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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker
Life
October 2001
Turning Points:
Half Empty or Half Full
By Warren Cadwallader-Staub
"Warren, all the bones from your pelvis to your skull are filled with cancer. You must go to the hospital immediately."
As I sat on an examination table in the late afternoon of October 22, 1999, my life suddenly flashed before me. Everything that had happened before changed at this moment. What am I doing in this office? How could this have happened to me? What does this mean for my family? What from the last 46 years matters now? I was just diagnosed with advanced bone cancer. My cup was excruciatingly empty. Our fifteen-year-old son, Ben, heard the words, turned his face to the wall and started to cry. After a moment, he faced Dr. Packard and asked what Julie and I had been too afraid to pursue, "Is Dad going to die?" She met his probing gaze and answered his question as directly as he asked it, "We don't know that."
During the forty-eight hours following my diagnosis and throughout my experience of having cancer, I was to find that the level in my cup would change. I have gone from feeling like my cup was hopelessly empty to literally overflowing. Sometimes these changes were quick and wrenching, sometimes slow and manageable, and occasionally completely unnoticed at the time.
I clutched my empty cup in cold hands as we left the examining room. When we walked back into the waiting room, there sat David Colman, my boss, colleague and dear friend. We had reported to him that we were on our way to my doctor for news so serious she would not tell us over the phone. Immed-iately following our phone call, he had driven to her office and was with us during those first moments of shock and realization. "Plink." Something landed in the bottom of my cup.
Ben, Julie and I got back into the car and drove the familiar way home. On our way to the doctor's office I observed aloud the trees were nearly bare and how final this made the summer feel. On our way home, with my diagnosis wrenching in my guts, I noticed the trees still had many beautiful leaves, now brightening the cloudy fall day. "Plink, plink," went my empty cup.
We stopped at home to pick up a few things for the night in the hospital and Julie left a message for our pastor, David Wright. When we stepped across the hospital entrance threshold fifteen minutes later, there he sat with his spouse, waiting for us. They stayed with us until I was settled in my room. At the end of the evening we made a circle of hands, and together with broken hearts, we wept through our fears and prayed into our hopes. "Splash!" The level in my cup rose again.
Nora and Rachel, our 12-year-old twins, were staying overnight at a friend's house. We decided not to interrupt their time with this news, so Ben and Julie spent the evening with me at the hospital. The trauma we were going through was not enough to keep a teenager's stomach from getting hungry, so we sent Ben to the snack bar to get some food. As he left the room he grabbed the door frame, pulling his head back into the opening and tossed off a line from a Jim Carey movie, "Don't go dyin' on me now!" We roared with laughter! Our son, always a ham. My cup was filled again.
At 6:30 the next morning, the door to my room quietly opened and David Colman walked in. "I am always up early, so I thought I'd come and spend some time with you." He lives an hour away and stayed until after lunch. The level in my cup kept rising.
The following day was Sunday. Around 11:30 I heard a familiar Introit being sung on the oncology floor. Our entire church choir and a few other church members squeezed into my room and sang the hymns and anthem from the morning service! I could only lie in my bed and weep tears of gratitude for being so richly blessed. "My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. . ."
One of the important lessons I learned through all of this is to embrace, not fight or fear, the empty cup. Let it be there, visible, real and empty. Empty because of fright over what I do not know. Empty, because of anger about what has happened to me. Empty, because of sadness in what may lie ahead. Living with an empty cup causes me to be more receptive to being involved in re-filling my cup. Yielding to fright, I hold my loved ones more closely in my tears. Allowing my anger, I feel calm more deeply when calm comes. Admitting that the future is sometimes just too sad to contemplate, I more easily give myself permission to go out to lunch as an escape! The cup has use and meaning, even if it is empty. By denying an empty cup, I miss the preparation for something that always happens—the re-filling of that cup.
Filling an empty cup requires asking for help and then being open to the gifts that come. When I do this, my need is always addressed—often not in the way I had envisioned, but addressed, nonetheless. I have seen and felt God in this process time and time again as God worked with me directly and through others to fill my empty cup. This is not easy because it requires me to be vulnerable and patient, two things I am still learning how to do! Additionally, it requires me to take action when I think I cannot help myself.
There is an even greater benefit from accepting my weakness and asking for help. I become a partner with God in the process of refilling my empty cup. What I ask for does not always come as I envision, but my cup has always been filled to nourish the situation at hand. And each time this happens, it becomes easier to trust God and I am better prepared to deal with the next empty cup I find in my hands.
In spite of all efforts to let go, I like to be in control of my life. Often, when things are forced upon me, I resist. Multiple Myeloma was thrown into my lap without my choice. I certainly did not ask for it and apparently, could have done nothing to prevent it. While I will always want an answer to "Why?" I realize I probably never will have one. Why didn't this happen five years later when it would have been so much easier for Ben, Rachel and Nora? Why was it discovered in the final stage, rather than during Stage One when treatment options and long term prognosis would have been so much better? Why did this happen during my peak earning years when we still need so much to support this family?
My questions force me to look more closely at this cup I did not choose. And when I do, I see blessings that have come from unbridled love and assistance. My children have seen their parents upheld at times when everything seemed hopeless. My understanding of God's ability to work for good in the most impossible situations has been expanded to an extent unimaginable before. I have opened myself to others and been filled with love in ways I have never known. I have been given the experience of Grace and an understanding of what it means to be in Covenant with others. Is my cup half empty or half full?
Are these lessons in living a reason to wish for misfortune? Certainly not. There are other ways to learn life's lessons, with fewer side effects! I am not glad I have cancer and never will be. I am, however, deeply grateful for the opportunities for growth that have come because of having cancer. It took new eyes to really see my life in a different way. I know now our family and friends will be here for whatever we need. I am aware of strengths in my children I did not know they possessed. I have felt a deep connection with Julie I had never before experienced. I know now an empty cup is an opportunity to find GodŐs leading and allow myself to be put on a different path.
Our congregation celebrates communion the first Sunday of every month. I listen very carefully now to David's words as he describes how "Jesus took bread and broke it. . . and in the same manner, took the Cup, blessed it and gave it to his Disciples." And then quietly, "Ministering to you in His name, we offer to you, this Cup."
There is Life in that Cup. I accept it, ponder its blessing, and drink deeply of it.
Warren Cadwallader-Staub, raised in College Avenue Friends Meeting, Iowa, was diagnosed with advanced bone marrow cancer in October 1999. Following a year of difficult treatments, he focused on helping others find the transforming power in life's "terrible" turns. He writes and leads retreats on Resurrection Living. Warren, his wife Julie and their three children live in Burlington, Vermont.
Copyright (c) 2001 Friends United Meeting
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