Thank God for leukemia

My history as a disciple of Christ is long and not very pretty. I was saved in high school at a meeting of Young Life Campaign. I was fifteen at the time. My family had never been inclined toward attending church. In fact, my dad, who was raised by an authoritarian father in the Methodist church, had declared his intention never to set foot in a church again, after his father divorced his mother and ran off with his secretary, who was twenty years his junior. My mom had been raised in the Episcopal church and was much more inclined toward her faith tradition, but in deference to her husband (see Ephesians 5:33b) she didn’t press the issue of church attendance. Occasionally, my brother and I were sent to church with some neighbors, because, I think, mom felt guilty about not providing us with spiritual training. Charlie and I didn’t enjoy that experience. 

When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a very popular freshman who invited me to a Young Life meeting at his home. I attended mainly because I knew the “cool” kids went to Young Life. To my surprise I found myself deeply moved by seeing kids I admired responding positively to the gospel message. I continued attending weekly throughout the rest of my high school career. One weekend in my senior year, I attended a Young Life retreat at the beach and surrendered to Christ. 

Surrender might be too strong a word. I decided to call myself a Christian, but I really didn’t have much of an idea of what I was getting into. Even after that retreat I didn’t feel compelled to attend church services, although I was a faithful Young Lifer. When I started college at an Ivy League university, I clung to my faith primarily as a buffer against the culture shock that hit me like a tidal wave, when I moved from little old Portland, Oregon, where I had been a top high school student and student council leader, to New Haven, Connecticut, where I rubbed elbows with people like William Howard Taft IV and Rock Brynner, son of actor Yul Brynner, not to mention scores of prep school graduates. 

My closest friend at Yale was a kid from Everett, Washington who also was a Christian and a public school grad. We attended church at Battell chapel on the campus. The pastor was William Sloane Coffin, who was deeply involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. My recollection is that most of his sermons were about getting involved in activism, rather than building up the congregation in the faith. Bob and I both resigned from Yale at the end of the first semester. 

Because I had been lauded by faculty and parents as a “leader” in high school, and I suppose, in part, because of Coffin’s emphasis, I began to fancy myself a little bit of a leader in my Christian life, too. I transferred from Yale to the University of Oregon, where I got involved in Young Life leadership. By my senior year I was, at age 20, the club leader of the South Eugene High School Young Life club. I lived in a boarding house, fondly known as “the Home,” which was run by a couple who headed up the local Young Life board. All of the residents, four men and three women, in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Green and their daughter Wendy, were Christians. It was a wonderful environment in which to grow my faith. 

Eventually, at the behest of Mrs. Green, most of the residents began attending an Assembly of God church that was headed up by a brother and sister team who billed themselves as Lead Pastor and Associate Pastor respectively. I was baffled by the charismatic nature of the Pentecostal church. The speaking in tongues, the dancing in the aisles and all was a little much for my rudimentary understanding of Christian doctrine. The Lead Pastor seemed to me to be taking advantage of the mostly blue collar and farm community congregation, and getting rich in the process. When Mrs. Green and the Associate Pastor ran off together to evangelize the world, leaving Mr. Green and his teenage daughter behind, I was devastated. I had no idea that Christians would act that way. 

No one was to blame except me, but at that point I began to have serious doubts about my faith, and by the time I graduated and headed off to dental school, I had rejected my faith. At that point I began to run away from God and kept running for about thirty years. In fact, debauchery became my lifestyle to the extent that it destroyed my marriage, shortly after my first wife and I adopted a son. 

Patrick was about 14 when he came home from school one day and asked if he could go to the local church with a friend to play basketball. I said that would be fine, as long as he had his homework finished and was home at whatever time I specified.  The basketball games became a weekly ritual, and then I learned that, in addition, Patrick was attending a youth service after the basketball games. Later that year, he wanted to go to a youth retreat called Winter Youth that was sponsored by a number of churches in the state. He had a good time, and then began to attend the church youth group on Sundays. 

The following year he went to Winter Youth again, and shortly thereafter, he invited me to come and see him be baptized. Of course, I went to see this important rite of the church, not realizing that part of God’s plan was to draw me back to Himself. When Patrick emerged from the water after the baptism, the look on his face was one of total elation. He was almost aglow. I have always thought that was a little taste of what it was like when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with his face aglow. (Exodus 34:29)

At that point, God had me back. I spent the afternoon repenting, weeping and worshiping God. I found it easy to take up my faith walk again and was surprised by how much of Scripture I could remember. A few weeks later, God brought Jill into my life, telling me that we were to be married in order to minister together to strengthen families. Jill also heard from the Lord during our courtship. When she was finishing  her evening prayers one night, as she crawled into bed, she tells me that God told her, “You will get closer to Me [God] by marrying him [meaning me].”  

Once again I found myself in a leadership role, first as husband and later when we found ourselves involved in premarital counseling ministry. I’m afraid part of my motivation may have been that a leadership role was comfortable for me, and that it made me feel important.  Of course, that is a very dangerous mindset for a Christian. 

Jill and I ministered to families for many years, and we even started a marriage mentoring ministry in one church where we were members. Along the way, God taught us more about our marriage and about grace and humility than we taught any of our charges. That ministry eventually led me to a ministry to men who struggle with unwanted sexual behaviors. The men I met there taught me more about grace than any other human interactions I have ever had, with the possible exception of being married to Jill. 

When the pandemic came along, opportunities for ministry kind of dried up due to quarantine and the state’s closing of churches. And then about the time the pandemic was easing, I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). That’s when I totally surrendered to Christ. I had no choice. I was powerless before this killer disease. 

When I did surrender, I finally was able to allow God to teach me to truly trust Him. A four year battle ensued, between me, the medical team, and the chemotherapy on one side and AML on the other. Of course, as we went along, I learned that God was carrying me in the palm of His hand. Most of the horrible things I was told to expect, fevers, nausea, vomiting, infections, hospitalizations, never happened. I’m not saying it was fun or easy, but it was obvious that God was in charge. Philippians 4:4-7 became my lifeline:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness[d]be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Throughout the whole battle, which culminated in my receiving a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) on May 8, 2024, I experienced the most amazing sense of joy along with the peace that passes all understanding. Along the way, I also learned first hand James 4:2-4:

2 Count it all joy, my brothers,[b] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

It really is true. In total surrender to Christ, there is unfathomable power and freedom, even in the face of devastating illness. 

Would I have chosen AML as a discipling tool? Not likely. Was it a walk in the park going through three and a half years of chemotherapy and a year of recovery from BMT? Not at all. But the other side of that coin is all of the wonderful Christian medical personnel I met. Not only that, but I was able to minister from my hospital bed to unbelievers who not only attended to me, but some of them would drop by just to chat with me and Jill. We were able to share the love of Christ without preaching or proselytizing. We simply lived out our faith and watched God do amazing things in people’s lives. 

While I was engaged in battle, I reconnected with an acquaintance from dental school who was also battling AML.  Brian was a believer, and together we shared many faith building conversations. God had different plans for Brian, whom He took home to be with Him for eternity last October. But I think Brian experienced the peace and the joy that God gave me. He was rooting for me to make full recovery from BMT, even as his medical team told him that they had nothing more to offer him except palliative care. I can remember three different occasions when Brian called essentially to say goodbye, because he thought he was at the end of his journey. But God sustained him a bit longer each time, maybe so he could see God’s miraculous work of curing me. It was shortly after I was clearly having a recovery that mirrored the uneventful treatments I had had prior to my BMT that, I like to think, the Lord told Brian, “I have some more stuff for Tom to do here, but I am bringing you home to be with Me.” 

Brian told me shortly before he went home that he had total peace and that he was very happy for me, because I was making an amazing recovery. 

Surrender. That’s not a word that soldiers take lightly. But for you, sergeant, surrender not to the enemy but to the Commander In Chief, Jesus Christ, is the road to victory. Is there anything you are holding back from the Lord? Jesus said it. Repent and believe for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Mark 1:14-16)