(1)
A boat named Cascade
Not long ago I unexpectedly discovered a
collection of photos on my computer of a sailing trip with my family. This was
thirteen years ago in 2007, the summer before I was first diagnosed with
late-stage kidney cancer, when my colleague Mr. Claude Trincle invited me and
my family to go sailing with him. His boat, called Cascade, was 41 feet long,
11 feet wide, and had a very tall 65-foot mast capable of supporting a
humongous mainsail, which could change the wind into kinetic energy, a
sailboat’s main source of energy. The truth is Cascade also had four diesel
engines for use when there wasn’t any wind out at sea, but Claude never used
them during the day we went out together; instead he used his excellent sailing
skills, relying entirely on adjusting the angle at which the boat faced the
wind to change the interaction between the wind and sails, to pilot Cascade
bravely across the windy Southern California sea.
I remember that day the sun was shining
brightly; before boarding Cascade, I’d stood on the dock and looked out at the
ocean to see the gleaming, shimmering reflection of waves in the sunlight,
without any noticeable wind or waves. But Claude told me the wind was actually
pretty strong that day, perfect for a boat that relied on wind power. I doubtfully
followed him and the others up onto Cascade. It wasn’t until Claude steered the
boat out into open water that I came to realize his earlier words were
accurate.
What had looked like a calm and gentle ocean
from the shore began to surge with irritable and restless waves as soon as we
reached deeper waters. As the wind continued to grow stronger, the 41-foot
Cascade was thrown violently up and down by one wave after another, and when
the boat turned along with the wind, it would sometimes tilt up to 45 degrees;
we all held tightly onto whatever we could find that was fixed to the boat, in
order not to get washed overboard by the turbulent ocean spray. There were
quite a few times I inwardly regretted my decision, wondering if I might have
made the wrong choice in bringing my family to such a dangerous environment.
This hair-raising experience allowed me to realize that the ocean, aside from
the fascinating charm of her blue seas and skies, her azure waves and
vast space, also held this level of all-encompassing danger, with an
unfathomably fierce personality. I, a Qingdao native, who’d grown up by the sea
and believed that I adored it, discovered at this moment that I was no more
than a man pretending at fondness while actually fearing it.
That was the first and final time in my life
that I ever road a boat on the open sea, which made this collection of photos
taken of us on Cascade suddenly feel like a precious commodity; last year I
sent them to Claude, now retired and moved to eastern America, along with a
letter thanking him for the warm hospitality he’d shown to me and my family
thirteen years ago. Claude was very happy to receive my pictures, and in his
return letter told me that he’d already sold Cascade many years ago. Seeing
these old photos filled him with nostalgia over those wonderful days in which
he’d still owned it. As for my late thank-you, he replied: “The honor was mine.
Experiencing a good sail in good wind, as we did, is a gift from God.”
(2)
A comparison of past and present
A healthy man and a terminally ill one live in
two completely different worlds. After such a long time as an invalid, I feel
as if I’ve entirely forgotten what it was like to live in a world without the
constant threat of death pressing down on me. The lifestyles those who are
healthy so easily take for granted have already become distant and unfamiliar
to me. After twelve full years of fighting against cancer, I have - without
realizing it - become an entirely different person from who I once was. And
these photos taken thirteen years ago are like a mirror to another time,
allowing me to clearly see these astonishing changes.
In this picture, my daughter Melody is still
barely twenty years old, her figure overflowing with girlish innocence and
youthful elegance. Back then she had just finished her first year of college at
the Cleveland Institute of Music on the east coast, and had come back home for
summer vacation. This college-age daughter, filled with beautiful visions for
the future, could never in her wildest dreams have predicted that one year
later she would be forced to face a cruel reality: That she could at any moment
lose the father who had cherished her since she was a baby.
And then there’s my son Mark; he was still in high
school at the time, his figure still yet to grow out fully, practically a
different person entirely from the mature, earnest medical school graduate and
intern doctor he is today. His older twin brother Luke doesn’t make an
appearance, because that summer we’d sent him to Inner Mongolia to experience
life there.
My wife in this picture was seemingly light of
heart - despite being a mother of three, the passage of time doesn’t seem to
have left any mark on her face. There was no way she could have known that one
year later, she would have to shoulder the heavy burden of a terminally ill
husband, and prepare herself at any moment for the inevitable fate of becoming
a widow.
