My Husband Adam

My name is Suzi Ketch. I am now Adam's widow. Adam went to be with the Lord on March 20th at 9:20 pm. My husband dealt with the difficulties of cancer and chemo for the last 6 years. He was a wonderful husband and an inspiration to many people. He will be greatly missed.

As I look back at the previous posts that my husband has posted I am reminded of how much he enjoyed sharing his love of knowledge with everyone he met. My husband loved the Lord and worked hard to live his life the way he felt God would want him to. If someone needed to talk to him he would stop whatever he was doing and he would listen intently. Making you feel like what you had to say was the most important thing in the world. He was always ready to share his experiences with people if he thought it would help them through their struggles. My husband was willing to give everything to help the people around him. I love him and he will be greatly missed.

Suzi

Fear

It is funny how a little emotion can come to dominate what you do. In February of this year I was once again diagnosed with colon cancer. Though this time the cancer choose to take up residence in my liver and near a kidney (I know, why is it colon cancer if it is in the liver? Simply because all cancers are named, and treated, after the area of the body in which they originate.) Since then I have had run ins with several different aspects of fear.

The first bout with fear was when the doctor told me that the chemotherapy may not work quickly enough and it appeared that I had only six weeks to live. The end of one's life is an occasion for fear and I was no exception. The fear that really got me though was not for my existence. I knew then, as I know now, that I have lived my life in a way that honors what I value and my God. Knowing that, I was able to look at the ending of my earthly existence with a contentedness that made the personal fear less. No, the fear that really got me was the fear for my wife, my family and my friends. I knew that they would be most powerfully impacted by my absence. I even had a conversation with Suzi (my wife) where we discussed my feelings about her potentially remarrying. That was scary, knowing that I would be absent from the events of this life. I would miss my 10th anniversary, my 32nd birthday, Suzi's 30th, my niece's first day of school; it was the relationships that would be postponed that gave me pause and lead to a deep and powerful fear. The desire to wrap myself in the presence of those I love and care for has now taken on a new and more urgent sense. But that nagging fear that I may not be around for the special and mundane moments of life continues to gnaw at me despite any improvements I may make.

The second fear that occupies my thoughts is that the remainder of my life will be spent on chemo and with the accompanying pains, illness and misery that goes along with a harsh dose of these drugs. I have discovered that nothing is worse then waking up in the morning to find that your body is in rebellion against you. The fatigue and weakness take their toll on my view of myself as a man. Now I am the one forced to ask for help with the pickle jar and ask my wife to lend me her strength to accomplish tasks around the house. Being unable to physically do the mundane chores of the house because of weakness takes it toll psychologically as I begin to see myself as a victim. At 31 I am often reduced to asking for help in matters that any healthy 30-something could and would do without pausing to consider the effort versus the reward. This fear is hard to discuss because of the weakness it shows in me and in my present state and fails to even consider the feelings of being ill that are the staple of life on chemo.

The second fear feeds the third fear and gives it strength. Being young it is difficult to admit to weakness because there is a fear that it will be seen as a reason to dismiss you before your time. As I wrote the above paragraph I was fighting my fear that those in my church may read it and decide I am a liability and fire me, or my friends and family may see me as a waste of time and energy and abandon me. The fear that I will be tossed aside is real and perhaps the worst of the fears. This fear is not forgotten on good days, or when friends and family visit, no this fear always lingers in the back of the mind eating away at my resolve. Did I do enough today to earn my place? Have I offered enough to justify my continued employment? Doubts like this rest heavy on me. The frustrating thing is that this fear causes me to doubt friends, family, coworkers and those whom I consider my spiritual family, my church. Yet none of these groups or individuals have given me any cause to have this feeling or fear but it still nags at me. Every time I am too ill to get out of bed I wonder if today is the last day someone will put up with me. Each day I am below what I know to be par I fear that someone will cut me out of something in my life that helps to still give it meaning. Fear of being cut out of the things that give me a sense of accomplishment and value battles me everyday for control over my attitudes and actions. Do I need to overdue and push myself beyond what I know I can do to prove my worth or do I do just what I can and show my weakness. Fear wins too often, and this fear can only make me worse but the sad truth is this fear is so strong and wins so often that any mere moment I can beat it through pushing myself past it and only do what is good and healthy is, to me, a victory. A hollow seeming victory, but victory none-the-less.

Well those are the fears that I struggle with on a daily basis. In truth I hope no one reads this, but if you do please remember that I am only a man and have the weaknesses common to man and that I wrote this in part to simply allow myself to give vent to those things which work to dominate me. As for the other reasons, well not even I could tell you what they are but I trust that they will work together for good.

Is life pain?

"Life is pain Highness, anyone who tells you different is selling something." These words are spoken by Wesley, disguised as the Dread Pirate Roberts, to the love of his life, Buttercup, in the film The Princess Bride. An unusual statement from a loved one to be sure but one that falls in with Wesley's current mood. Years before Wesley was taken prisoner by the previous Dread Pirate Roberts and assumed murdered by all who knew him. But now Buttercup was engaged to another man and Wesley needed to know if she had ever really loved him, so he rescues her as the Dread Pirate Roberts. The viewer sees Wesley's outburst as the heartbroken cry of the rejected lover and not as his true life philosophy, for as the film plays out Wesley builds upon his love for Buttercup instead of his expectation of pain. But Wesley's outburst does raise an important question, is life pain?

For the sick or handicapped it is our instant reaction to say yes. For ourselves when life does not go the way we desire our instinct is to say yes. When we suffer, when we weaken, when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we often lament that "life is pain". But I disagree. Though my life has had painful experiences and moments when the agony seemed overwhelming on both physical and emotional levels I am forced to say that none of those experiences were or are my life. Life may experience pain but the pain is simply an event in the life. Life is not pain. Wesley may claim it is because he is in the emotions of what he thinks is a betrayal but he has given his life as a sacrifice to true love, and there lies the real truth of what life is! Life, my life or your life, is completely about what we choose to live for, not what may happen to us. We have all been given an amazing gift to elect the meaning of our lives. The things and people we choose to love, the way we handle the pain that will drift in and out of our lives and the goals we set for ourselves determine what our life is, not some pain we have experienced.

So, am I selling something you may ask. The short answer is yes. I am selling life as we are meant to see it and live it. Free from the domination of our circumstances, free to be enjoyed and savored even when pain enters into it. If you don't believe me then look at the life of Christ. He experienced pain and suffering that he knew, from the moment of his birth was coming his way. Despite his complete awareness of what his fate was Jesus lived a life of love and mercy, he was never defined by the circumstances that awaited him but chose instead to embrace life and live as he desired. Life has pain yes, but life is not pain. Life is what you make of it, will you dwell on the uncontrollable or will you boldly face the future as one who chooses to live a life of freedom?

Still here

Okay, so I've been busy. Life gets that way from time to time. As a result I have not posted in quite a while. With my last semester of school rapidly out-pacing my ability to keep up and the temporary misplacement of my "give a hoot" I have been playing catchup and striving to find my balance. All in all I feel like I am running harder then ever with my classes and still slowing down. This is funny to me because both of my final semesters in high school and undergraduate work were very laid back and easy. I suppose that with seminary I have a much larger investment and have a greater concern that I actually learn and apply the knowledge I am being offered but it is still a strange sensation to be almost done and lost in the work.

So sorry I haven't been around so much, I hope to be back to post more often. But if it helps feel free to share how you might have had an experience where you fell behind, I know your story will help me!

God's Wrath?

As I write, hurricane Katrina is unleashing her full force on the southern US and Christians throughout the country are ready to respond. For many this response will be to provide aid to those who are suffering. For some others it will be to actually go and help feed, clothe and support the people who have been hurt the most by this disaster. Yet another response is brewing in the Church coffee houses, fellowship halls, Sunday school classes and blogs across the country: the assigning of blame. Specifically the question of what New Orleans might have done to bring about God's wrath in such a profound way. Was it Mardi Gras, bourbon street, or their tolerance of it all? It is this response that I want to think about for a moment.

I have often wondered why Christians have continued to hold onto the myth that bad things only happen to bad people. Many of our pop culture theologies hold this view high and take it to the other side, claiming that only good things will happen to the Godly. You can hear these preachers and teachers claiming that if you just envision it, or tithe for it God is obligated to give it to you, no matter what "it" may be, bad stuff is only for the weak of faith. The Bible has much to say that is contrary to this, of course, but that is often ignored in favor of feel-goodism. For example Job is called "blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1b) Yet in one day he loses his wealth, his servants, and his children. Job's wife has some advise for him after he is filled with physical illness: "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" Her view is that her husband must have done something wrong and his disasters and illness are the proof of this opinion to her mind. Later, Jobs friends come to him and say things like: "if you are pure and upright, even now he (God) will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your rightful place." (Job 8:6) In other words those around Job saw that he was in suffering and concluded that it must be his fault, that there must have been some sin he needed to confess so that God would forgive and restore him. But as the reader discovers in chapter 42 God is angry with those friends for their foolish words and he asks Job to pray for them. In this book the world behaves differently then we would expect it to. There is an acknowledgement that evil can occur to anyone, even those who are righteous. Evil is not seen in Job's life as a punishment for sin but as an event that he must learn to trust God in.

For an even better example of suffering entering the life of the righteous one need only look to the founding doctrines of the New Testament church! Jesus Christ the sinless Son of God is beaten, crucified and killed. Not just in this does Jesus face evil however, throughout his ministry Jesus is lied about, falsely accused and attacked. Yet not once did he sin. How can one look at the life of Christ and believe that evil can not fall on the righteous as well as the unrighteous?

Simple, it is easy to generalize. It is easier to find reasons, even false ones, where there seem to be none, then to say "I don't know". We like to feel in control and that we can do or act certain ways and that those actions will make us happy, prolong our life, etc. Fear of the unknown, unpredictable, parts of life still scare us. If we can find some reason for the destruction elsewhere we can feel safer here because we are not like that.

I can no longer live that way. It is not just that I live in tornado alley (a prime place for "weather events"), or that I have had cancer, it is instead a sense of how God desires me to react to those he created and gave his son for. I believe that I am to love others, no matter how hard they are to love, no matter if I failed to love them very well today, God wants me to be constantly about loving people. If I am spending my time deciding why they got hit with a storm, or any other disaster, I can not love them.

Besides, if I am loving others as Christ loves them I may be in store for some storms of my own!

You have got to be kidding me!

Last night I was, as is my privilege as a man, flipping through the channels. This is still an enjoyable process because I do not have that digital cable lag time in flipping (of course I also have very few channels to flip through). As I was flipping I paused on one of the religious stations here in the metroplex and watched for a minute or so, until I could take it no more.

What upset me you ask. Was it the pleas for money? The playing on emotions instead of relying on God's Word? The reduction of God to a "joy vending machine" that the faithful can use at need and ignore the rest of their lives? No, no and no. Though each of these often earns a rant from me directed at the television (seriously...Just ask Suzi). This time however, something so ridiculous was occurring that I truly did not know how to react! I was flabbergasted and merely pointed at the screen, asking Suzi if she had heard what I had. Unfortunately she had. So if you think you are ready read on.

The man speaking was in the midst of lamenting the way America was going, specifically he was concerned with the way America was no longer a Christian nation. He said that the solution to America losing touch with it's Christian heritage was for you and I to join his Political Action Committee so that he and his associates could advocate for Christian legislation! His plan to turn America back to God is to legislate the USA. Not evangelism, not introducing unbelievers to Christ and cultivating the faith of new Christians, that is too radical. No, the way to turn America back to God is through the legislative branch. After all who can forget the words of Christ when he gave us the great commission: All authority in congress has been given to me, therefore go and pass laws that will cause men to honor me with their lips even when their hearts are far from me. Passing them through the legislative, executive and judicial branches; knowing they will be with you always if you pass a constitutional amendment.

Is this really were we are in America? Have we lost sight of our mission so badly that we will accept anything as long as it mentions God? In case his plan appeals to you let me remind you of the actual text of Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

If you are concerned that America is far from God, good! Now do something useful about it! Don't fall for this idea that if we pass the right laws the country will become a beacon of Christianity, instead put that passion and energy into the place God intended it it to go: evangelism! The way America, or any nation, becomes Christian is that the majority of the people are Christian. Not the laws are Christian or the ten commandments hang in every public building. Imagine for a moment the type of country that would exist if evangelism were winning the day. That country would not need Christian PACs, it would need more pews. That is the America I want to see, what about you?

Witnessing like Bono

I remember back in high school a friend of mine showing me a CD entitled The Joshua Tree by U2. "They were almost a Christian band Adam, you'll like them." (I did, in fact, like them and thought that the song I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For was the most powerful song about the search for meaning in this world I had ever heard) But ever since Chris uttered that sentence to me I have been aware of a very intense debate about the true spiritual state of this band and more specifically it's front man, Bono.

Bono's liberal politics, occasional slips of the tongue and general rock star attitude sometimes obscure some of his other traits. He has been active in AIDS relief in Africa, been married 23 years (a great achievement in the Rock community) and openly claims to be a Christian. So the debate rages on, is Bono a Christian? For me, I need to look at the whole person and their beliefs. While the temptation is to judge someone based on their most recent or public action the truth is that is seldom who the person really is and so it is with Bono. Today I came across this blog on the World Magazine website that contained some of an interview from a new book about Bono. The most important section is copied below.


"...I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge," says Bono. "It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity."
Then the interviewer marvels, "The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that."
"The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death," replies Bono. "It's not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven."
The interviewer marvels some more: "That's a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it's close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has His rank among the world's great thinkers. But Son of God, isn't that farfetched?"
Bono comes back, "Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn't allow you that. He doesn't let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I'm not saying I'm a teacher, don't call me teacher. I'm not saying I'm a prophet. I'm saying: 'I'm the Messiah.' I'm saying: 'I am God incarnate.' . . . So what you're left with is either Christ was who He said He was the Messiah or a complete nutcase. . . . The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that's farfetched." (For the entire blog go to: http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=10892)

Wow. That was a rock star folks! He was being interviewed for a book and spent some time witnessing to the reporter (and everyone who reads the book)!!!!!!!!! It is funny, if this were a teacher, lawyer, stockboy or mechanic we would rejoice about how he has put his faith out there like that, but will we rejoice for Bono? Will some in the Christian community continue to focus only on sin that God can, and does, forgive in Bono's life? Maybe. Why? I think it is because we have expectations for famous Christians that we don't even have for ourselves. We feel that they have been given a platform that is so great they are obligated to speak louder then anyone for God, possibly. Heck, that may even be true and the reason Bon is famous. After all, when was the last time you heard someone you met share Christ that simply and powerfully with you?

Yeah, me either.