It’s a long way from Maroubra to Emu Plains.
By the time I arrive, I'm absolutely busting. So I drive past the street I'm after and turn down a different side street, a bit further along. It’s quieter here. Two houses are nearby, but beyond them, open fields stretch out in all directions. There's no-one around, so I jump out of my car and obtain sweet relief on a nearby tree. After all, every tree's a lavatory! I take the opportunity to pray. For peace. For understanding. For words to say. For wisdom to know when to stay silent. For humility. But most of all for healing. Once back in my car, I retrace my journey for a block or two and park in the dappled sunlight under a gum tree.
She answers the door with a smile. A woman of 30, standing tall. The warm June sun has cradled me gently against the cold all my journey through, but now it gives way to her beautiful warmth- a strangely suitable substitute. She beckons me inside, and we hug. An oddly familiar hug. I wait in the foyer as she gathers her walking stick. She struggles up the two stairs leading to the living area, and I follow slowly, introducing myself awkwardly from behind as we make our way. She looks healthier than I expected, but well I understand just how deceptive appearances can be as a barometer of a person's inner well-being.
First things first. Would I like a cup of tea? Um.... Is the Pope a Catholic? “I don't drink much coffee these days,” she explains. I concur vigorously, noting my own diminished consumption of the bean drink in favour of the leaves. I hurriedly hand over my thermos for a refill, it having been emptied lovingly on the long car trip over. I compliment her on her beautiful new home. The gas fireplace is radiating warmth. I suppose it takes the chill off the freezing western Sydney morning, but this eastern beaches boy is still cold to his bones.
Sinking into a chair with her mug, she begins to tell me of her many travails. Once her story starts, it tumbles out, more after more, hungering, thirsting for a listening ear, for the intangible relief that can only come from being heard without judgment.
She's always been a planner. She tells me of her fiancé, and the life she had planned for them. The house they had bought a few years ago with the intention of marrying soon after. They were to honeymoon at Disneyland- her dream- and return to their home to raise a family. “Sheesh,” I thought, “she'd planned all that and I don't even know what I'm gonna have for dinner!”
And then one morning she woke up and she couldn't see. That was the first symptom. Her fiance rushed her to the eye hospital. After completing the necessary tests, the doctors were able to identify the problem, but they also knew that it must have been a symptom of a far more serious underlying condition. And that was the beginning. About two years ago. She was 28. I'm 28.
Now she has a name for it, of course, but there's no way I could ever hope to pronounce it. Some kind of autoimmune arthritis that causes her constant, excruciating, ever worsening joint pain. The worst is her hip. Some days she can't get out of bed for the pain. The children she'd dreamed of? She's glad she didn't have them before she got sick. How could she possibly have cared for them in this state? And the beautiful house where she and her fiancé were to build their new family together? Well now she sits alone in it every day, an empty shell, a cruel and constant reminder of her broken dreams. “When we built this house I thought it was perfect. But now I hate it!”
“I used to love running.” She's choking up as she speaks. “I'd run 10km just about every day.” Unable to move now, she's gained 40kg. My heart hurts for her as I think on the deep joy and peace I myself have obtained from my own running addiction.
And anyway, she may as well not have a name for it, because it hasn't helped the doctors to treat her. The interminable merry-go-round of appointments; the myriad egotistical specialists who know far, far less than they think they do; the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of unexpected medical expenses that just pop up out of nowhere at the time she can least afford it. And all for what? Just so she can try all the expensive medications, one after the next after the next, each as horrendous and ineffective as the last, each with its own lengthy list of side effects, and its own suite of support drugs to combat the worst of those side effects- the nausea and the constipation (or the diarrhoea). Struggling to her feet and making her way to the kitchen, she defiantly holds up a bottle of pills- her immunosuppressants. Tablets the size of horse tranquilisers. 6 a day. SIX! In one day! 60 in a bottle, $60 a bottle. “But that's only 10 days’ worth!” I'm scrambling in my mind. Maths was never my forte, but it’s immediately apparent that that's an expensive exercise. And that's before she's even told me about the side effects. About how she gets sick anywhere she goes at the drop of a hat. And a cold that takes anyone else 3 days to get over, she struggles to shake, bedridden, for 2 weeks. And that's not even the worst of it. The main attack drug at present is similar to a chemotherapy, administered intravenously at the hospital, with very similar side effects. With each cycle she's bedridden for a week with nausea and vomiting... It's a story I know so well.
