Understanding

In this last week of the second cycle, my blood count went through the same down-and-up pattern that occurred during the last cycle, except that it did not go dangerously low this time due to the reduced dosage of one of the drugs.  The wound stays about the same although the effect of “radiation recall” is more noticeable due to the reddening of the skin that was radiated before surgery.  My appetite and energy level have been ok.  I am ready for the next three-week cycle which starts next Monday.

Our permanent character:

Christians believe in life after physical death, and part of that eternal life is a permanent character.  We believe in a permanent character (i.e., the “inner being” in Rom 7:22) that is shaped by our daily decisions on this earth. Every time we choose to act in the right or wrong way, we are shaping a little bit of that character, the part that makes the choice. With all the countless choices over our entire life, we are slowly transforming our inner being into either a heavenly creature or a hellish creature. At any given moment, each and every one of us is progressing towards one or the other.

A good character is more than the act of virtue from time to time.  When we speak of ‘good character’, it is similar to calling someone a good basketball player; that is, one who has the ability to make three-point shots repeatedly and reliably.  A bad player can make a three-point shot once in a while, but does not possess the same inner quality of a good player and therefore cannot be depended on.  In this way, a good character indicates the ability and quality to make the right choices and to do the right thing repeatedly in spite of the circumstances.

Nevertheless, there is a “bio-feedback” between every single act we perform and the formation of our character. Every time I choose to do the right thing, it improves a little of that quality of character just like a basketball player improves his/her body-eye coordination in every free-throw. Practice makes perfect, and what I do in this world (the right thing) will echo in eternity (as the permanent character).  In other words, every good or evil I do becomes a tiny part of my permanent character.  A right choice makes it slightly easier to make another right choice later, and vice versa.

A large part of character building is habit forming.   If we consider character as a rope, we weave a tiny heavenly strand of it every time we attempt a virtue and a tiny hellish strand for attempting an evil act. Character building also includes unlearning bad character habits that have taken years to take root.  Breaking bad habits such as badmouthing, criticalness, and selfishness takes much more than just will power and a few techniques. To free us from them, it will take real fundamental inside-out transformation that can only happen with our tremendous effort and God’s abundant grace.

Since I believe that our character is permanent (i.e., it continues after physical death), I don’t believe that we will be given a perfect character at some point after our physical death.  While the hellish strands will be burnt away (like contraband is confiscated by customs), there won’t be any free gifts of heavenly strands.  Although our ticket to heaven is guaranteed by our faith alone, our character will determine how much we will enjoy heaven and reflect God’s glory. If we do not have the qualities of a heavenly creature, no external conditions can make a heaven for us.  In fact, the heaven might just be like hell for hellish creatures, like the sunlight becomes anathema to crawling creatures under a rock. That is why this life on earth is so important and critical.  It is the only chance and place for us to get our character battle-hardened in enemy territory.  Along with this permanent character, I believe a large part of our memories and some feelings will continue after death, too.  After all, those are integrated parts of who we are.  However, this is all speculation, and there are people who are more qualified than me to talk about it.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.

After Monday’s chemo, I have experienced moderate to severe fatigue until yesterday.  At times, my body felt foreign to me.  To make matters worse, the cortisone pills and injections I had to take have made me restless and sleepless.  I knew I was irritable, and I thought there was something wrong with my spiritual condition.  I countered it by praying and meditating, and it did work to a large extent, but I was still not myself.  By accident, I mentioned the sleeplessness to a nurse who told me that it was a side effect of the cortisone, and the symptoms can be countered by yet another drug.  I have tried to minimize the use of this last drug. It is scary to think about the combined side effects of all these drugs in my system. Physical suffering, as bad as it is, is something one can clearly identify and deal with.  Mood altering is something else. It directly influences the wits and will that are responsible for a response.  This escalates the whole situation from one that is physically challenging to one that is mentally challenging.  Fortunately, the effect of cortisone does wear off after a few days.

