnight.
_______________
Gazing out at the waning moon, now descending toward the western horizon, midnight is a dark place. Might it also clarify and give insight?
When the Israelites fled Egypt in the dead of night, God’s pillar of fire lit their way, protecting them from certain death, blocking the path of Pharoah’s army.
Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns in a Philippi (Macedonian) prison at midnight, before an earthquake led to their miraculous release (Acts 16:16-40), and a conversion of the guard assigned to watch them. For that blest guard, midnight became a portal to faith and new life. He recognized the light in the darkness.
As a metaphor for divine judgement, midnight clarified God’s testing of Job’s willing endurance for his faith (Job 34:20); but more importantly, it provided a wake-up call to spiritual alertness…an alertness I now feel desperately lacking in me.
Jesus, himself, suffered the taunts and vulgar temptations splayed out before him by Satan in darkest night…in the desert.
Ultimately, the desolation of midnight is an opportunity: to confront our darkest fears, with faith in a new dawn; or, be swallowed by them. Will His light find me still desperately clinging to hubris-tainted notions of preserving a cancer-laden voice, or surrendering to a new love language?
Is my own faith strong enough to follow the light because I want to believe? Or do the shadows blind me because I harbor doubt?
Will I ever again see Sam to seek his forgiveness and embrace him?
________________
Awaiting a physician’s response to a desperate plea to reconsider the timeline of treatment for vocal cord cancer – cancer that eludes a physician’s grasp and challenges his knowledge – my mind ponders the impenetrable nature of God’s reasons and ways. I am in midnight, straddling the boundaries of divine light and hellish darkness. I am not asking for wisdom from the tree of knowledge. I ask for His patience and forgiveness…and a chance to set things right with all the “Sams” in my life.
1 comment
If I say that I enjoyed reading this, it sounds shallow, but I enjoyed the journey with you as you bared your soul. I have “Sams” in my life, too.