Prelude--The Beginning of My CLL Journey

Here's an email I sent to friends back ground back in late October of 2013:
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From: Michael Beavers <mikebeaverslmft@me.com>
To: ...
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2013 5:26 AM
Subject: Michael's Health

Hi all,
Here's an update about the health issue (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)) that you may have been praying (and/or wondering) about.

This has been a long diagnostic road but here are some particulars:

1. I have received a definite diagnosis of CLL.
2. It is described as Stage Two, in an "indolent" phase,  "Indolent" being a good thing since it's the opposite of aggressive and one likes any sort of cancer to be as indolent as possible. And "indolent" is also nothing like "terminal" which is pretty much what you want to avoid in matters like this.
3. There are no symptoms (except enlarged lymph nodes, which is what merited "Stage Two").
4. I will be monitored via blood tests every three months for at least the next couple of years.
5. Should further symptoms develop, it's possible I'll be in for an aggressive round of chemotherapy (which has a high probability of a good outcome)
6. It is also possible that things will worsen considerably and it will become terminal (which could take place in the next six months or when I'm 92), which makes long term planning rather more tentative.
7. Bottom line:  I have a much greater appreciation of whatever days I am granted and hope to carry out a life mission that (in no particular order)

• creates Christian community (the "CCX"  or "Christian Community Experiments" cell group project)
• provides strategic service to my community through avenues such as Rotary international
• develops a healthy non-profit organization focused on training and empowering outstanding clinicians, providing strengths-based services, and supporting the abolition cause
• provides love and support to an amazing wife (who is dealing with a few existential issues of her own)
• carries out a spiritual life with consistent integrity and connects deeply with like-minded people.
• Hopefully, "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated".  Don't feel too sorry for me; the reality is I could easily die of causes having nothing to do with CLL (like old age or careless driving or inordinate and adolescent risk-taking).  There's actually a gift in this process in that I likely have greater awareness of the preciousness of each day (some would think that a cliche, not having the benefit of a chronic potentially life-shortening diagnosis.  I, however, am beginning to "get" that the brevity and preciousness are actually the reality).

Something of the following may find its way into my next life mission revision:

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.  -Dawna Markova

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.  -George Bernard Shaw

Perhaps it is a bit ironic that this week I've been studying Philippians 1:21ff which hints that shorter lives can be better ones.

As to my mildly narcissistic sense of indispensableness to my lofty goals, a quote of which a friend reminded me last week, says it well, The graveyards are full of indispensable men.  So maybe I'm beginning to "get" that 'Man proposes, but God disposes', or as the Yiddish proverb has it, "Man plans, God laughs", God being quite the 'untame' (though eminently loving and majestic) 'lion'. God's purposes are not in doubt, nor is his kindness, as in allowing me some pretty awesome experiences alongside some pretty awesome people.

Michael Beavers
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That was then, this is now.  And now (February, 2015) treatment begins . . .