The me in this picture is flushed with the
success of having both a good job and a happy family. Maybe because I’d just
survived raging waves on stormy seas, some of the buttons on my blue shirt have
come open, partially revealing my chest in this family photo, and making me
look especially bold and unrestrained. Just like any other healthy man, I
didn’t pay any attention to the fact a few buttons had gotten loose; if I
played hard enough I could just take it off, standing on that boat with my
torso bared to the wind and waves, or even jump right into the ocean for a good
swim, and nobody around me would have thought anything of it. But if the me
right now were to sunbathe on the beach in nothing but my swim trunks, I would
certainly draw strange looks from everyone around, maybe even causing those
young beautiful bikini-wearing girls to turn pale at the sight. Because the
eight surgeries I’ve undergone have left many terrifying scars, on top of which
I’ve always had an easily-marked physique, so the slightest accidental cut on
my skin would leave a very large scar upon healing. These scars are ugly beyond
doubt, and terrifying to look at. Which is why these past few years, whenever I
go for a walk or to soak up some sun at the beach, I make sure to cover myself
up as best I can, like one of those ancient Chinese criminals trying to hide
the brand marking on his skin, so that I won’t scare the healthy people
sunbathing around me.
The me in that picture is energetic and full
of confidence. Every day at work I’d have to solve IT project budget issues -
these IT projects were troublesome and complicated, and the funds they required
came out to anywhere from a few hundred thousand to million dollars. As the
financial manager for IT back then, my mind was like an incredibly
fast-speeding computer, performing near-exact financial analyses for their
projects. But after being tormented for so long by cancer, the me that is here
today has not only become physically frail, but mentally weaker and retarded as
well; compared to that long-ago high-speed computer of a brain, these days I
don’t dare rely on my mental arithmetic even to pay the bill at a restaurant,
instead using the built-in calculator on my phone to figure out the 15% tip for
the waiter.
The me in that picture carried heavy
responsibility on my shoulders, often working overtime and pulling all-nighters
at the office, sometimes even staying the night at my company’s guest house.
Because I was so often solving emergency situations for the officers of every
branch of the IT department, I became a popular figure there, even winning the
Employee of the Year award for the entire company once, which seemed like the
greatest honor imaginable for a model employee. But the me of today has left
the workplace battlefield far behind me, and have become so weak I might as
well be made of glass. I’ve been exempted from all housework at home, the only
serious responsibility allowed to me being, when the limits of my health permit
it, is to trail unsteadily behind my wife at the supermarket, pushing the
shopping cart.
(3)
The sailboat of life
I closely examined these 13-year-old
photographs, loath to part with them, moved to the extreme. I was thinking, if
time could turn backwards, and God allowed me to re-choose the paths I’d taken
in life, what sort of choices would I make? Would I choose to live the same way
I did in this photo of me braving the wind and billows on the sailboat Cascade,
with a successful harvest in both family and career, or would I choose that of
the current me, a useless handicapped man with barely any worth left to him?
Without a doubt, there is no one on this earth who would gladly and willingly
fall to my level of worthlessness. Because from a medical standpoint, although
I am technically still alive, I’m not much different from a dead man.
Last year at my son Mark’s suggestion, I went
to see a family doctor in our neighborhood. After graduating from medical
school last May, Mark had become a Resident Physician at University of Nevada
School of Medicine in Las Vegas. He told me that chronically ill people like
myself generally need a family doctor; all the diagnoses and medical records
from the various specialists I’ve seen should be compiled into one file at this
family doctor’s clinic, allowing him to have a comprehensive understanding of
my condition. He went on to say that it wasn’t right for me to consider my oncologist
as a family doctor, because the former was a doctor who specialized in tumors,
meaning that unlike a family doctor, he didn’t have the time or energy to pay
attention to any other big or little medical issues I might normally have.
Following Mark’s advice, I found Dr. Chen in
our little town, who I was told was quite prestigious in the community, with
many locals looking to him or his wife when they needed a doctor. I remember
when I first met Dr. Chen, he spent quite a while measuring me up in the clinic,
before saying in amazement: “I could never have told that you were someone
who’s undergone the Whipple procedure before!” He admitted that the majority of
those he’d seen undergone this surgery, were looked emaciated and weak, because
aside from cutting out the pancreas, this high-risk procedure also requires
removal of the gall bladder, bile duct, duodenum, distal stomach, lymphatic
nodes, and more.
Because I was a new patient, he had me draw
blood for testing, and told me to come back once the results were in. I’ll
never forget the look on Dr. Chen’s face at my first checkup. He was holding my
blood test results in his hands, and very solemnly said to me: “There are
serious problems with every aspect of your blood levels...are you religious? I
think it would be best for you to have a talk with your pastor.” It was clear
that my test results had frightened the doctor, for him to think the priority
wasn’t what sort of medication I should take, but whether I’d put my affairs in
order and found a pastor to give comfort to my soul.
This family doctor’s words lingered by my ears
all the way home that day. In the twelve years since I was diagnosed with
cancer, getting a “death sentence” had already become a common occurrence, but
this was the first time I’d so straightforwardly been advised to get my last
rites done and my affairs put in order. The voices and faces of many fellow
cancer patients who’d been diagnosed at the same time as me floated into my
mind; all of them had already quietly passed on, leaving me the only survivor,
still riding the sailboat of life, drifting aimlessly in a turbulent stormy
sea, with the constant threat that my boat might sink, leaving my body to feed
the fishes.
“Why am I still alive?” This is a question
I’ve been asking myself a lot these days, to which I’ve yet to find an answer.
(4)
“Why am I still alive?”
Some people say I’m still alive because I’m
lucky enough to receive the world’s most cutting-edge clinical trial
medication. Ever since I was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2008, I’ve been
undergoing clinical trial treatments one after another. Without a doubt, the
medications I’ve received have extended my life. But other patients who entered
those three trials with me have all already passed away; why my life has lasted
so much longer than all the other cancer patients participating in those
clinical trials is a question which, from a medical standpoint, has yet to find
an answer.
The first clinical trial medication I took was
called Afinitor. The average treatment period for cancer patients participating
in this trial was only two years, whereas I, a “guinea pig”, used that
medication for up to five, living a full three years longer than the others.
The second clinical trial medication I tried
was ASONEP. Over the course of that two-year treatment, ASONEP showed an
extraordinarily positive effect on my body: The majority of my tumors - aside
from the noticeably sped-up growth of the one on my right thyroid gland, which
had to be surgically removed - were all successfully suppressed. But the other
participants in my group weren’t as fortunate. They all went through this
clinical trial for only four months on average before quietly withdrawing due
to worsening health conditions. Because those getting positive healing effects
numbered under 50%, this ASONEP clinical trial was forcibly discontinued. The
company which had developed the medicine, Lpath, also declared bankruptcy along
with it.
The third new clinical trial medicine I tried
was Opdivo (Nivolumab), the survivors of that 5-year immunotherapy treatment are
only 27%. After using this medicine for two years, I cut short the treatment
because it was no longer able to effectively control the spread of cancer cells
in my body.
The anti-cancer medication I’m currently taking
is Cabozantinib. This medication has already been approved by FDA, and comes
with enormous side effects. It can cause diarrhea, nausea, vomiting,
exhaustion, loss of appetite, rashes on the hands and feet, high blood
pressure, weight loss, headaches and dizziness, anemia, cramps, breathing
difficulties.... Cancer patients tend to use this medication for only seven
months on average, before no longer being able to continue handling these
serious side effects. But I’ve already used it for over a years. My oncologist
Dr. Pal exclaimed with surprise as he said to me: “You’ve lived even longer as
a stage 4 cancer patient than those people with stage 2!”
(5)
God doesn’t play by the rules
When I was a child I was familiar with a Bible
verse: “And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be you
poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.” (Luke 6:20) But in all these years, I
never truly understood the real meaning behind those words. I’d always thought
that the main point the Lord Jesus was making in this teaching was a warning
for us not to pay too much attention to our earthly possessions and living
conditions. Compared to the wealthy, getting into Heaven seemed much easier for
the poor…
Recently, however, I listened to an audio broadcast
series “A Twelve-Year Dance With Cancer”, which gave me a new understanding of
the word “poor” in the Lord Jesus’s teachings. In this audio broadcast, the
narrator’s rhythmic voice read aloud my work from when I’d first started
writing seven years ago. One article was titled “My lead on six final affairs”,
because at the time I’d had a relapse and assumed that God would soon be coming
to take me to Heaven, which led me to put down this title as the last
manuscript I would leave on this earth. Seven years after the fact, listening
to this essay as a common listener in the audience, I was surprised to find
myself moved to tears. I couldn’t believe that these words were written by my
own hand. It was here that I suddenly came to the realization that the “poor”
in Luke’s gospel didn’t simply refer to the financially destitute. It had
another deeper moral, which was that God didn’t play by the rules, and
throughout the Bible had always been choosing people “poor” in faith.
