The surgeon, Dr. Timothy O’Holleran, performed a needle biopsy. The
results that came back a few days later shocked me: hyperplasia.
Translation: the precursor to breast cancer.
Breast cancer! A man with a broken leg, kidney stones, and—come on,
really?—breast cancer?
Later, when other pastors in my district got wind of it, they started calling
me Pastor Job, after the man in the biblical book of the same name who
was struck with a series of increasingly bizarre symptoms. For now,
though, the surgeon ordered the same thing he would’ve if a woman’s
biopsy had come back with the same results: a mastectomy.
Strong, Midwestern woman that she is, Sonja took a practical approach
to the news. If surgery was what the doctor ordered, that’s the path we
would walk. We’d get through it, as a family.
I felt the same way. But it was also about this time that I also started
feeling sorry for myself. For one thing, I was tired of loping around on
crutches. Also, a mastectomy isn’t exactly the manliest surgery in the world.
Finally, I’d been asking the church board for a long time to set aside money
for me for an assistant. Only after this second round of kidney stones did
the board vote to authorize the position.
Instead of feeling grateful as I should have, I indulged myself with
resentment: So I have to be a cripple and be on the verge of a cancer
diagnosis to get a little help around here?
My pity party really got rolling one afternoon. I was down on the first floor
of the church property, a finished basement, really, where we had a
kitchen, a classroom, and a large fellowship area. I had just finished up
some paperwork and began working my way upstairs on my crutches.
Down at the bottom, on the first step, I started getting mad at God.
“This isn’t fair,” I grumbled aloud, as I struggled up the stairs, one crutch
at a time, one step at a time. “I have to suffer and be in this pathetic state
for them to give me the help I’ve needed all along.”
Feeling pretty smug in my martyrdom, I had just reached the top landing
when a still, small voice arose in my heart: And what did my Son do for
you?
Humbled and ashamed of my selfishness, I remembered what Jesus
said to the disciples: “A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant