How can we help the Joyce family? (11/18/24)

 This is by far the most common question I’ve gotten in the past couple weeks, and the answer might surprise you so I’m going to spend a little time explaining my thought process on this before answering it directly.

Prior to 10:23 AM CST on November 4, 2024, anyone who posed this sort of question to me would have gotten a very prideful answer about how “I’ve got this” followed by a reminder of how self-sufficient I am. In that moment, I somehow knew immediately that the only way my family was going to make it to the other side of this journey would be for every day to be “Yes day” moving forward. Now that I’ve had a little more time to process the validity of that intuition, there are some very logical reasons why accepting help that is offered is such a wise strategy.

The most basic reason has to do with the concept of “crowd wisdom.” In 1906, Francis Galton described a competition at the Plymouth County fair in which over 800 people were asked to guess the weight of an ox. When he averaged all the guesses together, he came up with 1,197 pounds. The actual weight of the animal: 1,198 pounds. In our current situation, there are hundreds of decisions that we have to make in an environment where we have zero experience or framework to even know where to start. These range from how to approach treatment (a broad topic that includes not just chemotherapy agents but also figuring out how to manage deconditioning, pain control, etc.) to what we should be doing to help our children. People grieve in different ways, so I have no idea if you can apply what I’m saying to other situations, but one reason I have been reluctant to offer advice or share from my own experiences when I encounter others who are suffering is that I’m afraid I will come across as insensitive. As a case in point, I’d be willing to bet that at least one out of every eight people reading this have been personally impacted by breast cancer either themselves or through a direct relative. I can imagine the tension you must feel knowing that you may have some really good advice, but not wanting to come across as sounding like you understand everything we’re going through. Maybe yours was cured with a lumpectomy, so you’re not sure if the degree of anxiety you experienced is relevant here. It doesn’t matter. We still need that data so that when we average everything together we’ll come a little closer to the right answer. When Harvard Business School publishes a case study, they don’t expect that each of the lessons will be applicable to every single company. Nor do they assume that any of the lessons will be applicable at the exact time point that an executive is studying a case and looking for applications in their own company. The same is true for our family as we embark on this new curriculum on how to walk through cancer and the suffering it leaves in its wake.

I never thought I would say this, but I’m so thankful that this isn’t my first experience with pain and suffering in my own life. I can remember an event that took place in my 20’s that really knocked me off my feet. I could only imagine a future that looked incredibly bleak, and at that time I didn’t really have the resources to process what I was going through. Sitting in church one day, I came across Romans 5:3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Meditating on this verse, I observed that you really can’t find an example of someone who really made a difference in this world without noticing that they had to go through some pretty awful stuff on their way to having an impact. That idea continues to bring me hope now, even though the stakes are so much higher. Ironically, the event that almost destroyed me 25 years ago was getting dumped by a girl that I assumed I could never be happy without. It’s almost comical looking back on it now, considering who I ended up with!!

 Apart from the very practical advantages of drawing on every resource available to us, we have unexpectedly tapped into something much more powerful through this journey—Love. Like Abbe Faria from “The Count of Monte Cristo” who miscalculates his escape strategy from the Chateau d’If and winds up digging into the cell of Edmond Dantes, we have experienced the unexpected joy of a connection with others who understand how isolating these moments can be. As Dumas describes the aftermath of this first encounter: “He [Dantes] then gave himself up to his happiness. He would no longer be alone; he was perhaps about to regain his liberty. At the worst, if he remained a prisoner, he would have a companion; and captivity that is shared is but half captivity.” This experience has been like being trapped in a prison that lives up to the assessment of Thomas Hobbes for being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” only to discover a shovel and a map that leads to hundreds of cells that contain fellow prisoners in their own form of captivity.  All of them are within reach, and at the end of the digging—freedom.

C.S. Lewis said that “to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” As surprising as this request may sound, the thing that would be most helpful for me is to respond to the sounds of tools scratching in my direction by bringing my own love to bear on the distance that separates us. Let me know how I can pray for you. Let me join in your suffering as we all take to heart the words of 1 Peter 4: 12-13: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed at the revelation of His glory.” Mark Twain said that “the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.” It took almost five decades, but I think I may have finally reached that second day.