But in the middle of this shit-storm, she finds a strange solace in an unlikely place. “I've completely lost count of the number of MRI scans I've had.” She smiles. “But you know what? That claustrophobic little scanner is where I find peace. It's like my little sanctuary in there.” Now also wearing a wide-eyed grin, I confess to having fallen asleep myself during PET scans on more than one occasion. But at least a PET scan is quiet. Have you ever had an MRI?!
The other day she saw her GP. This latest IV drug has caused significant damage to her liver, so it must be discontinued immediately. But... her liver was fine before. How does she make sense of that? An important organ inside her own body, a precious PART of her own body, attacked by the very 'medicine' given to her by people she trusted, given with the intent to heal.
So what now? Well, now...... Now she's exhausted all the options. Western medicine has nothing more to offer her. She'll be in a wheelchair by the age of 40. But she'll still be alive. And she'll still be in constant pain. I'd been too captivated to notice, but now they're unmistakable. Tears are flowing down her cheeks like a waterfall. They're tears I recognise. They're tears I know well. Tears expelled violently from so very deep within a human soul, a visceral expression of anguish, and pain, and frustration, and anger, and tiredness, and fear. I'm forced to my feet by the intensity of the moment. Almost involuntarily I move across the room toward her, and I hug her tightly.
Her friends had abandoned her. Just stopped replying to her messages. Never came to visit. And because of her own poor vision, she's only allowed to drive as far as the local shops. She thanks me for coming to visit. It’s a genuine, heartfelt thanks, I can tell. Her days are long and lonely here. She needs the TV on. It’s the only thing keeping her from driving herself crazy with her own thoughts. I glance over at the tele on the wall. A black and white movie is in full swing. I hadn't even noticed.
I suggest we go for a walk. The sun is still shining, and the frigid morning has given way to the early afternoon, so I'm hoping the temperature has risen.
Out on the street, we turn to the right, away from the open fields. A small collection of brand new McMansions sits awkwardly in the midst of the rolling hills. Just a couple of short streets. We make our way down and around, slowly looping back to her place, sweeping up every nourishing ray of sunshine as we go. She notes a house that has been completed since she last came down this way. It’s absolutely hideous! Everything painted a dull grey, including the driveway. I look back and I can just catch a glimpse of the countryside at the far end of the street. A profound contrast.
She tells me about her job. She'd worked in the immigration detention centre in Darwin. She'd been there during the riots when some of the buildings were set on fire. The stress of that job was enormous, and she couldn't agree with some of the things she was being instructed to do. Eventually she left for something a bit more placid at the Trade Commission. Her Spanish language skills came in handy there. And it was there where she had been working when she became sick.
We talk about nutrition- about the importance of a healthy, nourishing diet. I share my stories of regaining my health by eating the food that God provides for me- the fruits and the vegetables, the nuts and the seeds, the herbs and the spices, the fresh meat and fish. She has a good diet too. But still she has gained weight, an outward manifestation of the intense trauma going on inside her body.
Back inside the house, I flick the kettle on again. We're working our way through her tea box. We've already had two cups, but there just isn't enough tea in the world...
Resettling once again at the table, she tells me about her family. Her father had been an official in Chile, in Pinochet's dictatorship. He was a manipulative, violent drunk. A man so respected in the community that his two faces are a contradiction she still struggles to make sense of. Along with her sister and her mother, with very good reason, they lived in fear for their safety. And for their lives.