Peter, the most intimate of Lord Jesus’s
twelve disciples, was a weak man who, having lost his faith after Jesus was
captured, publicly denied him three times. He was also the unconfident disciple
who, frightened by large waves, had called out, “Lord, save me!” to Jesus as he
walked upon the water. But it was someone like this, a man Lord Jesus had
admonished with the words “Your faith is too lacking”, who was ultimately
chosen by God to become a core player in the founding of the early church. And
it was exactly Peter’s weakness that allowed him to realize he was “poor” in
terms of faith - and it was because there was someone who recognized his weak
and poor faith, that was he able to overcome the arrogance deep in his heart,
humbly prostrating himself before God for Him to use as He pleased.
I, meanwhile, was a “poor” man whose faith was
incredibly weak. In the twelve years since I was first diagnosed with stage 4
kidney cancer, not once did I dare to imagine that I would be able to live to
today. I remember a newly converted young Christian’s review after reading one
of my early works, saying that there was too much helplessness and sadness
leaking out from between the lines of my essay, and that is lacked the
overwhelming faith a Christian should have.
But then why God choose someone as weak as me,
allowing me to live so miraculously long? There seems to be only one answer:
God has a special calling for me, and is using the “thorn” inside me - my
weakness and pain - to act as living proof to the common people: Even if God
hasn’t taken away this “thorn”, and the medical world has yet to discover a
medicine that can cure this fatal disease, I can still strengthen my own faith throughout this suffering, and
keep my hope alive; even if the grim reaper’s coming is close at hand, I can
still carry a joyful heart as I face death, giving myself to God. It’s just as
the disciple Paul said: “Through glory and dishonor, bad report and good
report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as
unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet
possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:8-10)
(6)
A “Deal” of God
All the intelligent people I’ve met have, in
general, been arrogant and full of themselves - this includes myself. I’m a
naturally proud person, because I inherited a keen mind from my parents,
allowing me to do better in school than others my age. When I was studying at 7th
grade in Middle School in 1965, my
teacher Mr. Lizhong Guo greatly admired my talents in algebra, and made an
exception in inviting me, a 13-year-old middle schooler, out to have a beer at
Qingdao Coffee Shop on Qingdao Zhongshan Road. This was the first time in my
life that I’d ever tasted beer; what he ordered was a dark beer, and I remember
him telling me that dark beer tasted much better than regular beer, followed by
encouraging me to study abroad as he drank. He believed I had a great future
ahead of me, and might become a scientist. 1965 was before the Cultural
Revolution, with the class struggle being the guiding principle of the entire
country; at the time living in such a progressive and radical social
environment, hearing my teacher mention studying abroad was like being given a “double
Dutch.”
One of the senior literature teachers at my
middle school, Mrs. Li Xiuwen, also appreciated my essay composition. She used
one of my essays, titled Journey, as a model of literature composition to exhibit
publically in the school hallway, and gave me a record-breaking 96 points to
boot. Later she privately told me that this was the highest score she’d ever
given a student in the entire course of her teaching career. She encouraged me
to keep studying composition, saying that I’d one day become a writer.
I’ve been good at piano since I was little,
and was a prodigy of prominent Qingdao piano teacher Jessica Wang back in the
60s, successfully passing the test for Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music
in spring of 1966. But the results of that exam were nullified by the rise of
the Cultural Revolution, becoming a regret I’d carry all my life.
The three professional careers I used to dream
of as a child - scientist, writer, and pianist - later all left me over the
course of the 10-year calamity that was the Cultural Revolution. At age 16 I
was forced to leave my hometown, going to a destitute and primitive little
village in Wei County, Shandong Province to “repair the earth”; here I would
became a farmer who spent all day sweating in the fields, a dung sweeper who
carried baskets of manure as I traveled back and forth between Wei County and
the White Wave River’s livestock fair with all the cows, horses, mules, and donkeys
- a commoner sitting at the lowest rank of Chinese society.
I’ve always been the kind of person with a
strong drive to succeed; even though half my life had been a bumpy, winding
road, deep in my heart, I still hid a powerful thirst for knowledge and a sense
of pride, driving me to become a “workaholic” in the latter half of my life.
After finishing college in America, I took multiple jobs at once, throwing
myself into constant work in multinational enterprises, turning myself into a
model employee within the company; in church I took on a position as a deacon,
took charge of the worship music, and handled financial affairs; in large-scale
charities I served as a consultant, rushing about all over the Chinese
continent; in my wife’s violin studio I was the piano accompanist, playing
accompaniments for her violin students, and participated in various music
competitions in California…
As a “workaholic” busying my later life with
so many vastly different jobs, I gained a sort of mental satisfaction from this
fanatical working pace, a sense of achievement I was never able to attain in my
early years - I had become what is called a “successful figure” both at work
and in the home. To be honest, this sort of satisfaction and achievement was
all aroused into action by an arrogant heart. Particularly when I used my own
intelligence to solve difficult problems many others couldn’t, I’d feel even
more proud of myself than before, reveling in the wonderful feeling of being
the center of everyone’s attention.
However, this level of business and
successfulness at work caused me to be exhausted beyond belief, and so I
naturally spent less time speaking with the Lord, not having the time to calm
down and let God occupy my heart. Even with my duty as a deacon of my church,
or my voluntary serving at missionary organization, I was doing it all against
my own volition, my thoughts leaning more and more towards the act of serving,
and not the Lord for whom I served.
British author C.S. Lewis once wrote in his
work Mere Christianity, “For pride is
spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or
even common sense.” I remember after being diagnosed with late-stage kidney
cancer twelve years ago, my wife once helplessly said to me, “Maybe this cancer
is the only thing that can make you slow down and do a little less work.”
Looking back at it now, the Lord really did carry out a “deal” upon my body -
He exchanged my spiritually cancerous pride for physical cancer instead!
(7)
God’s selection
I have lost all the resources for my pride.
Over the course of these past twelve years,
the eight surgeries I’ve undergone have caused me to lose many of my precious
organs, and turned me into a “poor man”. This “poor man” is truly penniless;
like a newborn baby who must rely on its mother’s milk to survive each day, I
have no choice but to rely on our Heavenly Father’s mercy for my continued
existence. As if riding the sailboat Cascade as it drifts through a dangerous
stormy sea, I must spend every moment of every day seeking the Lord’s
protection, or else I could at any moment find myself going down with the ship.
The Lord has taught me, it is only when a person realizes his own spiritual
poverty, that he can truly abandon his own pride, discover his own
powerlessness, and thus prostrate himself before the Lord, becoming a truly
humble person; only then can he receive the Lord’s inspiration, blessings, and
industry, and enter the kingdom of God.
The Lord passed His decree onto me through the
spirit of a pastor. This pastor from the Chinese mainland, whom I’ll call Crow,
is an incredibly devoted servant of God. He came to America in November of 2011
to attend a religious conference for ministers, and stayed at my house for a
few days during it. Although this was the first time we’d met, during those
days we spent together, intimate conversation led us to discover that our
spirits were connected, and so we became friends in the Lord, only wishing we
could have known each other sooner. When pastor Crow left us, he told me in a
sincere and heartfelt tone that he hoped I would write memoirs of my own
personal experiences during this time of illness as well my family history. He
solemnly said, in that deep voice of his: “Passing your knowledge onto future
generations is very important!” He repeated and emphasized those words many
times, but back then I had yet to understand the hidden meaning behind them.
The reason I had no interest in pastor Crow’s
suggestion was because I only knew an elementary school level of Chinese. After
writing that essay in my 7th grade which teacher Li had considered a model
example of composition, I never wrote another Chinese-language essay, because
my Chinese studies were cut short by the Cultural Revolution. I spent the
latter part of my life using mainly English to speak and write. To have me use
Chinese to write now, in my old age, seemed like a mission impossible.
In 2013, two years after pastor Crow returned
to China, my cancer recurred for the third time, with the cancer cells spreading
to my lungs. Realizing that I was approaching death, I retired in March of that
year, and reluctantly parted with the company I’d worked at for over twenty
years.
As a former workaholic, the sudden change to a
retired lifestyle was incredibly hard to get used to; in an attempt to while
away the time, I began watching Korean dramas, a luxury I’d always dreamed of
trying, which I had never been able to fit into my busy schedule. But after
whittling away a period of time in front of the TV, I got tired of these shows.
The actresses in Korean dramas are all angelically beautiful, the male
protagonists incredibly impressive, the plot of each story mostly created to
cater to their viewers’ ideas, the writers stretching out their works to be as
long as humanly possible - you need great patience to be able to finish
watching these marathon-like shows.
I began to ask myself, am I just going to
spend all day drowning myself in Korean dramas while I wait for death? This was
clearly not the lifestyle I wanted. It was here that I received a long-distance
phone call from pastor Crow, in which he caringly asked after my physical
condition, and asked whether I’d begun writing yet. I had the same excuse Moses
did when rejecting God’s assignment for him to lead the Israelites out of
Egypt: “Lord, I am not eloquent...I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” (Exodus
4:10) I said to pastor Crow: “I’m not
normally used to writing essays in Chinese...my Chinese is only at a
grade-school level, how could I use it to write essays?”
Calling from the other side of the Pacific
Ocean, pastor Crow seemed entirely unmoved by my tactful rejection, repeating
the words he’d told me two years before: “Passing your knowledge onto future
generations is very important!”
That night I tossed and turned in bed,
wondering why such a casual acquaintance would be so persistent, refusing to
give up on me even after two years, placing such great expectations on me, and
hoping that I’d write essays in Chinese? I couldn’t sleep, so I flipped open my
Bible to read whatever page I landed on, only to see the words the Lord Jesus
told his disciples in Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to St. John: “You did
not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear
fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father
will give you.” (John 15:16) I thus came to the realization that the reason I
was alive, was because God had chosen me, allowing me to live in order to give
testament unto the Lord, to create long-lasting spiritual fruit in the form of
writing, and yet I’d ignorantly rejected God’s call, wasting two whole years in
doing so.
That night, I was completely subdued before
the Lord, and in my prayers I appealed to God for help: “May the Holy Spirit
descend upon my frail body, so impoverished in faith, and guide this
inarticulate person with rudimentary level of Chinese literature education to
write works which can bear spiritual fruit.”
I didn’t die that year.
God once more extended my life past the brink
of death, but His extension came with a condition: I couldn’t live my days
without purpose, because He had given me a pen, and told me to manifest His
glory through writing my personal experiences of life and death.
The Lord had deigned to listen to my prayers,
and had opened the door through which I could enter the Kingdom of God.
Gripping the pen He had given me, I wrote over seventy essays, totaling nealy four
hundred thousand characters, over the course of the past seven years. One of
the comments a reader wrote after reading my essays said: “I like Joseph’s
writing. Sometimes I feel that his illness causing him to break away from a
normal work position has given him the time and energy to focus on creating
these literary works, using written language to act as witness to the Lord;
could this be anything other than the special use God has for him? Everything
is as God wills it! I’m praying for Joseph, with great respect, and entrust him
fully into God’s hands! Amen!”
Maybe because my readers know that as a
late-stage cancer patient, every one of my essays has a possibility of becoming
my “Last Supper”, my writing has gained a lot of attention from Chinese readers
and new media editors alike around the world ; sometimes one of my essays can
gain even two-to-three million hits online.
(8)
“Dying, and yet I live on ”
Some people have asked me, do you get paid for
the essays you write? And each time I’ve jokingly replied: “I do!”
I reply this way because my insurance company
has a Catastrophes Policy drawn up specifically for terminate patients like me.
Every year my health insurance company pays three to five hundred thousand
dollars’ worth of my medical expenses. Over these twelve years of having
cancer, the insurance company has paid millions dollars for these fees. I
choose to see these huge insurance payments as my writing “remuneration”. For
example, the anti-cancer medication I’m currently using - Cabozantinib - has a
market value of $21,000, and yet I only
pay $1,000 each month, with the remaining $20,000 getting paid in its
entirety by the insurance company’s Catastrophes Policy every month.
My wife often reminds me, “This life of yours
is worth a lot of money!” I’m genuinely and honestly frightened by this fact,
knowing in my heart that this is the part of the “deal” which that Lord above
has enacted for the sake of my spiritually impoverished self. This is an
incredibly costly “deal”; I cannot disappoint the expectations He has placed in
me by living every day in a hazy sort of shock, and the only surplus value I
have is in sitting on the sailboat of life, carrying out my “deal” with the
Lord amidst swelling waves and stormy seas, and manifesting God’s glory through
my spiritual writing.
Some people have asked me, do you write an
outline before each of your essays? Each time I honestly reply: “I don’t.”
If I hadn’t received the touch and guidance of
the Holy Spirit, I wouldn’t have been able to write a single word. This could
be why lately when I listen to broadcaster reciting my old works, I feel as if
they didn’t come from my own pen, but instead came from the sparks that leapt
out upon the collision, contact, and communication between the Holy Spirit and
a human soul. They sound foreign yet familiar, noble yet low, fragile yet
strong, distant yet familiar. And the author of those essays is “dying, and yet I live on.”
In these twelve years of “dying, and yet I live
on”, God has granted me a sensitive heart, allowing me to see and come to
realize that a majority of the people on this earth are afraid of death. This
includes some long-devout Christians; upon facing death, they show the same
sort of terrified fear I did when facing peril upon the sailboat Cascade. Some
Christian cancer patients even make talking about their illness taboo, ashamed
of it, as if they’ve committed some sort of sin that led God to punish them.
For this reason, I wrote “Leaving the Grave of My Heart”, “Don’t Ask God Why”,
“Where My Help Comes From”, and other essays in my “Dance With Cancer” series,
using them to encourage my fellow patients on this sailboat on a sea of cancer:
Even if we only have a year, a few months, a few weeks left to live, we must
still be like the apostle Paul, not being ashamed of the gospel, but living the
way the Lord Jesus Christ would, living lives of triumph, and passing on love
to all those around us.
To be honest, what weighs most heavily on a
dying cancer patient’s mind isn’t their own selves, but their friends and
family. It’s impossible to express in words the pain they must bear every day,
knowing that they will soon be losing a loved one. In order to give comfort to
the family of those people, I wrote “Eunice’s Diary”, “The Waiting Room of Life
and Death”, “Only You Surpass Them All”, and the rest of my “Echoes of Love”
series to act as evidence.
I’ve also written some essays about enduring
love, attending my daughter’s Masters graduation ceremony and her wedding, the
filial love between myself and my twin sons, their school and work situations,
and my own joys in raising chickens and fish at home. Through these
descriptions of an ordinary life, I wish to tell my readers to treasure every
day of the miraculous lives God has given us, even if we’re living on the edge
of death.
Currently I’ve written 23 chapters of my
autobiography, “Qingdao, Suppressed by the Sea ”. It’s just like I wrote in the
foreword of this book: “Even if this work was doomed to be unfinished before I
even picked up my pen, I’ve already made my decision - I don’t want the people,
places, and things that accompanied me as I disappear into the sea of time,
forgotten, once illness takes me from this earth. I want to leave these
writings behind, to commemorate both my family and my homeland.” Last year, upon hearing that the Chinese
University of Hong Kong’s Chinese research service center had added “Qingdao,
Suppressed by the Sea” to its library’s
permanent database, I finally realized the deeper meaning behind what pastor
Crow had said to me: “Passing your knowledge onto future generations is very
important!” The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s library database has provided
precious historical records for all those historians around the world who
research modern Chinese history.
A good friend once said to me: “These years
you’ve been sick might be the brightest period of your life.” While this
“bright period” might not have been my first choice, it really is as my old
associate Mr. Claude Trincle said: “The honor was mine...a gift from God.” This
gift was the chance that allowed me to change, becoming a truly “poor man” in
God’s eyes, a man who prostrates himself before God while weathering through
storms on the sailboat of life—a man who is “dying, and yet I live on.”
Written by Joseph Chang on May 29, 2020
Translated by Ida von Mizener on June 24, 2020
Edited by Joseph Chang on June 26, 2020
Translated by Ida von Mizener on June 24, 2020
Edited by Joseph Chang on June 26, 2020
