Growing Up With the Holy Ghost Part II: Cancer with Christ

In part one of the this blog, I talked a lot about my first experiences with religion. The Baptist church of my stepfathers was really the first church and experiences with Christianity I can remember a lot about and was very involved in. However, this wasn't the last church I called home before I ended up here. After falling on some very hard times, my family and I moved to a neighboring town. While the Baptist church wasn't very far away, we decided to start going to a church that my aunt had been attending and recommended to my mother. This one was a Pentecostal church and it was quite a bit different. During this time, a major event happened in my life I'd like to tell you about...

In March of 2003, at the age of twelve, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I had come home one evening and noticed a large lump around my collar bone. My mother took me to the ER that night. At first we thought it might have been an issue with my collarbone considering how large and visible the lump was, but I was in no pain at all. From the start, I was worried about the possibility of, well, cancer. My mother had mentioned it briefly going over possible causes and I was old enough to know that lumps = cancer a lot of times. After some tests, we were told by the ER doctor that I had several enlarged lymph nodes from some type of virus or infection. I was told to take the antibiotics he prescribed and the nodes would go down in about four weeks. I remember getting home later that night feeling incredibly relieved. I had no idea about lymphoma's and my worries about cancer were put to rest for the time being. I also remember doing something else that night. I had this special nightly routine of my own, personal bedtime prayer. I always thanked God for another day, asked for more of them if He was willing, sent out a broad, generic prayer for all of those suffering around the world, and would usually finish with "I rebuke the Devil in your name. I love and believe in you with all of my heart." I would also fill in specific prayer requests for others and myself if I needed it - it usually followed my request to end world hunger. I will always remember my prayer that night. I remember thanking God for letting the lumps only be swollen lymph nodes and not something more serious. My mother, a nurse, didn't feel quite right about my ER diagnosis. The next day she set up an appointment with my pediatrician to see me as soon as possible. After that visit I was immediately sent to a surgeon for a biopsy on the lymph nodes on my neck. It was then that the cancer was found and I was flown to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital a few days later.

I'm sure some of my Christian readers read that and thought "Oh, this explains it. He's mad at God for letting him get cancer!". I can assure you, that isn't the case at all. After I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's a week later, I felt no anger at all. I didn't even question it that I remember. The only questions I had were "What did I do?". No anger, I just thought it may have been a punishment for something I had done - in all of my twelve years to raise hell. I didn't dwell on that, however. I, like I had been taught, simply assumed this was in God's plan and I couldn't understand it. In my world anger towards God or questioning his motives was never an option. With this approach, my faith strengthened as I felt I needed God to make it through treatment. I leaned heavily on it throughout the entire ordeal. Never once did I feel any sort of anger about my situation. Even when I was faced with bad news from this test of that scan, I still held on as tight as ever.

 In late summer of 2003 I had just finished up my chemotherapy treatments, which were the bulk of all my initial treatment protocol. After a routine scan I was found to be cancer-free. I was absolutely ecstatic! I had just beaten cancer in a few months and before I had finished treatment! That night I had a lot of praise for God/Jesus for taking the cancer away. The prayers had worked and my God had come through again like he always had: we won't talk about the times He didn't, it's His will, don't worry about it. He had worked another miracle and I owed him even more now. Even though I had went into remission quicker than expected, the doctors wanted to follow through with protocol and go on with radiation. It was my choice and I opted for it. A  few weeks later I was in Memphis to begin some low-dose radiation. After a week of routine appointments and prepping for radiation, I took another scan. This one, however, showed the cancer was back. I had relapsed and it had actually come back more aggressive than previously. Just like the first diagnosis, I was not mad at God in the least bit. Once again, I accepted this as God's will and knew he would get me through it once more. I never even regretted the praise I had given him for ridding me of cancer the first time, either. I just happened to be unlucky, but as I heard and still hear so many times, "If God brought you to it, he'll bring you through it." My faith in God was kicked up a few notches still and I felt I was leaning on him even more now. After nine months of twenty rounds of high-dose chemo, twenty-two radiation treatments, a handful of surgeries and a stem-cell transplant, I went into remission again...and where do you think the majority of my gratitude went? None other than the non-existent invisible man in the sky and talking to myself prayer. After my transplant the cancer was still there, but shrinking. The protocol called for two more rounds of high-dose chemo post-transplant. I went in for the first treatment and was feeling absolutely horrible from what I do remember of that day before waking up in ICU. I had fluid building around my heart and lungs, on top of that pesky cancer in my neck and chest. My mother called our preacher, our new Pentecostal one, and he and his wife came out to the hospital and a prayer meeting was held bedside by them, my parents and my aunt. All in attendance "laid  hands" and the pastor and my aunt spoke in tongues. About a week later the doctors managed to keep the fluid off of my heart and lungs. I was finally released to go back home, not knowing at all about how close I had come to dying. A week or so after my trip to the ICU, I had the first of the two rounds of chemo originally planned. A scan soon after showed the cancer had shrunk more than what it was visible immediately after my transplant. Though we were told that the effects of the transplant were likely to be delayed, this "miracle" was of course attributed to the perceived power of prayer. I finished the last two rounds of chemo and the scan after that round revealed the cancer was essentially gone. After another biopsy it was official: I was cancer-free. I never lost faith during this time, not even a question as to why this was happening to me and the thousands of children I saw going through much worse at St. Jude's. My faith soared to where it never was before I got sick.

