Tag: Pray with me

Ep.332: Experiential Religion.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

I find the New Testament book of 1 John both comforting and discomforting. 

It says “God is love”—a comforting thought. 

And it says “God is light”—a disturbing thought. I’m not sure I want this searchlight focused on me. 

Let’s start where John starts. 
   That which was from the beginning,
      which we have heard,
      which we have seen with our eyes.  . .
      and our hands have touched,
  this we proclaim about the word of life (1 John 1:1-2).

John’s religion was based on his experience. He heard and saw and touched Jesus. He wants to draw us into his experience with Christ. We can’t touch and hear and see Jesus, but we can share John’s experience of Christ who lives in us by his Spirit. 

In chapter 1, John describes this experience as truth, light, cleansing, fellowship, and joy. Quite a list. 

Here’s my summary of what John is saying.
    God is good, you are bad.
    God is light, you live in darkness.
    If you acknowledge your badness and darkness,
          God forgives and invites you into his goodness and light.

    So don’t be a poser, pretending you’re better than you are.
    Instead be a confesser.
        Shine the searchlight on yourself,
        tell the truth about your sins.
  Then you can step into a Christian community, a fellowship of truth and joy.  

It’s a wonderful vision of Christianity. 

As John says, 
    If we walk in the light
      as God is in the light,
    we have fellowship with one another,
      and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:9). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, too often I find myself slogging through the spiritual life, wondering where I missed John’s glorious vision of light, truth, joy, and fellowship.

Shine your light on me, exchanging darkness for light. Help me trade my self-serving worldview for your truth. Help me abandon my isolation for the fellowship of your family. 

Make my way like the dawn that gets brighter and brighter, until the full light of day (Prov 4:18).  

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep.331: Lessons Learned?

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

You may ask what I learned from my journey with cancer and chemo. My heartful reply is, “Life is confusing. I’m never sure what I’m learning.”

Perhaps Pete Seeger was thinking of me in Where Have All the Flowers Gone when he sang:
    When will they ever learn?
    When will they ever learn? 

However, since I do reflect on my life and my experiences, here are some thoughts. 

First, life is fragile and uncertain. I was physically healthy for 68 years, until cancer swept that away and introduced me to surgery and hospital stays and chemo-sickness. It doesn’t take much to land me in pain and helplessness.

My health is better this spring, but age now speaks to me in aching muscles. And creaky bones. And a forgetful mind. 

Moses said, “The length of our days is 70 years, or 80 if we have the strength. Yet their span is but trouble and sorrow for they quickly pass and we fly away” (Ps 90:10). I often think about flying away.   

A second lesson. My faith is in God, not in the medical system. The psalmist said, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the Lord our God” (Ps 20:7). 

Yes, some trust medicine and some natural remedies, but I trust in God who watches over life and death. Last November in the hospital with chemo-caused sickness, the medical profession didn’t understand what was wrong with me. My comfort was the beauty of cold winter sunrises in hospital windows, and the Spirit’s witness that God was looking out for me. 

My third lesson is endurance. Paul said, “We rejoice in our trials because we know that trials produce endurance” (Ro 5:3). I didn’t rejoice my way through chemo. But I endured it. I was miserable and fatigued, but I tried not to dump my misery on those around me, because God was teaching me Endurance 101. If I have passed that course, maybe I’m ready for Endurance 201. I think I’d prefer a lighter course. Does God offer basket weaving?

A fourth lesson is community. I’ve always been very private, but the Spirit prompted me to invite my community to journey with me. So I published a newsletter, posted on Facebook, and welcomed family and friends and visitors. During that chemo winter, I lost my spiritual disciplines—prayer and scripture and dog-walking. But the prayers and encouragement of the community supported me in some way I don’t understand. 

Let’s pray. 

O Father, I don’t look forward to Endurance 201. But I do look forward to the day I will fly away.

Thank you for lessons in endurance and community, for those who shared your love with me through the worst of my cancer winter. 

Life is a mystery. Science studies it and doctors heal it, but no one really understands it. 

Because life is your gift to us. You walk with us through the mystery we live on earth, into the mystery of eternity. 

Teach me to walk with grace and patience and humor.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep.330: Cancer, Chemo, COVID, and Wildfires.

Ep.330: Cancer, Chemo, COVID, and Wildfires.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

The effects of my chemotherapy were just wearing off when I got . . . COVID. 

Chemo and COVID, not exactly a marriage made in heaven. One evening when my COVID fever crept beyond 39 degrees Celsius, I checked myself into Emergency. They poked and prodded and took statements and extracted blood. Finally, they sent me home at 2:00 a.m. saying, “Come back if your breathing gets difficult and painful.”

After a restless sleep, I phoned the COVID hotline. A doctor prescribed the new COVID drug Paxlovid. Pills morning, pills evening, fatigue all the time! Oil-sludgy tasting tongue. Tingling feet. It was like chemo all over again. But only for five days. Small mercies?

Paxlovid didn’t kill or heal my COVID, it just slowed it down while my body built immunity. When I finished my pills, I got a COVID hacking cough and runny nose. My taste buds quit working, an improvement on the sludge, but not an outcome that made me happy.

A week later my home test kit declared me COVID-free. My taste buds and sense of smell started to recover—just in time to experience the smoke-filled air of Alberta wildfire season. A record 23 out-of-control wildfires burned thousands of square kilometers, creating 20,000 refugees. 

Edmonton air quality, normally one or two on a scale of ten, jumped beyond ten. My winter of sickness progressed into a spring of smoke-filled air.

Let’s pray. 

Our father, my tomato seeds grew stems with smooth, generic leaves, and then replaced them with pointy tomato leaves. 

My life is at the generic stage. In the dark soil of cancer and chemo and COVID, bits of your word germinated and grew timidly into the smokey air of my life. My garden has produced weak stems and immature leaves. 

What plants are you growing here, as you dirty your hands in the soil of my life? Are you breathing my smokey air and tending the tender plants?  

Paul said, in all things for the good of those who love you. May my heart respond to your love. May my life mature in your care. Bring your seedlings to a rich harvest.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep.329: Chemo, Part 2.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

My first round of chemo for colon cancer landed me in the hospital with a broken digestive system. Two weeks later and twenty pounds lighter, they sent me home. My digestion wasn’t back to normal, but it was usable.

My oncologist summoned me back to the cancer clinic to discuss resuming chemo. 

I said, “I don’t want to repeat that experience.” 

He said, “We don’t want you to repeat it either.” 

So we agreed on a second round of chemo at a 60% dose, starting after Christmas. 

On December 28, they gave me a two-hour intravenous drip of chemo meds, and sent me home with two weeks of chemo pills. Happy New Year, Daniel!  

I resumed my familiar routine: Omelet and pills in the morning, chemo pills for dessert after dinner. After two weeks, my digestion was out of order again, so I prescribed my own solution: an easy-to-digest, mostly liquid diet, while my body tried to flush out chemo meds.

My wife added popsicles to my recovery diet. Omelet for breakfast, popsicles for lunch, canned peaches with yogurt for dinner. The Michelin restaurant reviewers did not drop by to review my culinary adventures.  

The cancer clinic sampled my blood for a third round of chemo, and sent me home because my white blood cell count was low. The next week, my cells achieved the minimum passing grade. Yay . . .

This time, they added a growth hormone to the mix, and prescribed a syringe to self-inject it on my third day of chemo pills. 

The doctor said, “This encourages your bone marrow to produce more white cells. You might get growing pains–achy bones and muscles–like when you were growing up.”  

I have always wanted to grow up, but injecting myself with growth hormones didn’t make it happen. Instead, it made me ache all over. Miserable and fatigued, I spent a weekend sleeping unhappily on the couch. 

When round three ended, I restocked my popsicles for another round of digestive recovery. The good news was, my bone marrow responded to the popsicles and growth hormones, creating enough white cells to start round four of chemo on schedule. One last infusion of intravenous meds. Two final weeks of chemo breakfasts and desserts. One last self-injected syringe of growth hormones. 

On March 1, I finished chemo. At last my body would have an opportunity to  eliminate the poisons that persisted and the meds that lingered. Was the end in sight for abnormally dry hands, tingling feet, treacherous digestion, and endless fatigue?

Now, nearing the end of April, I eat almost normally. My hands and feet have improved. I still fatigue easily. And I am re-integrating into society. 

My first Sunday back at church I said to my friends, “The doctor cleared me to re-enter civilized society.” 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, my chemo companions were the Bible and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and our dog, Wall-E. The dog shared my long cold chemo winter. The Bible promised that endurance produces character. Dostoevsky held out hope that even the worst of us can find new life. 

Thank you that I have finished chemo. Thank you for the family that supported me and the church that prayed for me and the Christ who lives in me and the Easter story that shifs my focus from death to life. 

O father, clear out the poisons in my life. The remnants of chemo meds and the sin that so easily entangles me (Heb 12:3). 

As Paul said, “Let us celebrate the resurrection, not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor 5:8). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Ep.328: Chemotherapy.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Eight weeks after my cancer surgery, the Cross Cancer Institute inEdmonton extracted blood to determine if I’d survive chemo. “You’re good to go,” said the doctor as he cleared me for intravenous medicine and chemo pills. 

On the first snowy Wednesday of winter, nurses sat me in a recliner, draped me with a warm blanket, and started my two-hour drip of chemo meds.

The nurse said, “We’re the lucky ones. We have a fourth-floor view out the window!” 

I said, “Can you turn my chair so I can enjoy it?” 

Couldn’t be done. The view I got was busy nurses completing forms and hooking patients to IV’s. Blood, paperwork, chemicals. That’s life in Chemo City! I fed my brain with Dostoevky’s Crime and Punishment while the IV meds attacked the evil inside me. 

Then they sent me home with two weeks of chemo pills. Four pills morning, four evening. Take them with food because they’re hard on the stomach.  

The oxalyplatin from the IV lingered in my body and made me cold-sensitive. At night I wore socks to bed. In the morning I needed gloves to get an egg from the fridge for my morning omelet. Two weeks of eggs and chemo pills for breakfast, two weeks of chemo-pill dessert after dinner. I hated those pills. They coated my taste buds with motor-oil sludge, they threw off my digestion, made my hands and feet desert dry, and I always felt wasted. 

As Lamentations says, 
   I remember my affliction. . .
      the bitterness and the gall (3:19). 

It also says,
    Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed.
      His mercies are new every morning (3:23). 

I thanked God for small mercies under the merciless regime of chemo. I thanked God for the gift of sleep on cold winter nights. For warm naps on cold winter afternoons. For the daily omelet. For the courage to follow it with the hated pills. And I was most thankful for the promise of a week-long break after two weeks of meds.

I finished the round of pills on a Wednesday and started my week off. But my digestion had other plans. The pills left me unable to eat, and barely able to drink. I toughed it out, miserable and dehydrated, until Saturday, waiting for things to improve.

They didn’t. So my family took me to emergency, where I was put on IV to rehydrate, and kept for two nights until a hospital bed was available, in a room with a man who had spent 40 unhappy days in the hospital after a stroke. 

They gave me a clear liquid diet, of which the mainstay was jello. Red jello. Yellow jello. Green jello. Like stop lights. I just wanted it to stop! I tried, but I just can’t handle that much jello. Chicken broth and beef broth were better, thank you! Orange juice in the morning, cranberry juice at noon, apple juice at dinner. My wife supplemented the hospital fare with homemade broths and juices.  

After a week they declared I could eat regular food and they sent me home. I celebrated with a package of Japanese noodle soup, which proved my digestion had not recovered after all. An ambulance collected me, burping green bile, for a midnight ride back to the hospital. 

They didn’t know what was blocking my plumbing and backing up the bile. A CT scan showed nothing. So they put me back on a liquid diet, this time in an isolation room with a view of Sister Mary Ann Casey Park. In the coldest week of November, I watched the winter sun rise every day through fog and smog. It was beautiful.

Somehow, the winter sun warmed my soul. I found gladness in the sunrises, joy in the wintery landscape, hopefulness in the care of friendly nurses, patience with the everlasting hunger, grace in a podcast of morning prayers, love in the care of my family. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, I spent two weeks in the hospital. So did you. You were with me, my family cared for me, my church and friends prayed and visited. 

Who understands these gifts of your grace? 

O father, surprise me again today with the grace I need. May the sunrises of spring light my darkness. May patient endurance lead me to new hope and better character. I say with Paul, “I rejoice in my trials, because trials produce endurance; endurance produces character; character produces hope. And hope does not make ashamed because the love of God is poured out in our hearts” (Rom 5:3-5).  

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube