So This Is Suffering...

By Andrew Miller

God loves his children, blesses his own, rewards those who serve him, tells us to ask and receive, and heals those who believe. Really? Then why on earth am I lying in a hospital bed with cancer? So This Is Suffering... is a first-hand, real-time account of a battle with cancer over a three month period. Told with candor, insight and humour, the author shares a world of needles and nausea, fear and fatigue, and hospitals and bad haircuts. But it turns out there was more to it all. Much more. For the experience also opened up a rich world of Biblical understanding, ministry opportunities and most of all the reality of joy in even the most desperate circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365066016

Andrew Miller

ANDREW MILLER is an operations expert whose clients include the Bank of Nova Scotia, McKesson Canada, 3M Canada, Mount Sinai Hospital, and other world-class institutions. Before starting his firm in 2006, he held senior consulting positions with IBM Business Consulting Services and PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting.

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So This Is Suffering...

So This is Suffering…

Cancer, Chemo and Christ

- a personal and Biblical journey of suffering

© Andrew Miller, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrew Miller with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  Andrew can be contacted at [e-mail]

ISBN #: 978-1-365-06601-6

For Johnny, who suffers with me.

1.  My Story

God loves his children, blesses his own, rewards those who serve him, tells us to ask and receive, and heals those who believe.

Really?

Then why on earth am I lying in a hospital bed with cancer?

My name is Andrew.  I’m 49 years old.  I have follicular lymphoma. 

A little about me.

I was born and bred in Australia, growing up with two loving parents and three ugly brothers.  We grew up in the church and the youth group we attended for many years played a big role in the adolescent lives we lived - things like egging our friends’ cars and erecting ‘for sale’ signs in front of houses that were not for sale - and the characters and faith that we would develop which would shape the course of our lives.  I married Toyoko, and we soon moved to Japan where I started my own English school and continued egging my new friends’ cars.  About ten years later, the church we were attending inexplicably asked me to become the pastor, and so after completing my formal training, I stopped egging cars and began to lead the local international church.  Then about ten years later, after faithfully serving the church, I got lymphoma.

A little about my lymphoma. 

Follicular lymphoma is a treatable but incurable cancer of the lymph nodes.  I was first given the prognosis after surgery on a lump in my right armpit when the Japanese doctor mistook the white man’s ‘tell me everything’ for ‘no tact required’ and the moment I came out of the anaesthetic, leaned over my face and bellowed, You have lymphoma!  Yet the doctors were very optimistic that the surgery had gone well.  Perhaps a little too optimistic.  I was led to believe that as the affected lymph node had been successfully removed that any trace of lymphoma had been removed with it.  I was told to celebrate.  And I was thankful.

Six months later on a routine follow up examination, a small lump was detected, again in my right armpit and immediately the doctor declared it lymphoma and began to schedule treatment.  My wife and I had always made a point of going to the hospital together so that in the event of hearing bad news, we would be there for each other.  On this occasion, believing it to be nothing more than a routine check up, I was on my own. 

After receiving the initial results, I was told to sit in the corridor and wait for the nurse to come and explain the treatment I would require.  Normally a stoic Aussie, I can’t tell you how miserable I felt sitting in that silent hospital hallway on my own.  The emptiness of that normally bustling corridor was a sad metaphor for the awful emptiness I was feeling inside at the time.  All jocularity and joy gone, it was dismal.  And then the questions began to tumble:

Was this really happening?

Why was this happening?

Why would God allow this to happen?

How does this fit in with God’s plans for my life?

The goal of my life is to glorify God in all I do - how could God be glorified through incurable sickness?

How will this affect my family, my work, my ministry?

Is God really in control?

So I write this not as a learned professional speaking with an outside wisdom, but as a sufferer speaking from within the throes of chemotherapy, and as one who has grappled and continues to grapple personally with the pain of suffering.  And although I have experienced and understand that there are many different types of suffering - physical pain, mental anguish, work stress, marital conflict, prodigal children, financial trouble, accident trauma, persecution, rejection, betrayal, spiritual torment and so on - I want to declare that even now - not from a mountain top and with the benefit of hindsight - but in the deepest valley and in the darkest night and with the uncertainty of my frail frame before me, that there is purpose to pain, that God can and will be glorified in our suffering if we allow it, and that, yes, there can even be joy in these times, not in our suffering itself of course, but in spite of our suffering.

The apostle Paul said, In all our troubles, my joy knows no bounds.  I begin this writing as I start my first round of chemotherapy.

Share this journey with me.

2.  Healing Experiences

There is an unspoken thought in Christian circles that ‘spiritual winners’ read books on healing while ‘spiritual losers’ read books on suffering.  Or perhaps worse still, that the ‘faithful’ seek healing while the ‘less faithful’ merely seek comfort for what seems to be their inevitable suffering.  Let me state from the start what should be obvious and uncontested: that both healing and suffering can and will be a normal part of the Christian experience and the wise and mature Christian is the one who is at peace with both.

I’d like to share with you two miraculous healings I have personally experienced because I want you to know that I write about suffering out of a fundamental belief and experience that God heals, not only through natural processes and doctors - praise God for both - but also by miraculous means.  So I’m not a pessimist trying to bring peace and understanding to the topic suffering because I’ve given up on healing.  Neither am I an unrealistic optimist who clings to miraculous healing because I haven’t had the fortitude or patience to develop a theology of suffering.  Rather, I’ve learnt the secret of being content in any and all circumstances (Philippians 4:12), which includes both healing and suffering.

When I was in my early twenties I had an abseiling accident which left me with chronic sciatica.  To this day I’ve never experienced pain anything like that of sciatica and I hobbled around with it for three years.  Though there were ‘good days’ and ‘bad days’, generally it felt as though I were being stabbed in the buttock with a needle with every step I took.  Over those three years, I saw many doctors, physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists - basically anyone who could bring me any pain relief.  None could.  I also took medicine to dull the pain.  And oh, how I prayed.  One of C.S.Lewis’ most often quoted expressions is that pain is God’s megaphone.  I can tell you, God sure had my attention during that period.  But I was never sure that I had His.  I had little relief at all and I began to wonder with real trepidation if I would have to endure this pain for the rest of my life.  Where was God and why wasn’t He helping me?

At the age of twenty-five, my work sent me to Tokyo for six months.  The inn that I was placed in for that period backed onto a church.  Every Sunday morning I would attend.  I could barely understand a thing they were talking about but I just enjoyed sitting amongst other believers, following the reading of the day (that was the only thing in English) and looking out into a beautiful little garden they kept off to the side of the sanctuary.

One day, a visiting evangelist came.  He was from America’s deep south and he spoke and behaved like the sort of stereotypical TV evangelist that so many joke about.  On the Saturday evening, they had a healing service.  Well, flamboyant TV evangelist or not, I remained desperate, so went along much more curious and suspicious than expectant or respectful.  The evening’s proceedings confirmed my feelings.  It was showtime and I felt embarrassed by all the hoo-ha.  Some of it was actually comical.  The evangelist would say, There’s someone here with nosebleeds, someone with a problem of a bleeding nose which was translated simply as someone with a nose problem.  I heard a