As I mentioned several times before, I can never remember being angry at all towards God, only thankful that I was pulling through and also that my situation wasn't more serious. I emphasize that for two reasons: 1) for those that believe this was when I lost my faith or I am mad at God for my illness and 2) to show how much of a hold Christianity had on me at the time. This was a life-changing event and my outlook on life, now at the age of fourteen, changed dramatically. I frequently saw children much younger than me with much more life-threatening diagnoses, and some of these little ones didn't make it. Some of my friends I made didn't either. Death is a lot to take in as a thirteen year old; it's a lot to live with now at twenty-three. Coming in for a treatment, asking about a friend, only to find out she passed away the week before (I just had seen her smiling face a few weeks prior) was a very hard thing to go through. My algebra teacher's daughter had visited me during my treatment, having just beat Leukemia herself. Not much later after that, she was diagnosed with a extremely serious brain tumor. The next time I got to visit her was at her wake, she passed at the age of sixteen. Both families of these heroes of mine were very religious like mine. There's an extreme amount of guilt some people in that situation carry afterwards and I still feel it to this day. At the time, I tried to turn it into something more positive. I told myself that my friends death, the death of other children I met, and the plight of countless little ones suffering these horrible diseases were all a part of God's plan. I was told that God had something in store for me, that I lived for a reason and that reason was to serve him and fulfill his almighty will: whatever that may be. That's a lot to take on for anyone, especially at that age. I was burdened not only with doing what God needed me to do, I also had to live in honor of those who didn't survive. The latter is something that still sticks with me today. While I don't believe in any ridiculous plan of a non-existent deity, those that passed away were real and had their own plans, hopes and dreams.

Today, when I tell someone I'm an atheist and that I'm a cancer-survivor, a lot of them can't understand how that could be. God, they say, brought me through it and saved my life. I only managed this because I had strong faith, that I survived only because I was a believer. My answer is that while, yes, I did believe in God when I beat cancer, I was also was just as strong a believer when I got cancer. The Lord giveth before he taketh away. I also have heard that I'm only an atheist because I'm mad at God because I got cancer. This, as I've shown, is just completely false. As I mentioned several times above, while going through my illness I only became more passionate about my beliefs. It was years before I lost my belief in God and cancer had absolutely nothing to do with it. The only thing I'm upset with today is the fact I was so naive and foolish to believe there was some being meddling and saving my life. I'm also ashamed of the fact that I didn't appreciate the true reasons I pulled through: my family, my nurses/doctors, and advanced medicine. Science was my savior, medicine my messiah. The notion that I'm angry at God also doesn't make sense for one very big reason: I don't believe in the existence of a God. I'm an atheist because I have come to the sound conclusion that there is no God and never was. For me to be angry at something, I'd have to acknowledge its existence. This is impossible with atheism. Some need to understand that us atheists aren't pissed at some imaginary being, we can't have emotions towards something that isn't there. It would be like being depressed that my imaginary friend died or when I don't get something I wanted at Christmas time, I get pissed at Santa. 

