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If you would like to leave your own Note "to" Pastor Andy, click HERE and you can on Table & Fire: 

If you want to "buzz" his pager, after you've said a prayer, call the number, 972-229-3878, wait for the beeps, enter your phone number, you will hear some more beeps and the pager will buzz.

I start 6 more months of both-barrelled chemo next Wednesday. After that, I'll have six additional months of just one drug (Avastin) which I'll also have to go in every other week to be infused with. In short, a full year of more junk. 

The good news is that my doc says he's now "trying to cure me" rather than just extend my life. And he thinks we've got a chance with this protocol "if we're really lucky". I just smiled. 

Onward and upward, 

EAM

Andy was released from the hospital today and is back home. This is a bit earlier than expected and great news. Please continue to pray as he begins to heal up.

Andy's surgery went very well this morning. Andy was back in his room . . . and trying to get a tee time for later this afternoon:) The nurses will have him up and walking a bit today. Watch this space for more updates along the way.

My Dear Friends,

A little boy was on a 250 mile-long drive with his dad to go fishing. After about fifty miles, the excited child asked if they were almost there. “No son, we’ve got a ways to go yet.” Fifty miles later the little voiced piped up again. “Are we almost there?”  “No son, we’ve got a ways to go yet.” After another hour had passed, the boy asked, “Are we almost there?” “Sorry son, we have another hundred miles yet.” After another fifty miles, the little guy asked, “Daddy, will I still be five when we get there?”

It’s wearying to wait, isn’t it? Whether you’re five and it seems the trip is taking forever or you’re 45 and it seems the career break you’ve been praying for will never come, patience is no piece of pie! My OCD personality would rather have a root canal than wait. My image of Hell is waiting in a long line in a large room painted government-issue green, only to get to the front and hear a bureaucrat tell me why I won’t be getting my car license plates today! Waiting makes my teeth clench, my blood pressure rise and face turn red. Of course, I have to do it with you all every day in traffic, at checkout counters, fast-food drive-thru’s, the bank and waiting on hold with an operator overseas to straighten out your most recent cell-phone billing error.

But since arriving here in the Valley of the Shadow, I’ve found the necessity of waiting to be even more pervasive, difficult, and even fearful. In my case, going through cancer surgeries and chemotherapy means all sorts of waiting, and often scary suspense is bound up in that waiting. You get a test, and have to wait hours for the results. You get a scan and have to agonize for days over the verdict. You start a new chemo protocol, and have to wait months for the effects. You have a surgery and have to wait years to see if it’s saving your life. Is the treatment working? Don’t know, have to wait and see. Is the cancer back? Don’t know, have to wait and see. Am I going to live or die? Don’t know, have to wait and see.

It’s hard enough to wait when you’re reasonably sure that what you long for is on its way. But it’s a good sight harder to cool your jets when you can’t be sure that anything good is happening or ever will. 
This “waiting-without-knowing” is the biggest smackdown here in the Valley. A pastor friend of mine just had a tumor removed from the frontal lobe of his brain, and is waiting on the biopsy results to see if it’s malignant. A relative of mine just had a colonoscopy and is waiting to see if the polyps are cancerous. Another friend we’ve been praying for just wrote this update:

“I had my 4-month follow-up MRI this week and found out that the two spots on my brain are continuing to grow.  The good news is that they are still growing at a slow pace, and I am still symptom-free.  However, once I start experiencing symptoms, I will need surgery again to remove these small tumors.  And it’s anyone’s guess as to when that will be.  It could be as long as a few years or as early as tomorrow. Most likely, my doctors will continue the ‘wait and see’ approach, meaning that I will continue to go in for an MRI every 4 months, unless I present with symptoms before then.” What’s going to happen to my friends? Don’t know, we’ll just have to “wait and see”.

But scary as it is, I’ve also found waiting to be extremely illuminating here in the Valley. I used to picture waiting as sitting back bored in a doctor’s office reception area, fidgeting and fretting over wasted time and stacked schedules. I used to think of waiting as passive; it’s something that happens to us, not something we make happen. Implicit in this view of waiting is that happiness only comes when we exit the waiting room. We’re eager to get what we wait for because we’ve convinced ourselves that life is no good until we do. In effect, we wait to live until we’re done waiting.

But the huge problem with that mentality is that much of life involves waiting. We wait for the bank to loan us money, to learn the lab results, to start a family, to get our test scores, to get justice, to see our loved ones have faith in God, to marry, to discover God’s will, to get our prayers answered, to be offered a better job, to get well, to win a World Series, to go to Heaven.  So if we wait to live until we’re done waiting, we’ll never really live. All our life we’ll wait to live, and when we die, we’ll realize we never did!