The wound is about the same. My appetite has not been good but keeping water and food down has not been a problem.  I will have a blood count test done next Tuesday.

Learn to live & love like a father and a husband:

Having been a husband and a father for many years, I think marriage and parenthood are excellent conditions in which to develop and grow in the ability to love.  There is a natural progression in terms of level of difficulty from marriage to parenting.  After all, most of us more or less get to choose our partners, while none of us get to pick and choose our children. (Talk about a real blind date.)

Parenting is challenging; there are no shortages of expert advice and “How to” books on this subject. On this Father’s Day, I would like to share one lesson that I have learned the hard way.  

The biggest mistake I have made in my parenting was that I was not proactive enough in engaging and loving my family. I did not take the initiative nor provide the leadership as a head of the household should be.

I understood the importance of parenting enough to encourage and support my wife in her decision to stay home, and the children and I have benefited from that tremendously.  However, I then conveniently took a backseat role, because the children now were under Mom’s department.  I envisioned and took pride in myself as a provider and a protector who took care of things outside the house.  As long as there were no crises or surprises, I focused on building a career and a livelihood.  My priority was on things that built up my c.v., things that brought acclaim and success. I enjoyed my job, and I was good at it.  Family functions were frequently at the mercy of projects, papers, and proposals.  I had to be nudged repeatedly by my wife before engaging the children. Instead of experiencing my kids’ progresses and developments first hand, I usually heard about them from my wife.  While I was familiar with my children’s sounds and looks, I couldn’t really say that I know their likes, dislikes, fears, concerns and deep secrets.  

At first, it was largely due to my ignorance .  I did not know any better, partially because when I was growing up, my father was struggling with his own poor health.  He was like most men in his generation, hardworking but usually keeping his own emotions and feelings to himself.  It also did not help that the young language churches we went to had few families that were older than ours, i.e., no role models. The problem was further compounded by my lack of desire to set my priorities straight, which would have required me to get out of my comfort zone.  The truth is that I did not even have the skills needed to engage my children in a way to allow them to feel my love for them.  When they were teens, I could not keep a simple conversation going for more than a couple of minutes even if I tried, let alone a deep and meaningful one.  It took me quite a while to desire what God has desired for my family and to acquire the skills; then even longer to catch up.

My dear brothers, let’s take the initiative to engage our family if we are blessed with one.  Be creative and proactive.  Learn the skills as if we were in the graduate school. Plan a family activity just like we would go after a big project or client.  Take our family members out for one-on-one dates and treat them with a nice meal and our full attention.  Play a board game with our children.  Forget about our tennis or golf games with our buddies.  Take our children out for what they like to do most.  Be a father to our children and a husband to our wife, because we are teaching by example our sons how to be a future husband and father and showing our daughters the kind of mate she should look for.   This will be a legacy and blessing that will continue for generations.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health on this Father’s Day.

Dear All, 

My current chemo has a 3-week cycle. It consists of a drug on the 1st day, the same drug and another drug on the 8th day, a white cell booster on the 9th day, and then nothing in between the 10th and 21st day so that the blood counts can recover for the next cycle. Last Monday was the 1st day of the 2nd cycle.  Although my platelet count did rebound to 160,000, well above the threshold necessary for treatment, my oncologist still lowered the dosage by about 20% because the 20,000 count on 5/29 was just too close a call. After the chemo, I suffered from mild nausea until Thursday afternoon.  The wound is about the same so far but the pain is somewhat stronger now.  Hopefully, it does not get much worse so that everything will be good enough tomorrow to receive the two drugs.  As predicted, my hair began to fall off last Tuesday. By Saturday, bald spots began to show and I had all the remaining hair sheared off.  My baldness reminds me of the days when I served in the army.

