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Lessons:
· The First Lesson:
· “If you don’t have your health…”
· Big failures – my inability to walk through the valley
· Base Jumping – when we seek to come face to face with death
· Facing death with the mind – thinking our way through
· Facing death with the heart – feeling our way through
· Facing death with the soul – faithing our way through
· From the mountain to the valley
· Loosing life – finding life
· Selling today for tomorrow
· Miracles of Generosity
· Job loss – salvation through failure

I don’t want to make you feel bad if you’re one of them, but I get frustrated when folks say, “At least we’ve got our health,” or worse, “If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.” AAAHHHHH!!!!

First let me say I understand this impulse – I appreciate being healthy, and work hard to stay that way (sometimes). But none of us really ‘has our health.’ Health is not a possession that you can go and acquire like a new suit or a place in the country. You may spend hours in time, energy, money to ‘be healthy’ – watching what you eat, visiting the gym (and actually exercising, not just saying, “hi”_ going to doctors and trainers, avoiding tobacco, alcohol and anything else that might disrupt your body’s natural rhythms (even coffee?!). And you still get cancer or drop dead from a heart attack. Or you don’t drop dead but perhaps worse you have a debilitating stroke that leaves you physically and mentally impaired for decades, suddenly relying on others for the most basic of daily functions.
So, what does it mean to “have health”? And what have you said about your neighbor who doesn’t? Is she ‘less’ – less human, less valuable, less able to have meaning and purpose in life?
In western culture – if I may generalize – one’s value is often determined by the ability to produce a marketable product or service that is useful to society. When we first meet someone, we ask, “What do you do?” as a way to classify or understand them.
What if instead we were to ask, “What do you believe,” “What do you value,” What do you love,” Who is important to you,” “How do you make difficult decisions”? If I were asked those questions by a new acquaintance, I might feel threatened – like they were wanting to challenge me on those things – that only speaks to how twisted our society is and how afraid we are to be in relationship with people. Relationships are dangerous – they are where we get most hurt – But relationships are also the source of greatest joy in life.
Read a book like Mitch Album’s Tuesdays with Morrie and you realize the great grace that can be found in loosing one’s health – the simple ecstatic pleasures – talk, touch, companionship – again, things which come in relationship.
One reason we hate illness is that it compromises our freedom & independence. Many of us (I) don’t like to ask for help. I will do a task poorly and incorrectly rather than say, “I’m not sure how – I need a hand.” What is it at work in us that so needs such independence, such freedom? Even in my most intimate relationships with family and dear friends, I’m slow to say “I need help, I need you.”
Sickness gives us that gift, if we’re open. When I am really ill, I am forced to rely on the help and support of others. I see men and women resist it, though I think for different reasons. Women resist because they are accustomed to being the care takers, doing for others. Receiving another’s care seems to violate that foundational principle that helps create a definition of self. This is a connectional relationship, but one based upon her ability to care for others. For men, the reason goes away from connection toward independence. “I have been told to make my own way in the world, and that means I shouldn’t rely upon anyone.” Now, that said, it is often the case (for me and others) that when men finally to accept help, particularly from a wife, we regress into some kind of son/mother relationship and become, as our wives might say, “big babies.”
How often I go to the doctor with dread rather than gratitude. My attitude toward my healthcare professionals could be, “Thank you. Thank you for investing in your education, studying and working hard so that I can be healthy, and so when I need you, you are there for me. And further, “How can I be here for you?” How can I make my relationships with such people (all people?) more reciprocal? How many of my relationships are one-sided, or at least lopsided – money in exchange for service – a simple economic transaction and nothing more. “You do this for me, and I (or my insurance company) will pay you $XX.xx.
I even approach ministry that way – fee for service. I do because I’m paid, and if someone outside the circle wants something from me, I want to be paid for that too. I think about being paid for weddings, funerals, counseling, etc. Instead, I might view all of these as gifts I am able to offer others because I’m already well paid.

