Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’”
Then Isaiah said, “Prepare a poultice of figs.” They did so and applied it to the boil, and he recovered.
Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, “What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the temple of the Lord on the third day from now?”
Isaiah answered, “This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?”
“It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps,” said Hezekiah. “Rather, have it go back ten steps.”
Then the prophet Isaiah called on the Lord, and the Lord made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.

• 2 Kings 20:1-11

I said, “In the prime of my life
    must I go through the gates of death
    and be robbed of the rest of my years?”
I said, “I will not again see the Lord himself
    in the land of the living;
no longer will I look on my fellow man,
    or be with those who now dwell in this world.
Like a shepherd’s tent my house
    has been pulled down and taken from me.
Like a weaver I have rolled up my life,
    and he has cut me off from the loom;
    day and night you made an end of me.
I waited patiently till dawn,
    but like a lion he broke all my bones;
    day and night you made an end of me.
I cried like a swift or thrush,
    I moaned like a mourning dove.
My eyes grew weak as I looked to the heavens.
    I am being threatened; Lord, come to my aid!”
But what can I say?
    He has spoken to me, and he himself has done this.
I will walk humbly all my years
    because of this anguish of my soul.
Lord, by such things people live;
    and my spirit finds life in them too.
You restored me to health
    and let me live.
Surely it was for my benefit
    that I suffered such anguish.
In your love you kept me
    from the pit of destruction;
you have put all my sins
    behind your back.
For the grave cannot praise you,
    death cannot sing your praise;
those who go down to the pit
    cannot hope for your faithfulness.
The living, the living—they praise you,
    as I am doing today;
parents tell their children
    about your faithfulness.
The Lord will save me,
    and we will sing with stringed instruments
all the days of our lives
    in the temple of the Lord.

• Isaiah 38:10-20

“Cancer is one of those subjects that can’t be comprehended secondhand. It’s larger than life; it carries such powerful implications that it changes a person forever. Whenever I open the door at Scripps, the feelings come flooding back, even though I ’ve had consistently good reports for two decades. The good news never quite washes out the memory and emotions of those uncertain times. So was I afraid? Is it fear that comes creeping back even now? …
“ ‘Absolutely! I was desperately afraid. There’s no disputing that. Was I afraid to die? No. I’m not afraid to leave this life, although I’m not eager to do so either. A good bit of my fear focused on losing precious years with the people I love. Some of it was simply about pain. Some of it was about the unknown. How would you respond to the news that you were suffering from a possibly fatal disease? Imagine the thoughts and feelings that might flood your heart at such a time, and you’ll know the same things I experienced.‘ …
“As we read of people in Scripture who suffered with various diseases, we recognize the same emotions we feel today. One compelling example is Hezekiah, a king of Judah. Let’s look first at his life, and then we’ll explore his approach to illness. His battle with disease is recounted three times: in 2 Kings 20, 2 Chronicles 52, and Isaiah 38.
“Hezekiah was one of Judah’s greatest kings. ‘He trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him’ (2 Kings 18:5).
“Hezekiah ascended the throne at the age of twenty-five and inspired a period of religious revival in which he was encouraged by Isaiah, perhaps the noblest and the most eloquent of the Hebrew prophets. Hezekiah opened the long-closed doors of the Temple in Jerusalem and began its renovation, issuing this charge to the priests and Levites: ‘Hear me, Levites! Now sanctify yourselves, sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry out the rubbish from the holy place’ (2 Chronicles 29:5). …
“How would you react if you learned that your death was imminent? If a godly man like Hezekiah ‘wept bitterly’ (Isaiah 38:3), then we can understand it’s no sin to express grief when we’re hit with terrible medical news. Hezekiah was not just a godly king; he was a godly human king. And humans naturally grieve in the face of bad news.”

• Dr. David Jeremiah, Hope, Living Fearlessly in a Scary World

To explain the beginning of Dr. Jeremiah’s quote above, he had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  As he goes further into the story of his diagnosis, he speaks of his wife flying away the next day.  He did not tell her.  They were going to run tests to confirm the diagnosis.  Why cancel her trip if this was nothing?  His wife would be gone for three days.  And as the plane took off, he realized he was left alone to deal with the fear.

The treatment worked and he has been cancer free for decades since this diagnosis and treatment, but he still must return for checkups.  He still remembers the fear.

And as for the Scriptures, I used the 2 Kings telling of the story of Hezekiah’s illness, but I included what Hezekiah wrote regarding his illness, and Isaiah used Hezekiah’s words in Isaiah 38.

When my wife was still alive, people would ask how we get along in our retirement, how was our health, those kinds of questions.  They wanted to know why we were so cheerful.

I would explain that I had every illness or ailment on the face of the earth, or so it seemed, that would not kill you, but it would make life miserable.  Okay, I have had my shingles vaccines.  I do not want that one.  Then I would say that my wife had every type of life-threatening disease.  Then my wife would correct that by saying she did not have cancer.

Then when they asked why we were so cheerful?  And we would say that we were blessed by God, blessed to have each other, and no one wants to be around “Grumpy Gus.”

Now that my wife is gone, I have had some weird pains, and each time cancer is eliminated early on.

As Dr. Jeremiah asked, in the midst of several questions, is it fear of the pain?

I have had so much pain at times that the pains do not seem so intense anymore.  Your brain cancels them out.  The old joke about the cure for a headache is for someone to step on your foot.  Suddenly, you aren’t worried about the headache anymore.  At some of the bad times, that kind of thing works.  You do not have to inflict the pain.  Your body does that on its own.  And when asked about the pain, the nurse wants a number between 1 and 10.  I have given the nurse a number of eight or less.  One nurse told me that she had what I had and the pain was a ten.  I replied, “I am saving the ten for a heart attack.  I haven’t had that one yet.”  She snickered and said, “I’ll change your eight to a nine on my chart.”

My wife told me to go home early the night she died.  She said to call when I got home so that she would know that I was safe, but then when I called, she got angry.  She had gone to sleep, and I think she knew what would happen that night.  She wanted to die quietly in her sleep.  As it was, the heart monitors chirped, and she died with one doctor performing CPR while another doctor was trying to insert a pacemaker to keep her heart going.  But I wonder if she was still there for any of that.

I guess that I am not the right person to talk about serious illness.  I have dodged it in my life, and my wife did not want to talk about it.  She wanted to smile and think happy thoughts.

But Hezekiah was 25 when he became king, and he reigned for 29 years.  That makes him 54 when he died.  He starts his “memoir” of his disease with being in the prime of his life.  Indeed, he was a thirty-something, barely at 39.

How would my wife and I have taken the news of her illnesses at that age?  Really, my wife lamented that she found out about type 2 diabetes on her fortieth birthday.  That was an exaggeration of sorts.  Her birthday that year was on a Sunday.  I know, because I left her in South Carolina while I went to Mississippi to work on a NASA project on her birthday.  Nice of me, hunh?

So, that little shock of diabetes came when she was alone.  She never had willpower when it came to diets.  She wished to ignore the disease other than being careful to take her pills.  The disease probably led to some of the other body failures, thyroid disease, parathyroid way out of control, a heart murmur that led to aortic stenosis and open-heart surgery, and then her kidneys failed.  The things she complained about were vitiligo and alopecia areata.  Those could not be hidden.  I think by the end, the latter of these two was simply balding, but she did not wish to think about that.

But when it came to the deadly diseases, my wife had accepted Jesus.  She had her champion who would see her through the illness and when she breathed her last in her mortal body, she would awaken to see Jesus.

Without that assurance, her last years might have been a totally different story.

Lord, strengthen me.  My wife left this earth the right way.  She always greeted people with a smile.  She showed love wherever she went, and she often went to hospitals.  Often, I would go to visit her, and nurses would emerge from her room, laughing.  Lord, I have a tough act to follow, but with your help, I can give it a try.  But not yet, she told me that once she was gone, I could write more.  Write, I must, until You take me home.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.