I received an encouraging email from a famous Christian writer from the Netherlands last week , letting me know that my blog has even reached halfway around the world. When I had to give up teaching Sunday school because of my low blood counts I felt sad about been silenced by my illness, and I did question God’s wisdom in allowing this wonderful ministry to be taken away from me.  Just around that time, a sister reminded me about blogging.  The web has given my voice back to me so that I can continue my witnessing in the virtual world to real people in spite of my illness. In some way, this is also a way of fighting back, and it gives me the motivation to seek God day after day.  The web is a great tool for reaching and connecting people who are thousands of miles away.  Hence, I think it is befitting to share a story about how the web has been used in making a difference in the lives of many living in third world countries.

A technological solution for real human needs-Kiva:

On 3/4/2007, I shared the story of Dr. Yunus, a man who was awarded the 2006 Nobel peace prize for his contribution in lifting millions out of poverty using microloans  (http://highspirit.blog.com/1583534/).  This time, I would like to share another story about how information technology is being used to make microloans even more accessible.

Jessica Flannery first came to Uganda in 2004 to do some development work with a group called Village Enterprise Fund. On her first trip to Africa, she was struck by how a small amount of money could go such a long way, and she returned home to tell her husband, Matt.

Traditionally, microcredit is offered through banks that charge as much as 35 percent interest or through moneylenders who charge as much as 300 percent.  To make microloans more efficient and accessible via information technology, Matt Flannery built a web site with a simple concept in mind — peer to peer lending.

Using Kiva website, individual lenders with as little as $25 can select precisely which business receives the loan and will in turn receive regular updates on the start-up business’s progress. To minimize risks, Kiva forges partnerships with local microfinance institutes so that each business are vetted and approved before being posted on its site. For example, at the weekly meeting of the Life in Africa group, one of Kiva’s local partners in Uganda, new loan requests are reviewed. People in the group fire off questions to the new applicants, who must give a good explanation as to why they should be chosen. Those present are motivated to make the right decisions, as they are all responsible if the business should fail.

Before Kiva, an average person couldn’t actually invest in small businesses in the developing world.  By creating Kiva, we can help them grow their enterprises and, in turn, create a trickle of prosperity down to others in the community.  We’re tapping into a new source of capital and goodwill, i.e., the ordinary people. There is a real connection between a lender and a borrower due to the lender’s freedom to choose where his/her money’s going and what it’s being used for. It gives the lender a greater sense of engagement, and the process is inherently more transparent.

Kiva has processed over $6 million in loans and has distributed to more than 60,000 people. And what started in one small village in Uganda has spread to 11 other countries in just its first year.

The aforementioned is an example of people who love their neighbors so much that they feel their neighbors’ dire need of starting capital in order to lift themselves out of poverty.  They then saw a solution of making microloans more efficient and accessible with the application of information technology, part of their own profession skills.   With passion and dedication, the solution was realized to empower both the lenders and borrowers, making the world a better place.

Do you have $25 to spare in order to make a difference in somebody’s life?  It’s only a loan; most likely, you’ll get it back.  (Kiva borrowers have a 100% payback rate so far.) Moreover, let’s be on the constant lookout for novel solutions in meeting the real needs of our neighbors.

(I shared the story about Kiva because it is the first peer-to-peer microloan website.  There are other such websites just a few mouse clicks away.)

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.

Dear All,

Due to “radiation recall”, a side-effect of the two chemo drugs, two small holes have opened up along the incision line and clear body fluid is coming out of them. They were somewhat infected initially.  Fortunately, antibiotic cream and my own immune system have been able to fight off the infection so far. The wound care involves cleaning, changing the dressing and applying the cream a few times a day.  The hope is that they won’t become infected and thus interfere with the next chemo cycle which starts Monday. In addition to the open wound, itching and mild pain around the incision have also returned.  It is a blessing that half of the area no longer has any sensation due to the removal of the nerve.