As Scott and began to talk about his experience of living with cancer and what it meant for him and for his family, and for me, it became important to try to gain something from it. He valued seeking some meaning, something useful and even redemptive to rise from all the heartache and pain. I suggested that we write a book, with the working title, “Lessons from the valley” taken from the 23rd Psalm. The 23rd Psalm is a text of Old Testament scripture familiar to folks who know nothing else from the bible, because they’ve been to funerals and heard it read. Even people who don’t consider themselves either Christian or Jewish request this text for a funeral, because it is so comforting, so full of hope and peace.
The Psalmist writes, “Even when I’m at my lowest point, most in danger, weakest and most alone in the world, I will not be afraid, because in fact I am not alone – YOU, o God, are with me.” The Psalmist knows by Faith that when he faces death, God is with him. And the belief in that divine presence gives the writer comfort.
Scott could articulate, long before it became clear that he would not recover and go into remission, that this experience with cancer was a “walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” Death hangs everywhere when cancer comes. All the images from literature, art, and film come flooding in – a grim reaper, robed in black, with his own rod and staff not of comfort but of loss, shepherding the departed soul to the netherworld, never to return. Even when we have a faith story contrary to those myths, the images still hold power for us. The grim reaper, as if from some Charles Dickens novel like the ghost of Christmas future, showing us our own mortality.
So, Scott and I would sit, usually in a hospital room while Cindy and the boys were out, and we’d talk. He’d talk, mostly. I’d listen, ask questions, occasionally pushing for understanding. We were both optimistic in those early days. I think you probably have to be, to get through. It certainly seems to be the case that pessimism will kill, even if optimism won’t save. So I would talk of the future, with him in it, living out and teaching what he’d learned. This would not end like “Tuesdays with Morrie” in a Eulogy for an Epilogue. But it did, and there are lessons there as well to explore.
I don’t know why you’ve picked this up to read. Perhaps you’re entering your own valley, and looking for a traveling companion to point out some of the trail markers along the way. We’ll do some of that. Or, it may be that you are looking back on your valley, trying to make sense of what you’ve been through. You may be the one with the illness or injury, the object of everyone’s sympathy and pity, feeling at times more like a science experiment or med school lab lesson than a person. You may be a traveling companion – spouse, sibling, parent, child, friend – who has nursed and cared and laughed and raged and cried, feeling helpless. The valleys you’ve traveled may have provided numerous lessons for you, and for you to share. Or, it may have left you simply numb.
Not all of us enter into our valleys equally equipped to learn and grow and even thrive in and through them. Scott and I believe that our faith in Christ provides the equipping we need for this journey that each of us will take multiple times in our lives. As others have said, “no on gets out of this alive.” And this is true – death comes to us all. If we love at all, we will loose those we love through illness, injury, or the long passing of time and the natural entropy of our bodies – their inclination to eventually just stop.
I want to speak and write of Scott in the present tense at times – he is still very much present for me, and for others too. Scott is a man of faith and intellect, with a great love for his family and for nature, both of which he knows to be gifts from a loving God. For me this is not just a past reality, but a present one. The valley may have something to say about that too.
Let me say, finally, that most of what follows is mine, though informed by my conversations with Scott, primarily, and others secondarily. This is a result of one of the lessons that the valley has to teach “You never know how much time you have.” “Scott, we started too late, and worked too slow.” I say this not out of guilt, its simply a fact. One of Scotts goals was to die with no regrets – I’m not sure if he made it or not, but I suspect so, or that he came close anyway. The thought that comes to me is something like this: “The best I can do is the best I can do.” Now, sure, not everyone tries their best – Scott didn’t always, and neither do I. But when you realize this and then are able to commit to making a change, then you’ve learned something, you’ve grown, and maybe the journey through the valley hasn’t been a total loss after all.
My prayer is that through all of this, you find what you need, before during or after your valley experiences, to equip you for the journey. For us, Scott and me, that journey only makes sense in and through a life of faith. Most of all, we hope and pray that the greatest lesson from your journeys through the valley is to join Scott and the psalmist in these words:

Psalm 23
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
I will fear no evil.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil – My cup overflows.
Surely Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.