I can speak from experience. Having led a very healthy, active, sporting, woodsman, life, then contracting severe bone cancer two years ago requiring major/readical surgery to survive. Three major surgeries, 3 mmonths in the hospital at MD Anderson in Houston, 3 more months of very intensive rehab to teach me to walk again.
I am now disabled and can hobble around, but will never run, jump, climb, etc. again, and my bowel and bladder functions are severely constrained requiring a very strict diet and very attentive monitoring to be able to even accomplish those basic functions.
Hundreds and hundreds (many right here on FR) prayed and followed my experience and stoory.
Prayers were answered...many hearts were touched.
I have now seen two more grandkids boorn, a son return from a foreign mission for our church, a daughter preparing to get married (our other two daughters and one other son already are married), and have been able to enjoy my grandkids so much.
Would I be better off dead? That’s God’s decision...not mine. I need to be a tool in His hand and help others, and witness to others...which is what I am doing now.
The inclination to allow assisted suicide and somehow say its okay for folks to just die is not an inclination or thought that comes from God. He is perfectly capable of taking us when our time comes in innumerable ways.
He wants us to have faith, to come to Him and His Son, and then to bear witness of Him in all circumstance and use our free will to live as long as we can and help others.
I know this to be true.
My Sacral Chordoma
http://www.jeffhead.com/chordoma.htm
God bless you and your family and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.
Good stuff!
My father is an esophageal cancer survivor with similar challenges.(Plus he is unable to lay flat, which compromises not only his sleep but any medical care as well). My girls were babies when he was diagnosed, and now they are on the brink of adulthood (18 next month), extremely grateful to have their Grandpa in their lives.
“...is not an inclination or thought that comes from God.”
Just today I was watching a homeless guy with a heavy pack and a cane slowing making his rounds of the dumpsters. I thought to myself what keeps that guy going? If it were me - I’d probably blow my head off.
Hopefully I would remember your sentiments above though. The kids and I were watching that zombie show on T.V., and the discussion of suicide came up - and they all thought they would kill themselves rather than to try to survive in a zombie infested place.
I explained to them that life always has its difficulties, and sometimes there seems like no hope, but there always is. And you fight for it and struggle for it. (”But dad - these are ZOMBIES!”)
Glad to see that you made it through all of your treatments so far from your home.
I’m happy to see you here, sharing the good news of God’s blessings. I hope he continues to bless you.
Here’s another side......
My MIL, a serious student of English History and literature, and former bank president, is now little more than a child in her dotage. Witnessing the agony of her daughters trying to cope with her declining mental/physical state is trying, to say the least !
How do you comfort a wife whose mother is little more than an infant ? A mother whose greatest pride was her mind, ( and her greatest fear was its loss) ?
And I’m facing the same issues myself, it seems !
So who “determines dignity” ? For my MIL, it seems it devolves upon her daughters. I can only be supportive. In my case, I’ve already made certain determinations based upon defined presenting conditions.
At some point we all must ask ourselves how much moral/ethical/legal burden are we willing to place upon our wives/husbands/children in these “end of life” decisions ?
>PS
you are an excellent living witness to faith. Thanks for posting, and thanks for being.
Thank you for sharing your story, Jeff. A blessed and Merry Christmas to you and your family!
Blessed and Merry Christmas.
Praise God.
Very happy you are still with us, Jeff.
Jeff, a Merry Christmas to you and your family.
You are FR’s resident walking miracle, and a testimony to your faith in the goodness of God, the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit.
If the life of one is considered of no value, then the life of all have no value.
If we can print trillions to bail out foreign banks, we can print green pieces of paper to save lives. We are always being set up by the godless to accept a limit on resources, a false choice in order to “save society”.
Well, we have been cleaning the air for 40 years, and it still isn’t clean enough, according to the enviro whackjobs.
We have been cleaning the water for 40 years, and it still isn’t clean enough.We have been fighting the War on Drugs for 40 years, and it never ends. The War on Poverty is in its 46th year, and there is no hope of winning in sight.
We have eliminated 60 million Americans since 1973 with abortion on demand, and after almost 39 years, every child is evidently still not a “wanted child”.
Thus, there will be no end of the ever expanding list of “undesirables” who we will be told are “just taking resources from the living”.
The rest of the world can run off that cliff. Not my country, if I can help it.
We are much better than that.
Continued good health to you, Jeff. God is not finished with you yet. You still have a job to do for Him, and when that job is done, He will promote you to Heaven. You have influenced many, and there are many more you will yet influence.
All glory to God forever and ever.