This event that occurred my life has affected my current beliefs and shaped my overall approach to life. As I said before, it gave me a purpose in life. At the time, I thought that purpose was to devote my life to a religion and its God because I had been mercifully spared to carry on the torch of the trinity. I realize now that I had it all wrong. The purpose I now hold is of the secular kind,. It's one of humanism that envelopes kindness, compassion, charity, and goodness without a god. I hear too often that a life without God is meaningless and not worth living. This arrogant, offensive and ignorant claim doesn't hold a drop of holy water. I have found my godless life much more meaningful than it ever was while I was a believer. Why? Because it undeniably is in every single way. Everything around you becomes so much more meaningful when viewed through a pious-less prism. Nature, for example,  becomes more amazing than it was before. The fact that our world has created and sustained everything around us is nothing short of incredible. When the truth reaches you that there was no creator planting this tree or flipping on that light-switch, that everything happened after billions of years of torrent changes and chance, it leaves you in complete awe. And us folks that inhabit it? I think Lawrence Krauss said it best...

"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren't created at the beginning of time. They were created in nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were king enough to explode. So, forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be here today."

To me, that's so much more beautiful than any fictional story we may be told when we're growing up. The fact that makes it even more incredible is knowing that that is based on a true story, our story. As a kid, it may have been neat to think we were dropped in by a stork. But when we're older we see how amazing the process of life is. The reality is much more impressive than the children's story. It's the same feeling you get when the neat stories you're told in Sunday school about coming from dirt and a rib are replaced by the story of reality and fact that we're a product of stars, time and chance all coming together in an indescribably beautiful way. How could anyone call that a meaningless life? Because we know there was no God in the ingredient of life doesn't downgrade our existence and we should never let that notion go unchallenged. Contrary to what some may believe, a subscription to the absurd ideas that religion proposes does not give life weight. A manufactured messiah does not assign meaningfulness to what's already undeniably full of it. 

When examined, that life becomes that much more precious. It's meaningfulness is real, but the meaning is much different than what a religious person sees. I know it changed for me. You realize that this isn't a dress-rehearsal for some happy-ever-after (or not-so-happy-ever-after) outside of this life. There's no proof whatsoever for a heaven, hell or afterlife of any kind. I'll admit it, that's scary as shit. This is it. You're in it right now kindly reading my words(sorry). It's the purest form of truth and everything that is real exists here and now. It's palpable and short, not promised and forever-after. It is heaven and it's hell. It's a tiny blip in time to do whatever it is you want to do, then poof, it's gone. It's everything now that a religion promises will happen later on -  after you've given the one true life you have to it. It's the only thing an atheist worships. There's nothing more jaw-dropping than realizing the atheistic odyssey you' and everyone around you is on, whether or not they know it - because we're all without a God whether we accept that or not. While that's an uneasy truth to swallow, looking at what we have done on our own offers a lot of solace. When you realize that we've been doing it all on our own the entire time without help from some supernatural being, you see how truly special we all are. You had the strength the entire time to overcome any of those obstacles in your life. You had the kindness inside to help others all along, it didn't need to be activated by an alleged almighty. You may have passed a test, you may have created a life, you may have beat cancer...but whatever it was, big or small, you did it. You did all of those things you thought you couldn't do without help from the empty above. You. So how dare anyone say that your life becomes meaningless simply because you reject the non-existent omnipotent and accept the godless obvious.

When I was going through my bouts with cancer, I didn't see any of this. That, to me, was the worst ailment I experienced when I reflect on that time in my life. I was too busy sending up countless praises and prayers that dissolved after leaving my lips, never reaching what was never there. That was the most unfortunate part of my life that I look back on. I sometimes have to pause to think about what a tragedy it would have been if I had succumbed to my illness in that ICU room nearly ten years ago. If I had, Matthew Skeens's obituary would have likely mentioned God, angels and heaven; and it no doubt would have began "he went to be with the Lord today...". Perishing in youth is an unspeakable tragedy on its own, but personally, dying before the age of reason would have been the biggest tragedy of all. Defeating cancer seems easier now compared to wiping out the pious virus that I suffered from since it was first introduced to me sitting in the church pews as a young boy. I had no chemo or radiation to aid me during the internal struggle I faced years later while recovering from the terrifying and oppressing myths that flowed through my veins. While my religiosity was inoperable, in different ways the ever-omnipresent thing called science still led the way in my remission.

I've been cancer-free for nine years and Christ-free for four of those. The former I can't guarantee forever, but the latter I can. I'm cured.