That’s not what God had in mind. He actually has a whole different purpose for our waiting. We wait to get done waiting. We wait with the hope and anticipation of getting what we wait for and therefore having to wait no longer. We wait with the assumption that if we wait long enough, we’ll receive all that we wait for and never have to wait again. In other words, we naively assume that, if we patiently play our cards just right, we’ll eventually become problem-free in this problem-plagued world of ours. A half second’s thought about that, however, reveals the fallacy. Not only does God ever promise us an untroubled life. He actually declares that trouble is His tool for shaping our character and deepening our faith. No wonder I’m always in a hurry, but God never is! Therefore His advice to me in antsy times is unwaveringly, “Hurry up and wait.” You’ll find it worth your while. Why?

“God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you'll have it all--life healed and whole. I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it's your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory” (The Message, 1Pet.1.5-7).

So you’re childless and God has told you to wait for a baby. You’re single and God has told you to wait for a mate. You’re ill and God has told you to wait for healing. You’re troubled and God has told you to wait for peace. That’s tough, but remember that at least as important as the things we wait for is the work God does in us while we wait. Here is the greatest mystery of waiting--it is really God who doing it! He’s waiting for us to learn, to grow, to trust, to change and become the people he wants us to be. Our Lord’s most famous picture of God’s love is of a father in front of his house, eyes fixed on the horizon, waiting for his foolish son to come home (Lk. 15). Each of us, in his or her own way, is that son or daughter. We sojourn in the far country, peeved that God is making us wait, when all the time it’s Him that’s waiting for us. The pain of waiting is actually a good occasion for us to come home to all the Father wants to do in our lives.  For if we do, we’re promised even greater things to wait for in time to come.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8.18).

Note the words “sufferings” and “glory”.  Paul invites us to make a comparison of the two.  His point?  If you could put all the difficulties and pain and suffering of your life on one side of a scale, and the glory that will someday be revealed to you on the other side, the glory would be so much heavier than your present sufferings that they would be blown away like a feather. The sufferings of this life, though terrible, are virtually nothing in comparison with the great weight of glory coming to the children of God. In other words, the anxious longing and eager waiting in spite of pain and suffering is not asking too much.  Heaven is worth the wait.  As a wise man once said:

“Sorrow looks back.  Worry looks around.  Faith looks up.”  

Seeking God while we wait involves making faith choices.  Sure, there is not yet peace everywhere and all pain has not yet been taken away.  But still, we hear voices that pray, notice moments of forgiveness, and witness many signs of hope. We don’t have to wait until all is well, but can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.  This is a real discipline.  It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten us, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when we are surrounded with lies.  Wise are those who so choose.

Ps. 130:5-7   I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.   O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.

Oh yes, and you’ll still be five when you get there.

Embracing the Wait,

Pastor Andy

 

November 18, 2009

Dear Ones,

Thanks so much for your prayers and concern for me in these days. So many of you have been asking after my health and the progress of my chemo treatments. It’s high time I finally give you an update.

Last Wednesday I had my second PET scan having completed three months of chemo. This morning, Alice and I met with the doctor to go over the results and make a plan for future treatment in their light.

The PET scan revealed good news. The lymph node where the cancer had spread has diminished in size from 10.2 mm to 2.2 mm. This 80% reduction shows that my cancer is responsive to chemotherapy. The other good news was that there is no more spread of the cancer. It seems to be limited to that one spot.

We’re obviously grateful for this good news. But the next question is, where do we head from here? My doctor is strongly advising that I undergo major surgery ASAP to remove the lymph node and then follow that with another four to six months of chemotherapy. His reasoning is that even if the next three months of chemo makes the rest of that cancer disappear on subsequent scans, it’s possible that cancer cell concentrations could still be there, albeit smaller and undetected. Best to remove the concentration of cells surgically and then “mop up” with more chemo. Doc says this aggressive approach would give me the greater chance of survivability over the long term, and of course we’re all about that!

Though another surgery and then virtually starting over again with the chemo are not what we’d hoped for, Alice and I are inclined to go with this plan. We’re meeting with the surgeon on Friday to get the wheels turning.

Again, we do so appreciate your prayers and kind thoughts and acts of kindness to us in these days! God is sustaining us through you even as we place our full trust in Him.

With Him in Mind,

Andy

 

November 11, 2009

My Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Valley of the Shadow! Your intrepid Travel Writer has a report on an interesting point of language use by the locals here and those of you on the outside in the larger English-speaking world which we’ve previously nicknamed “Myopia”. The phrase I have in mind is the very common and well-meaning interrogative often used as a greeting in both cultures, “How’re you doing?”

It’s such a simple question. And it’s a kind question too, motivated by the desire of the questioner for the well-being of the questioned. Yet those in the Valley tend to hear and answer that question in a very different way than those on the outside. I thought I’d use this installment of my Travel Writer missives to give you all a bit of personal insight into how folks on this side think about the “how are you?” query, hereafter designated “TQ” for “The Question”.

First, you must realize that to the Valley dweller, TQ is generally a far more complex question than you might imagine.  To them, TQ includes several distinct sub-questions that may be fuzzily latent in the mind of the asker but which are crystal clear to the mind of those in the Valley. I will break these down by headings and explain them as follows:

1. The “do you realize that I care about you and that’s why I’m asking TQ?” sub-question, here labeled “I CARE”. This obviously is really more of a statement than a question, and is always much appreciated. Both cultures, Valley and Myopia, use TQ this way. It’s almost like saying, “hey buddy, whassup?” We’re glad to see each other, we care about each other, and that’s how we express our fondness.  Of course, the proper answer to “I CARE” is, “I CARE RIGHT BACK!” So we say, “I’m good, how YOU doin’?!” We slap each other on the back and say goodbye, another friendly interaction!

2. The “are you winning the cancer battle. . . or not?” sub-question, here labeled “R U DYING?”. To a person who is in a fight for their life, this is the sub-question of the TQ they sometimes hear. Right after I’d had a cancerous tumor along with 12 inches of my colon removed and a PET scan showed that I still had cancer spreading in my lymph system, I encountered two IBC staffers at a meeting who asked me TQ. Concerned that I had cancer cells pulsing unopposed through my veins (I had not yet begun chemo), in my mind I heard them asking the R U DYING sub-question and, before I could stop myself, answered it honestly: “At this moment, I think I might be dying of cancer. . .” Their shocked expressions immediately let me know that I’d pulled a cultural faux paus. Realizing my error, I laughed and lied, “Just kidding!” Funny thing, word must have got around staff because no one working at IBC has asked me TQ for the last three months. My bad!

3. The “right now are you physically OK or are you about to hurl?” sub-question, here labeled “DO U FEEL TERRIBLE?” People in the Valley are usually dealing with some sort of pain or handicap or discomfort that constantly reminds them of their statas there in the shadow. So you can understand that the TQ might sound like a query about their physical symptoms at that very moment. I had a friend who works at a drugstore who made an after hours delivery to my home of some much needed anti-nausea medicine—a prince of a guy! As he gave me the med’s he asked TQ, but in my mind I heard the “DO U FEEL TERRIBLE?” sub-question and answered honestly: “I’m nauseated, constipated, fatigued, and sleepless most nights. . . yes my friend, I feel terrible.” The look of horror on his face immediately told me I’d made another cultural faux paus. “Well,” he stuttered, “thanks for being honest!” “You bet!” I said, secretly vowing not to be honest like that ever again.

4. The “are you an emotional wreck or are you holding steady” sub-question, here labeled “ARE YOU ABOUT  TO GIVE UP?” Many people in the Valley soon realize that their sojourn in the shadow isn’t a sprint, but a marathon. They have to come to grips with the reality that they may never again live in Myopia, but that neither might they be passing quickly through the Valley to the golden gates on the other side. Their pain or disability or suffering may go on and on and on for quite a while, and that gets more than tiring, it get discouraging. So when well-meaning friends ask them TQ, they sometimes hear the “ARE YOU READY TO GIVE UP?” sub-question.

I think this is best answered with actions and not words from Valley dwellers. For me, it comes out in certain (possibly perverse?) ways according to my sense of humor. For instance, I determined from the beginning that the way for me to show I have not given up on the fight is to name the fight and refuse to let it become the elephant in the room. For example, I recently played in a golf tournament with a bunch of my buddies and could tell they were all tiptoeing around my cancer. So I started in on the first hole begging for gimme’s with the line, “After all guys, I’ve got cancer.” At first, they caved because they didn’t get it. But after the third time I played the cancer card they got it and said, “Forget it dude, make the putt.” At that moment I knew that they knew I was dealing with the disease and had not given up. Otherwise why would I still be trying to kick their heinie’s (in love, mind you) on the golf course? I love it. It’s kind of like the note I received recently from a friend:

“I hope all is well.  I wanted to let you know about a really fun opportunity that is coming up.  It is called the Undy5000, and it is a walk/run to raise money for the colon cancer alliance.  It is Oct. 31st at Winfrey point at White Rock Lake in Dallas.  I did it last year, and it was really fun.  This year, our clinic is doing it in costume.  Our team is called: Heinie Herd, so several of us are going as farm animals.”

Am I ready to give up? Not as long as the Heinie Herd dress up like cows and sheep and are run-walking to help save my life! Now I’m not only “Semicolon” and “Travel Writer” and “Clipboard King”, I am also a “Heinie Herder”. Wonderful.

5. The “overall do you sense that God is still with you and that hope is alive or are you sinking spiritually” sub-question, here labeled “DO YOU STILL HAVE PEACE?” I think this is  the really big part of TQ, both to the askers and the askee’s. This sub-question, while being the most profound of the five, is actually the simplest to answer. Because if the Valley Dweller confronted with TQ hears #5, an accurate and appropriate answer to “How are you?” can quite truly be, “I’m fine, thanks.” That is, having a friend express love and concern in TQ and realizing that yes, I am fighting the battle and even though I  feel terrible I haven’t given up because God’s grace is all over the journey does lead me to respond to #5 in all honesty with “I’m just fine. Really I am!” Maybe even, “Never better.”

I had a young friend who asked me TQ after church one day and was clearly disappointed when I gave that simple answer, exhorting me, “C’mon Andy, tell me truthfully, how are you, REALLY?!” He was operating under the reasonable assumption that nobody fighting cancer can actually be “fine”, and that any indication otherwise was at best sugary and naïve optimism and at worse cynically expressed pessimism. As Barbara Ehrenreich recently wrote in her new book, “But I can report that breast cancer did not make me stronger or more spiritual. What it gave me, if you want to call this a ‘gift’, was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate” (Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America).

I’m sorry that Ms. Ehrenreich considers the only honest answer to TQ to be one of despair and defeat. What Valley Dwellers want those in the land of Myopia to understand is that yes, it’s actually possible for people of faith to stand in shadows and still be fine, just fine, and maybe even better than fine. Answering TQ with “Fine thanks” is not a dismissive or dishonest or superficial answer but a true, genuine, and even miraculous one. That it is possible to be physically depleted and emotionally exhausted and yet walking steadily forward with faith, hope, and love. One can indeed be living in the Valley and simultaneously be “doing just fine”.

How can this be so? In his latest book If God is Good,  Randy Alcorn tells the story of the late Pastor James Montgomery Boice  who, in May 2000, stood before his Philadelphia church and explained that he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer:

“Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course. My general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles–and He certainly can–is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. So although miracles do happen, they’re rare by definition.…Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying Himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified Himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though He could have.…God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by.… God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything He does is good.… If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good” (p.14).

I’m reasonably certain that, if you’d asked TQ of Dr. Boice right after he said those words, he would have replied, “Fine thanks”, and it would have been a true and honest answer. He was a man of faith, you see, and was resting in God’s promises like the following: "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble." Psalm 46:1.  "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you." Isaiah 43:1b-2a. Or how about the promise of eternal life in an eternal kingdom to those redeemed by God’s grace, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3—4).” Would Dr. Boice have preferred not to have cancer? Unless he’d become light in his loafers in old age and I don’t think he had, of course he would have preferred health over sickness. But did his sickness mean that he wasn’t fine? No. He was just fine, because he knew what the anonymous author of this famous poem about cancer knew. . . and he to embraced it--“What Cancer Cannot Do”:

“Cancer is so limited...

It cannot cripple love.

It cannot shatter hope.

It cannot corrode faith.

It cannot eat away peace.

It cannot destroy confidence.

It cannot kill friendship.

It cannot shut out memories.

It cannot silence courage.

It cannot reduce eternal life.

It cannot quench the Spirit.”

Eight weeks after announcing his illness to the church, and having taught his people first how to live and then how to die, Pastor Boice departed this world to “be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23). He was fine when fighting cancer, and he was fine when he went home. That’s a continuous “fine” line. Get it?

Now please understand, neither I nor most of those I know here in the Valley have any plans and we certainly have no desire for an early exit from life on this planet. What we want you all to know is that if death is the worst case scenario and we can be ok facing that, then surely we can be fine with facing whatever lesser challenges life in the Valley might bring. Got it? And get this too: cancer is not the only difficult condition under which people of faith can be “fine”. God’s promises and presence and grace are available for us all no matter what hard things are cascading our way. You may not have cancer, but I suspect you’ve got your share of worries and heartaches, and I want you to know that “just fine” living through faith in Our Lord is for you as well as for me!

So, to bring our linguistic/cultural discussion to a conclusion, I’d like to review and make a suggestion. We’ve noted that big problems can ensue when a Valley dweller fails to discern which combination of the five TQ sub-questions is actually being asked. For a Valley person to honestly answer a sub-question that was not intended by the askee is to create an awkward moment indeed.

Perhaps a good practical suggestion to Myopians for avoiding these awkward moments is this: please specify your sub-question under TQ. Instead of just asking the Valley dweller “how’re you doing?”, go right for the jugular. Want to know if I feel terrible? Then ask, “Hey Andy, do you just feel terrible?” It’s hard to misunderstand such a refreshingly pointed interrogative and I’ll have no compunction in giving you an honest answer. You may also want to go with a more positive form of the direct question, “Are you feeling good today?”, but don’t be shocked if the honest answer comes back the same, “No, actually I feel terrible. . . but you wanted to know, right?” Smile, right here.

Or, if such brutal directness rocks your comfort zone, another suggestion would be to go ahead and ask TQ but resolve in advance not to be aggravated with whatever honest answer your Valley Dweller friend might give. We’ve already talked about the awkwardness of his answering a sub-question that you didn’t really want to know the answer to. But you must also resolve not to be offended with what may seem to you a flippant or even superficial answer to TQ, such as, “Fine, thanks”, because it can actually be (and probably is) the truest response you could receive.

Doing Fine, Really,

Pastor Andy 

October 26, 2009

My Dear Friends,

This morning at 6:50 AM, my father made the grand journey from this veil of tears through the Heavenly Gates into the Land of No Tears and the presence of Jesus. It was a final trip he was longing to make, and though I grieve his loss, I am so very happy for him finally to be at home. This afternoon, I am writing Dad’s obituary, and I wanted to share it with you.

“Eric McQuitty was born on August 17, 1930, in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. He passed over into eternity on October 26, 2009. Eric was the youngest of four children born to Andrew and Susan McAtamney McQuitty. He is survived by Dorothy Dreher McQuitty, his wife of 56 years; by his three sons Andrew, Timothy, and Philip and their families; by his elder brother James and his wife Pearl and by numerous nieces and nephews and their families in Ulster; and by 12 grandchildren and one great-grandson in America.

Eric grew to young manhood in Ireland and was apprenticed as a machinist’s mate in a large foundry in Belfast when his father decided to emigrate with his family to the United States of America. With his parents and three siblings, Eric set sail to this country on the Queen Mary, arriving on December 22, 1948. The ensuing eighteen months were difficult for these six, so much so that Andrew and Susan decided to return with their family to Ireland as soon as possible. But while these preparations for the voyage home were being made, Eric was invited to a Methodist Youth for Christ rally in Rochester, N.Y. where for the first time he was presented with the claims of Jesus Christ through the testimony of the late R.G. LeTourneau. Eric embraced Jesus as His Savior and Lord by faith on that momentous evening. Sensing that Christ had a deeper purpose for him in America, Eric then declined to return to Ireland with his family, choosing instead to wave good-bye to them on a train platform in New York state and stay here alone to seek God’s direction for his future. He was eighteen years of age.

Over the next few years, Eric felt called by the Lord into the gospel ministry. Realizing that this vocation required extensive education, he set about acquiring the needed credentials. For Eric, this meant completing his high school diploma at the age of 22, then completing his college degree, then completing his Master’s degree in seminary. He was the first of his family’s generation to attend college, never mind graduate school. Eric was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1960, and served the Lord faithfully in that capacity for 49 years until his recent home going. Through his faithful ministry for Christ and to the Church, countless souls were added to Heaven’s roster, countless Christ-followers taught and encouraged, and countless workers raised up for the spiritual harvest in America and around the world. We are so happy for Eric that now at last he is in a position to see the full extent of what God did for Heaven’s sake through his life on planet Earth.

It was during his college years that Eric was smitten with love for the beautiful and godly young Dorothy Dreher of Baltimore, Maryland. They married May 31, 1953 and embarked on a lifetime of adventure together as they raised their three sons and served Christ in the ministry. His family affirms that one of Eric’s greatest legacies is that of a man who loved one woman well for a lifetime and inculcated with her into his sons a love for Christ and His word. Though he was surely an authentically cantankerous Irishman at times, his love for his Lord and his wife and family and friends and his enthusiasm for life and hope for Heaven was always winsome, always effective, and always contagious. And so with full hearts we raise to Eric the blessing that he bestowed upon us on earth, and which is most certainly being fulfilled for him now in Heaven:

“May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

Thanks you all for bearing with me as I write these thoughts about my Father. I’m grateful to and for him and his life, and to the God who put him in my life and Who has now ushered him into eternal life. May you be blessed too my friends. . .

As the Road Rises Up to Meet You,

Pastor Andy

 

October 15, 2009

My Dear Friends,

In our IBC weekend services these days we are making our way through the Lord’s Prayer--phrase by phrase—and finding it rich and challenging beyond what most of us had ever imagined.

Last Sunday Jackie led us in studying the inaugural four words of the prayer, “Our Father in Heaven”.  It’s amazing how that short phrase opens up incredible implications for us as prayers of the prayer not only to be in community as brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ, but also to be about the Father’s business of rescue and restoration as Jesus always was.

N.T. Wright notes that “when Jesus gave his disciples this prayer, he was giving them part of his own breath, his own life, his own prayer. The prayer is actually a distillation of his own sense of vocation, his own understanding of his Father’s purpose” (The Lord and His Prayer, 2).

Isn’t it fascinating to approach our understanding of Jesus’ prayer by first asking what it meant for Him to pray it Himself?

This weekend I have the privilege of teaching the second phrase of the prayer, “Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. . .” Again, just four words, but so powerful and pregnant with meaning and challenge for those of us who pray the prayer with all of our hearts!

I hope you’ll be meditating on these words, wearing the wristbands we gave you as reminders to pray often,  and then joining us on Sunday as our community grapples with what it means to not just say the prayer, but live it.

See you soon,

Pastor Andy

October 6, 2009

My Dear Friends,

Know how every time you go to a new doctor they always hand you a clipboard of forms to fill out before they’ll even consider letting you into the examination room? And know how you have the same clipboard routine before you check into a hospital or have any sort of scan or medical
procedure done?

Well, it’s getting to me. In the past, I’ve done the clipboard thing every once in a while with long separations in between. But lately, I’ve had some health issues which have necessitated the filling out of no less than 13 clipboard’s worth of forms in the last little while.

I’ve got a new oncologist (clipboard), a new urologist (clipboard), a new colonoscopy doc (clipboard) and two new surgeons (two clipboards). I’ve had a CT scan (clipboard), a PET scan (clipboard), and a med port surgically installed (clipboard). Add to that one new heart doctor (clipboard) who put me through no less than three scanning procedures to check for blocked arteries (3 clipboards) and another heart scan from yet another doc (2 clipboards), and in the last two years I’ve filled out 14 clipboards’ worth of repetitious, monotonous, mundane, unpleasant information. Did I say only 13? I was wrong. It’s worse than I thought.

If you feel like pushing me over the emotional edge just to see what a raving, maniacal pastor on chemo looks like, just smile and hand me a clipboard. I’m not responsible for what might happen next.

I know what you’re thinking. “C’mon dude, it’s just a little bit of information they want. What’s the big deal? Write it down and move on.” Don’t be so reasonable. Someday you might find yourself buried under a clipboard avalanche, and we’ll see how chipper you are to fill out yet one more unmerciful form.

It’s not that what the clipboards demand to know is unreasonable. It’s that you are required to recite the same information over and over again without respite. Name? Address? Phone? Emergency contact? Their phone? Primary physician? Their phone? Their address? (who knows their doctor’s address, for heaven’s sake?!). Insurance company? Insurance company phone? Insurance company group number? Insurance company address? (who knows their insurance company’s address, for heaven’s sake?!). Supplemental insurance company? Phone? Group number? Address? Next of kin? Age? Phone? Children? Their ages? Their phone numbers? (why the obsession with phone numbers?!). Your net worth? Your bank account number in case your insurance doesn’t pay up? The bank’s phone? Address? (for heaven’s sake).

That’s just the first page. I could be exaggerating a bit, possibly.

The next several pages of the clipboard have to do with your entire medical life history. Whole lists of maladies to check if you have them, spaces to write in all the medicines you are taking, ever took, or ever hope to take, blanks to record every surgery or medical procedure you’ve ever had and the date you had it on and the doctor who performed it and the hospital where it happened and the phone number and address of said hospital and what color were the nurses’ smocks in the operating room on that fateful day?

Now that you’ve painfully rehearsed every low medical moment of your life and spilled on paper every possible infirmity that just might kill you someday, it’s time to move on to the release forms you must sign. These forms spell out in morbid detail everything that can possibly go wrong with your future treatment and that usually ends in blindness, bleeding, death, or dismemberment. You are invited to sign the form inviting the medical community to inflict this on you anyway.

I haven’t told you the most infuriating thing about the clipboard, though. On every page, you must write your name at the top. Not just initials, the whole thing--on every page. One day I was doing a 14 page clipboard when, in a fit of rebellion, I pulled a Braveheart, yelled “freedom!” (on the inside) and turned it all in without affixing my name to every single page. The receptionist turned a steely eye to me as if to say, “Nice try dufuss but you’re not getting this incomplete clipboard past me.” She then did actually say, “Sir, please write your name at the top of each page.” As smoothly and evenly as I could I intoned, “But my full name and attendant information is clearly inscribed on the very first page. Mightn’t that henceforth be sufficient to identify this entire document as belonging to me in your records?” “No,” she snarled. “We need your name on every page.” “But why?” I pleaded to know. “Is this some sort of punishment for past sins I’ve committed?” With a derogatory roll of the eyes she sighed, “No, just please go back and write your name 13 more times.” I caved and did it. I am so not Braveheart. He would have mooned the receptionist, split the clipboard with his sword and stormed out to slay some English. Me, I just meekly wrote and rewrote my name like a recalcitrant sophomore in detention.

See why this is getting to me?

I think it might have something to do with the essential message of endless clipboards in my life, to wit: you are unknown, everything about you is unknown, and no matter how many times you try to make yourself known, you will nevertheless remain unknown. What did you say your name was again? Please write it again on every page. . .

What is it that makes us long to be known? To transcend unrecognizing stares and designation by number and soar to the heights of no longer being a stranger? The old theme song to the “Cheers” sitcom offers a compelling answer:

“Sometimes you want to go 
Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came; 
You want to be where you can see, 
Our troubles are all the same; 
You want to be where everybody knows your name.”

Sure you do. Sure we do! It would be nice of course to have no troubles in the first place. But we know the reality of life in a sin-cracked universe:  “Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” ( Job 5.7). No, we’re not demanding that sparks fly downward, just longing to know that our hurts and suffering are not unique to us. As  C.S. Lewis said: "We read to know we are not alone."

Spoken like a true Oxford scholar! And the inimitable Mr. Lewis is right: we just want to be where we can see our troubles are all the same. But the Cheers song reveals that there’s more that we want. In our extremities, we want to be not only where our troubles are the same, but also and even more importantly, where somebody knows our name.

That’s why “Tabitha” graffitied her name on a high wall in Blarney Castle over the date 1754  (we saw it there on our last trip to Ireland). That’s why the Count of Monte Criso scratched his name into his cell wall at Chateau D'If. That’s why a GI in WW2, after having peered over a wall to see if the Germans were coming, scrawled on it the famous words “Elroy was here.” That’s why I carved my name on my wooden desk top in Mrs. Tully’s second grade classroom (back when desk tops were still gloriously wooden and susceptible to pocket knives, and when carrying a pocket knife to school wouldn’t get you banned to Siberia forever).

“Elroy was here” wasn’t a silly attempt to intimidate the enemy. Elroy wrote that because he wanted someone to know that a real person with real troubles and a real life had been in that spot, and that that person’s name was Elroy. Just writing it comforted Elroy just as it did Tabitha and Edmond Dantès and 7-year old Andy. In the writing of their names they were identifying themselves, and there is just something in the human spirit that deeply desires simply to be known.

The problem is, we don’t live in a world that’s very conducive to being known. To the bank, we’re not a name, but an account number. To the IRS, we’re not a name, we’re a tax return. To DART, we’re not a name, but a pass purchaser. To the staff at Cowboys’ Stadium, we’re not a name, but a season-ticket holder (well, only the very rich among us now that the Pokes are in their new Jerry’s World). To the DPS, we’re not a name but a driver’s license number. To the Census, we’re not a name, but an ethnicity. And to the medical community we’re not a name, but the filler-outers of clipboards full of repetitious information which is never remembered from one office to another.

Maybe at a metaphysical level I’m making too much out of those dad-gummed clipboards! But maybe not.  All I know is that they have produced in me a wonder and delight at something about God that I’ve never before truly appreciated as I should: though in this world I may be unknown as a person—just a number or statistic or demographic—to God I am intimately, thoroughly, and compassionately known.

Here in the Valley of the Shadow, folks are cognizant of this glorious fact and take great comfort in it. As your Travel Writer, I thought I would spell out the scriptural assurance upon which they base this hope:

Psalm 139.1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.  2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.  5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.  6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

Yes David, it really is! That God has searched me and sees me and perceives my thoughts from afar when people and government and banks and even next door neighbors aren’t really aware of my existence is just too wonderful. That God is with me and around me and understands my heart and my hurts and my ways and my words when it seems the world doesn’t give a flying rip about any of that is just too lofty for me to attain.

So I don’t have to carve my name in a desk top or scratch it on a wall or carve it into a stone to be known. I am known by the One who, in His knowing of me, brings peace and comfort and hope here in the Valley. And so are you, wherever you find yourself today.

And the best part? God has no clipboards.

So. . . .

Be glad there's one place in the world 

Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came; 
You want to go where people know, 
People are all the same; 
You want to go where everybody knows your name. (Cheers theme song by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo )

Your Clipboard King,

Pastor Andy

Andy's first day of chemotherapy went off without a hitch yesterday. Other than his pager that was having an buzzing fit all day :) it all went down very well. There were no significant issues AND he even felt good enough to come into the office on Wednesday morning!!

Continue to keep him in your prayers. His pager number is 972-229-3878. I don't know if anybody has ever wore out a page but there's a good chance this one will self destruct from the vibrations alone.

After you've said a prayer, call the number, wait for the beeps, enter your phone number, you will hear some more beeps and the pager will buzz.

 

Thank you all, so many of you from all over the world, for caring for the McQuitty’s. We know you are looking for more info on Andy’s treatment. The doctors are continuing to design his treatment plan and we should have much more for you later this week. In the mean time....

Andy now has a pager that if you call it every time you pray for he and the family, it will vibrate and let them know of your prayers. 

So please store this number, 972-229-3878 in your speed dial and let the praying and vibrating begin!

For those of you who might not be familiar with how a pager works, after you dial and are connected, you will hear a short series of beeps. Enter your phone number followed by the # key and you will hear another series of beeps confirming that your page has been sent. That's all there is to it.

Check back here from time to time for updates.

July 31, 2009

My Dear Friends, 

I was smoking a stogie on my back porch the other day with two buddies, one my age and one younger.  The older one (Tommy) and I were discussing our latest adventures on the wonder voyage for semi-centenarians known in common parlance as a “colonoscopy”, while the younger one (Steve) finally piped up and said, “Is this all you two geezers are going to be talking about from now on?” I told him probably so, and get ready to set sail buddy because you’ll be fifty shortly (then you too can have some cool stories to contribute to our stimulating conversation!).

Nevertheless, I don’t want to be that guy who scatters people who see him coming because they know all he’s going to talk about when he arrives is his latest health issue. So I’m confounded. I feel like I need to inform you all about where things stand (especially since so many of you have been so valiant in prayer for me in these days!), but I don’t want it to read like a pathology report. So I’m going to try a hybrid—a note that is about something bigger than my health while at the same time communicating some essential facts, my non-pathology pathology report if you will.

So let’s begin with the essential facts. Alice and met with my surgeon this afternoon. Eight days ago, he removed 12 inches of my colon (evidently, God gave us way more tubing than we actually need) including the tumor and my appendix (one less thing. . . !). The pathology report came back yesterday, and doc explained that there is some involvement  of the cancer in the lymph nodes, necessitating chemotherapy. I’ll meet a new doc next week, an oncologist, who will introduce me to that uniquely tortuous yet life-saving treatment and what it will entail for me. Not that I was much to look at before, but I give you fair warning—a Chihuahua hairless Pastor Andy may be inflicted on the world in short order (just in time for Halloween).

This state of affairs reminds me of a particularly malevolent football coach I once had who arbitrarily loved to inflict extra laps on his players after practice. For some reason, he particularly loved to make me run. A lot.  I learned however that when assigned the extra work, the best thing was to get going and get it over with because it was neither optional nor fatal. Some things you do not because you want to, but because you have to—then you move on about your business. I won’t jack with you: we really wanted not to have to run these extra chemo laps, but hey, we’re going to. They are neither optional nor fatal, they will come to an end, and life will go on.

The big difference of course is that the Head Coach who is assigning me these laps is neither malevolent  nor arbitrary. (In case you missed my transition, this is the non-pathology part of my pathology report.)

He is also my Good Shepherd. I’m one of His two-legged charges and I’m confident that His assignments are ultimately for good (maybe my football coach had the same ultimate intent, but he had a hard time showing it sometimes).  Through all these present challenges, God is calling and my job is simply to answer Him the right way.

What’s the right way, you ask? Good question. Consider the following: “God called to Abraham saying, “Abraham” and he replied, “Here I am, Lord.” Genesis 22:1.  An angel spoke to “Jacob” in a dream, “Jacob” and he replied, “Here I am, Lord.” Genesis 31:11. From a burning bush God called “Moses” and he replied, “Here I am, Lord.” Exodus 3:4. God asked Isaiah, “Whom shall I send?” he replied, “Here I am, send me, Lord!” Isaiah 6:8. After the angel Gabriel told Mary she would bear Jesus, the son of God, she replied, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1:38. 

Of these instances and others like them, E. Stanley Ott offers the following insight: “In every case, the person whom God called simply replied with the Hebrew word hinnainee (hin-nay’-nee), the word of the servant – which means “here I am”  – available – ready to serve – what may I do for you?”

I believe that God is always calling His people to serve. Sometimes the context for that service is loving others in His name, or sharing the Good News we call “gospel”, or obeying Him when it would be a darn sight easier to bug out and do it our own way. Other times the context for that service is simply remaining faithful during times of pain or suffering or disappointment.

The key for us is not the context of our call, but the answer we give to the One who issues it. We can either say, “Not now Lord, I wish you’d just pick on someone else” or “OK Lord, hinnainee.” For me, it’s too late for the first (or I’d be sorely tempted to choose it), so I’ve decided to go full bore with the second. I have a feeling that, having welcomed God’s call in this matter, quite an adventure awaits me. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I am profoundly grateful for a successful surgery and faster than normal recovery. They sent me home from the hospital a full two days early, and now a week out from the procedure I’m waltzing around the malls, playing putt-putt and eating like a horse. My doc was frankly amazed at my progress today. You know what? I’m beginning to put some store in this prayer thing. All of you out there who have been lifting me up, be encouraged—God is listening to you, and you evidently have some real pull with Him! I’d be grateful if you kept using it.

I’m also grateful for having finally had the experience of major surgery without deleterious result. Ever since I read The Cross and the Switchblade, I wondered what it would be like to lose a knife fight in an alley. Now I kind of know what with a three inch incision plus three puncture wounds right into the ole abdomen (though I think Nicky Cruz had it worse—no general anesthesia or Vicodin—my good friend-- for knife fights). I found that after such surgery it really hurts to cough, belch, laugh, stand up, sit down, walk, turn over in bed, or stretch. Other than that, it’s a breeze. I’m just glad that, with reference to colon surgery, I can now say with the Old Calvinist predestinarian: “Glad I got that over with!”

And so now I sign off again for a while with a shout-out to Jennifer on our IBC staff for the slick new nickname with which she has dubbed me: “Semicolon.”

Hinnainee,

Pastor Andy McQuitty

Andy was able to go home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. He's eating solid food, sleeping fairly comfortably and has even taken a few short walks. We are still waiting on test results. He's in good spirits and joking about getting back on the golf course.

Thanks for all your prayers.

3:40pm 7/23/09

Dad is out of surgery. All went well and as expected. He will be in recovery for an hour before we get to see him.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers-

A message from Wayne Smith, Chairman of the Board of Elders, Irving Bible Church

Occasionally we need to address family business here at IBC. This is one of those times. