Friends-
This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, Iâll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.
Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; itâs a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too â we all do.
Iâm blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, âSure, youâre on the clock, but weâre all on the clock.â Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.
Still, Iâve got less time than Iâd prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I canât begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as weâd temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer â and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and sheâs off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (sheâs a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, weâve been driving off-book for six years â but now weâve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldnât be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.
Thereâs not a good time to tell your peeps youâre now marching to the beat of a faster drummer â but the season of advent isnât the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of whatâs to come.
Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope â often we lazily say âhopeâ when what we mean is âoptimism.â To be clear, optimism is great, and itâs absolutely necessary, but itâs insufficient. Itâs not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters youâre not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops theyâre gonna bury their son.
A well-lived life demands more reality â stiffer stuff. Thatâs why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope â often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.
Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer â a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city â with foundations and without cancer â is not yet.
Remembering Isaiahâs prophecies of whatâs to come doesnât dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternityâs perspective:
âWhen we've been there 10,000 yearsâŠWe've no less days to sing God's praise.â
Iâll have more to say. Iâm not going down without a fight. One sub-part of Godâs grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying arenât the same â the process of dying is still something to be lived. Weâre zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and Iâve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.
But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: âThe people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawnedâŠ.For to us a son is givenâ (Isaiah 9).
With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben â and the Sasses