CABL Forum - I hope that I am this big when my time comes...

Tony Snow Testimony

This is an outstanding testimony from Tony Snow, President Bush's Press Secretary, and his fight with cancer. Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush Administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007, Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen,- leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but has resigned since, "for economic reasons," and to pursue " other interests."

It needs little intro... it speaks for itself.

"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 begin 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
acquire 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 love.

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 that we might
devote our remaining days to things that do?

When our faith flags, he 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 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 ineluctable touch of God.

What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much, but we
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
believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and impregnable
place, in the hollow of God's hand."

T. Snow

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I hope that I am this big when my time comes...