Her mum passed away from breast cancer a number of years ago. A distressing story of a mother's death virtually identical to my own mother's. It had been so difficult for her to watch. But more difficult still it was for her 7 year old sister. They ended up with their grandparents, sharing a room together. And it was there that she began to drink. She tells me yet another familiar story of routine after-work trips to the bottle shop, quickly increasing in frequency until they were habitual- every. single. day. She tells me of the inexplicable numbness the alcohol would bring. It was all she could do to dull the pain. Yet it also made the pain worse- a paradox, of course, that could only ever be overcome by increasing the quantity, or the frequency, or both. She tells me of the lengths she would go to to smuggle her contraband into the house, to hide it until her little sister had fallen asleep in the bed next to her, to consume it all under the cover of night, and to smuggle the empty containers out of the house again in the morning. She'd stop by the park on the way to work and dispose of the bottles or cans in the bin there, ready to do it all over again.
Rising to my feet, I move toward the kitchen once again, to make yet more tea. “What are you drinking?” I ask. “Just chamomile,” comes the expected reply. I point out that in my younger, more alcoholic days, that question never referred to tea. And a reply of “Just chamomile” would likely have elicited an intensely scornful retort. We laugh long and hard. But beneath the laughter is the unspoken understanding that we have both come through the other side of that. And here we stand together. And we can still laugh. I tell her how strong she is. Tears well in her eyes. She doesn't feel strong. Actually, she's never felt weaker.
Eventually her father's abuse had been the subject of a harrowing court case. She explains what that was like- like living through the unbearable trauma of the abuse all over again. She had somehow stayed strong, resisting even the deeply hurtful scorn of her then boyfriend. And then, as she emerged from that second round of trauma, and that toxic relationship, she met her fiancé and began to build the life she had always dreamed of.
And then she became sick.
It’s my turn to speak. For a moment, I wax philosophical. I talk about the unfortunate separation our culture has enforced between mind, body and spirit. We treat mental illnesses as though they are only mental illnesses, and we treat physical illnesses as though they are only physical illnesses. And we imagine that we can take what is spiritual and divorce it from what is intellectual. But God, our Almighty Creator, is three in one. And we bear God's image. We cannot ever separate the mental, from the physical, from the spiritual. And the extent to which we try is the extent to which we fail to understand the beautiful complexities of what it means to be human.
I tell the stories I know- so many stories- of people who have survived intense trauma, and the most stressful of situations. Who have miraculously come through the other side, only to find a little ways down the track that they are now facing a fresh hell- a serious, chronic, in many cases terminal illness. I tell my own story. Receiving a very unusual diagnosis at the age of 24, the surgeon told me that the only thing that the doctors know for certain contributes to the development of bowel cancer is stress. Not alcohol. Not burnt meat. But stress. And from my interactions with others, I've learned to identify and name the deep, deep causative connection between intense stress and serious illness.
Once again there are tears streaming down her face. She confesses that she, too, understands that causative link. But that is probably the most confronting thing. In her terrible, painful illness, it seems to her as though her dad, her tormentor, has won. And that is the final burden that is too great for her to carry. I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. “Rest assured, my friend. Love wins. Love will always win, because love is stronger than hate”.
I'm certain I'm taking them completely out of context, but I can't help recalling Jesus' words:
“Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
I can't immediately think what Jesus was talking about on that occasion, but his description sure seems to describe the way the world works.
We talk about how profoundly unfair that is. We acknowledge to one another that we can make neither head nor tail of it. But we also acknowledge that we can find joy, and peace, and laughter, and friendship in the midst of it.
I share the joy and peace I've found in following Jesus. I explain the miracles he's done in my life. The crippling depression- darkness so black I never thought I would ever see the light of day- completely replaced by overflowing joy. The burden of alcoholism- with its exacting physical and mental toll- completely replaced by the self-control of mineral water and fresh lime juice. And I describe how God has strengthened my body, using his good food as my medicine, right at the time my specialists tell me I'm supposed to be dying. I shed a tear or two of my own as I recall the miracle of a half marathon run in the middle of a course of chemotherapy. None of these things happened because of my will or my strength. All were miracles performed by Christ's Spirit in me.
I offer a quick prayer for her- that God might perform these same miracles in her life.
As we make our way back to the front door, she tells me she'll sleep well tonight. She can tell. I promise to visit again soon, and she smacks two huge Latin kisses on me, one on each cheek, and squeezes me so tight my blood hurts. “Peace and love,” I say over my shoulder as I make my way back through the dappled sunlight. “Peace and love.”
It’s a long way from Emu Plains to Maroubra…
By the time I arrive, I'm absolutely busting. So I drive past the street I'm after and turn down a different side street, a bit further along. It’s quieter here. Two houses are nearby, but beyond them, open fields stretch out in all directions. There's no-one around, so I jump out of my car and obtain sweet relief on a nearby tree. After all, every tree's a lavatory! I take the opportunity to pray. For peace. For understanding. For words to say. For wisdom to know when to stay silent. For humility. But most of all for healing. Once back in my car, I retrace my journey for a block or two and park in the dappled sunlight under a gum tree.
She answers the door with a smile. A woman of 30, standing tall. The warm June sun has cradled me gently against the cold all my journey through, but now it gives way to her beautiful warmth- a strangely suitable substitute. She beckons me inside, and we hug. An oddly familiar hug. I wait in the foyer as she gathers her walking stick. She struggles up the two stairs leading to the living area, and I follow slowly, introducing myself awkwardly from behind as we make our way. She looks healthier than I expected, but well I understand just how deceptive appearances can be as a barometer of a person's inner well-being.
First things first. Would I like a cup of tea? Um.... Is the Pope a Catholic? “I don't drink much coffee these days,” she explains. I concur vigorously, noting my own diminished consumption of the bean drink in favour of the leaves. I hurriedly hand over my thermos for a refill, it having been emptied lovingly on the long car trip over. I compliment her on her beautiful new home. The gas fireplace is radiating warmth. I suppose it takes the chill off the freezing western Sydney morning, but this eastern beaches boy is still cold to his bones.
Sinking into a chair with her mug, she begins to tell me of her many travails. Once her story starts, it tumbles out, more after more, hungering, thirsting for a listening ear, for the intangible relief that can only come from being heard without judgment.
She's always been a planner. She tells me of her fiancé, and the life she had planned for them. The house they had bought a few years ago with the intention of marrying soon after. They were to honeymoon at Disneyland- her dream- and return to their home to raise a family. “Sheesh,” I thought, “she'd planned all that and I don't even know what I'm gonna have for dinner!”
And then one morning she woke up and she couldn't see. That was the first symptom. Her fiance rushed her to the eye hospital. After completing the necessary tests, the doctors were able to identify the problem, but they also knew that it must have been a symptom of a far more serious underlying condition. And that was the beginning. About two years ago. She was 28. I'm 28.
Now she has a name for it, of course, but there's no way I could ever hope to pronounce it. Some kind of autoimmune arthritis that causes her constant, excruciating, ever worsening joint pain. The worst is her hip. Some days she can't get out of bed for the pain. The children she'd dreamed of? She's glad she didn't have them before she got sick. How could she possibly have cared for them in this state? And the beautiful house where she and her fiancé were to build their new family together? Well now she sits alone in it every day, an empty shell, a cruel and constant reminder of her broken dreams. “When we built this house I thought it was perfect. But now I hate it!”
“I used to love running.” She's choking up as she speaks. “I'd run 10km just about every day.” Unable to move now, she's gained 40kg. My heart hurts for her as I think on the deep joy and peace I myself have obtained from my own running addiction.
And anyway, she may as well not have a name for it, because it hasn't helped the doctors to treat her. The interminable merry-go-round of appointments; the myriad egotistical specialists who know far, far less than they think they do; the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of unexpected medical expenses that just pop up out of nowhere at the time she can least afford it. And all for what? Just so she can try all the expensive medications, one after the next after the next, each as horrendous and ineffective as the last, each with its own lengthy list of side effects, and its own suite of support drugs to combat the worst of those side effects- the nausea and the constipation (or the diarrhoea). Struggling to her feet and making her way to the kitchen, she defiantly holds up a bottle of pills- her immunosuppressants. Tablets the size of horse tranquilisers. 6 a day. SIX! In one day! 60 in a bottle, $60 a bottle. “But that's only 10 days’ worth!” I'm scrambling in my mind. Maths was never my forte, but it’s immediately apparent that that's an expensive exercise. And that's before she's even told me about the side effects. About how she gets sick anywhere she goes at the drop of a hat. And a cold that takes anyone else 3 days to get over, she struggles to shake, bedridden, for 2 weeks. And that's not even the worst of it. The main attack drug at present is similar to a chemotherapy, administered intravenously at the hospital, with very similar side effects. With each cycle she's bedridden for a week with nausea and vomiting... It's a story I know so well.
But in the middle of this shit-storm, she finds a strange solace in an unlikely place. “I've completely lost count of the number of MRI scans I've had.” She smiles. “But you know what? That claustrophobic little scanner is where I find peace. It's like my little sanctuary in there.” Now also wearing a wide-eyed grin, I confess to having fallen asleep myself during PET scans on more than one occasion. But at least a PET scan is quiet. Have you ever had an MRI?!
The other day she saw her GP. This latest IV drug has caused significant damage to her liver, so it must be discontinued immediately. But... her liver was fine before. How does she make sense of that? An important organ inside her own body, a precious PART of her own body, attacked by the very 'medicine' given to her by people she trusted, given with the intent to heal.
So what now? Well, now...... Now she's exhausted all the options. Western medicine has nothing more to offer her. She'll be in a wheelchair by the age of 40. But she'll still be alive. And she'll still be in constant pain. I'd been too captivated to notice, but now they're unmistakable. Tears are flowing down her cheeks like a waterfall. They're tears I recognise. They're tears I know well. Tears expelled violently from so very deep within a human soul, a visceral expression of anguish, and pain, and frustration, and anger, and tiredness, and fear. I'm forced to my feet by the intensity of the moment. Almost involuntarily I move across the room toward her, and I hug her tightly.
Her friends had abandoned her. Just stopped replying to her messages. Never came to visit. And because of her own poor vision, she's only allowed to drive as far as the local shops. She thanks me for coming to visit. It’s a genuine, heartfelt thanks, I can tell. Her days are long and lonely here. She needs the TV on. It’s the only thing keeping her from driving herself crazy with her own thoughts. I glance over at the tele on the wall. A black and white movie is in full swing. I hadn't even noticed.
I suggest we go for a walk. The sun is still shining, and the frigid morning has given way to the early afternoon, so I'm hoping the temperature has risen.
Out on the street, we turn to the right, away from the open fields. A small collection of brand new McMansions sits awkwardly in the midst of the rolling hills. Just a couple of short streets. We make our way down and around, slowly looping back to her place, sweeping up every nourishing ray of sunshine as we go. She notes a house that has been completed since she last came down this way. It’s absolutely hideous! Everything painted a dull grey, including the driveway. I look back and I can just catch a glimpse of the countryside at the far end of the street. A profound contrast.
She tells me about her job. She'd worked in the immigration detention centre in Darwin. She'd been there during the riots when some of the buildings were set on fire. The stress of that job was enormous, and she couldn't agree with some of the things she was being instructed to do. Eventually she left for something a bit more placid at the Trade Commission. Her Spanish language skills came in handy there. And it was there where she had been working when she became sick.
We talk about nutrition- about the importance of a healthy, nourishing diet. I share my stories of regaining my health by eating the food that God provides for me- the fruits and the vegetables, the nuts and the seeds, the herbs and the spices, the fresh meat and fish. She has a good diet too. But still she has gained weight, an outward manifestation of the intense trauma going on inside her body.
Back inside the house, I flick the kettle on again. We're working our way through her tea box. We've already had two cups, but there just isn't enough tea in the world...
Resettling once again at the table, she tells me about her family. Her father had been an official in Chile, in Pinochet's dictatorship. He was a manipulative, violent drunk. A man so respected in the community that his two faces are a contradiction she still struggles to make sense of. Along with her sister and her mother, with very good reason, they lived in fear for their safety. And for their lives.
Her mum passed away from breast cancer a number of years ago. A distressing story of a mother's death virtually identical to my own mother's. It had been so difficult for her to watch. But more difficult still it was for her 7 year old sister. They ended up with their grandparents, sharing a room together. And it was there that she began to drink. She tells me yet another familiar story of routine after-work trips to the bottle shop, quickly increasing in frequency until they were habitual- every. single. day. She tells me of the inexplicable numbness the alcohol would bring. It was all she could do to dull the pain. Yet it also made the pain worse- a paradox, of course, that could only ever be overcome by increasing the quantity, or the frequency, or both. She tells me of the lengths she would go to to smuggle her contraband into the house, to hide it until her little sister had fallen asleep in the bed next to her, to consume it all under the cover of night, and to smuggle the empty containers out of the house again in the morning. She'd stop by the park on the way to work and dispose of the bottles or cans in the bin there, ready to do it all over again.
Rising to my feet, I move toward the kitchen once again, to make yet more tea. “What are you drinking?” I ask. “Just chamomile,” comes the expected reply. I point out that in my younger, more alcoholic days, that question never referred to tea. And a reply of “Just chamomile” would likely have elicited an intensely scornful retort. We laugh long and hard. But beneath the laughter is the unspoken understanding that we have both come through the other side of that. And here we stand together. And we can still laugh. I tell her how strong she is. Tears well in her eyes. She doesn't feel strong. Actually, she's never felt weaker.
Eventually her father's abuse had been the subject of a harrowing court case. She explains what that was like- like living through the unbearable trauma of the abuse all over again. She had somehow stayed strong, resisting even the deeply hurtful scorn of her then boyfriend. And then, as she emerged from that second round of trauma, and that toxic relationship, she met her fiancé and began to build the life she had always dreamed of.
And then she became sick.
It’s my turn to speak. For a moment, I wax philosophical. I talk about the unfortunate separation our culture has enforced between mind, body and spirit. We treat mental illnesses as though they are only mental illnesses, and we treat physical illnesses as though they are only physical illnesses. And we imagine that we can take what is spiritual and divorce it from what is intellectual. But God, our Almighty Creator, is three in one. And we bear God's image. We cannot ever separate the mental, from the physical, from the spiritual. And the extent to which we try is the extent to which we fail to understand the beautiful complexities of what it means to be human.
I tell the stories I know- so many stories- of people who have survived intense trauma, and the most stressful of situations. Who have miraculously come through the other side, only to find a little ways down the track that they are now facing a fresh hell- a serious, chronic, in many cases terminal illness. I tell my own story. Receiving a very unusual diagnosis at the age of 24, the surgeon told me that the only thing that the doctors know for certain contributes to the development of bowel cancer is stress. Not alcohol. Not burnt meat. But stress. And from my interactions with others, I've learned to identify and name the deep, deep causative connection between intense stress and serious illness.
Once again there are tears streaming down her face. She confesses that she, too, understands that causative link. But that is probably the most confronting thing. In her terrible, painful illness, it seems to her as though her dad, her tormentor, has won. And that is the final burden that is too great for her to carry. I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. “Rest assured, my friend. Love wins. Love will always win, because love is stronger than hate”.
I'm certain I'm taking them completely out of context, but I can't help recalling Jesus' words:
“Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
I can't immediately think what Jesus was talking about on that occasion, but his description sure seems to describe the way the world works.
We talk about how profoundly unfair that is. We acknowledge to one another that we can make neither head nor tail of it. But we also acknowledge that we can find joy, and peace, and laughter, and friendship in the midst of it.
I share the joy and peace I've found in following Jesus. I explain the miracles he's done in my life. The crippling depression- darkness so black I never thought I would ever see the light of day- completely replaced by overflowing joy. The burden of alcoholism- with its exacting physical and mental toll- completely replaced by the self-control of mineral water and fresh lime juice. And I describe how God has strengthened my body, using his good food as my medicine, right at the time my specialists tell me I'm supposed to be dying. I shed a tear or two of my own as I recall the miracle of a half marathon run in the middle of a course of chemotherapy. None of these things happened because of my will or my strength. All were miracles performed by Christ's Spirit in me.
I offer a quick prayer for her- that God might perform these same miracles in her life.
As we make our way back to the front door, she tells me she'll sleep well tonight. She can tell. I promise to visit again soon, and she smacks two huge Latin kisses on me, one on each cheek, and squeezes me so tight my blood hurts. “Peace and love,” I say over my shoulder as I make my way back through the dappled sunlight. “Peace and love.”
It’s a long way from Emu Plains to Maroubra…