The wound re-opening is an unusual manifestation of the radiation recall.  It surprised both the doctors and myself.  I have been unhappy about it because the objective of the surgery was to take care of the local problem first, so that the doctors can concentrate on the systematic problem later without being held back by the local problem.  However, I am thankful that it is under control so far.

My platelet count was very low on Tue, about 20,000 (the normal is at least 150,000 and the low limit to receive treatment is 100,000).  I was warned to be careful not to hit my head hard or else the brain would bleed internally.  It is unpleasant to see traces of blood on the tissue after blowing my nose and the black and blue caused by leaking from my vein after a blood test.  Thankfully, the count came back up to 70,000 on Friday. With such a rebound rate, there is a good chance that the count will be high enough next Monday for the next chemo.  Due to the white booster shot, the white cell count has not gone as low, which is important considering the open wound.

My appetite has been reasonably good and I have not lost much weight. My energy level has been Ok.  My mobility is limited because I was told not to bend my knee in order to prevent aggravating the wound opening.

While you remember us in your thoughts and prayers, please also remember the mother of a student I ran into Friday.  He told me that, after hearing my story, his mother is resuming her treatment for her brain tumor after quitting due to severe chemo side-effects.  In addition to her positive response to the treatment and minimal side-effects, please pray for their financial needs.  The insurance company has refused to pay for the “experimental” therapies which have run up a bill of tens of thousands dollars so far.  Both he and his sister have to work two jobs in order to help pay for his mom’s treatments.

Love your neighbor starting with respect–II

Every person deserves our respect because in respecting others, our love manifests itself.  Wherever respect is lacking, love is absent.  Seeing another person as he/she really is is the starting point and reverently receiving him/her is the heart of respect. 

Last week, I shared that we should not make an image and label of others, so that we can relate to our neighbors properly as who they really are.  However, all of us see the world through a lens.  We see the world, not as it is, but as who we are, i.e., through a coloration derived from our basic character.  Our imperfect lens of character distorts the reality to prevent us from seeing the reality. While it is a work of lifetime to shape our character according to godly principles, we can in the meantime try to learn what comtemplatives have always known and what good therapists have always practiced: to accept others with an open mind, rejecting and judging little.  It also means relinquishing all anxiety of self-affirmation, curiosity, and judging. Nevertheless, we cannot go very far to change our vision without simultaneously changing our basic character, and vice versa.  There is no short cut in developing a 20/20 vision; it has to come from inside out. Only a loving heart will enable us to see the butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, and the saint in a selfish person.

Regarding the loving reception of others wholly as they are, in its all truth, we have this obsessive tendency to judge. We evaluate others according to our own egocentric set of norms and therefore cannot interact with others in their own dignity and truth. We are quick to make assessments of others and second-guess their motives, though, at times, we are even unaware of doing it. Instead of revealing to a person his/her own hidden beauty, we seek our own affirmation and sense of self-worth in our interactions with others. We focus on our needs, justify our own position and look for evidences to show the flaws of others. We keep a record of “perceived” wrongs of others as a dark treasure and then reduce others into their failings as we perceive them, i.e., we create a negative image of our neighbors and confine them to it. We think we know what is good for others, and we impose that on them without asking and listening–we love our own ideas, thoughts, or solutions more than our neighbors.

The problem is our ego and self-centeredness. Our own ego just plays too much of a role.  In order to receive others, we have to empty ourselves first.  Jesus said in Matthew 16:24  “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” 

We can only deny ourselves if we have a strong sense of security, self-acceptance and self-worth.  If they are weak, we will have a limited ability to humble ourselves and to be free from egoism. The need of self-affirmation is just too great to ignore and taking a lower place creates a strong internal tension. Sense of security, self-acceptance and self-worth are subjects worthy of at least a sharing in their own right.  For the moment, it suffices to say that a deep sense of high intrinsic self-worth has to be centered on principles and grounded in the love of God and others.

1 Corinthians 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails.

May this find you and your loved ones in good spirit and health.