Sufficiency at each moment

I remember rather vividly when the doctors first suggested that I may have cancer about a month ago.  Back in Singapore already by then, I was placed in the investigative care of several doctors who were tasked to find out the origins of my daily bouts of high fevers.  One of them suspected that it was Leukemia. I recall just letting the news flow into me like an incoming tide on a very calm day.  No drama, no anger, no incredulity.  It was as if I was looking at myself from a distance, and there was a reassuring calm that assured me that “it’s ok”, and that this is in no way an abandonment in any way, shape or form.  If at all there was an ‘out-of-body’ experience that I could ever refer to in my life, that would be a very close one.  Even up till now I am amazed at the kind of grace that I have been privileged of receiving on a daily basis, where it does seem that I have simply hightailed it from denial to acceptance. 

I have read about and encountered many peoples’ difficult and painful struggles about that fluctuation between the so-called five stages of grief management (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), and even had on several occasions myself asked cancer patients if this is a linear movement, where one finishes with one stage and moves on to the next one, in some sort of progressive way.  Apparently, it is different for different people, and one can actually go through all five stages in the span of a few hours in a day, and even go back to a stage several times.  There is, as such, no hard and fast rule about when and how long one is at each stage of the grief process. 

I have asked myself the pointless question of why this does not seem to be the case for me, and lately, in the silence of my hospital room (I hardly have the TV or radio on in the room) I came to the conclusion that this is perhaps because I have never seen this cancer-challenge as something that is grief causing.  Sometimes, it is the label that one gives to things and situations that can determine and cause the way one deals with life challenges.  Truth is, I have never seen cancer as something that I should be dealing with by looking at it with grief.  Grief is defined as deep sorrow, often caused by the news of a death of a loved one.  My faith in God and his deep Divine Mercy has deeply instilled in me that the only true sorrow in life that is truly deep is when one has cut off oneself from this font of mercy and love by one’s sinfulness and stupid willfulness.  Everything else is a commentary.

Do I mean to be flippant about the true and agonizing suffering of millions of others who also have to deal with physical pain and psychological torments?  Certainly not.  I fully acknowledge that each person’s suffering is real.  But there is a certain point at which a person can choose to dwell on that suffering, or ask God to use it creatively for the betterment of God’s Kingdom.  I remember having a conversation with my friend in DC, Fr Paul Appel, a priest-student from Iowa, a kind hearted and gentleman12 years younger than I who stayed in the same college as I did.  It was at the beginning of my fever bouts, and he asked me how this experience of illness (of course we didn’t know that I was at the genesis of leukemia then in early January of this year) would affect the way I ministered to the infirm in future.  I remember saying to him that the words I use in future will no longer have a hollow ring to them, as I know for a fact how one feels when one is truly sick. 

Yet, having said that, I look at my own situation now, and realize that I have been graced by God and have fully and almost immediately accept this cancer-journey with a spirit of peace and quite calm.  Does this mean that I have yet to really walk the walk, almost nullifying any claims to being in real solidarity with my fellow cancer sufferers because my lot seems to be so different?  Yet, I am fully convinced that this whole experience has not just a teaching and living lesson for me, but for many out there who are looking for some semblance of positive outlook in life when it appears that life is only giving out lemons.  Many have written to me and told me how my open reflections about the mystery of life and suffering have given them some form of a shot in the arm.  (God knows the kind of unpleasant shots that we have had to endure in our infirmity!)

One of the ways that I think has helped me in looking at things positively is to see that there is an air of sufficiency in everything.  If I am to look at life and its challenges as something that is lacking, something that needs topping –up, something that needs mending and something that requires a completion by my or God’s acts, there will be an insufficiency that fills my world and my spirituality.  I will be always looking at life as a half-filled glass, and I may well be walking around with an air of discontent, impatience and a sense of being unfulfilled.  That would be a living nightmare.  But if our lives can be filled with some semblance of sufficiency, where we know that no matter what happens or has happened in our lives, that it is sufficient, that God is more than sufficient, that our lot in life is sufficient, and that ‘lack’ is a human category that often renders one ungrateful, impatience and unwilling to yield, I truly believe that we can begin to make ‘acceptance’ a place where our spirits, hearts and minds can dwell for a long time to come, and the Holy Spirit can truly be a long-staying guest in the depths of our hearts.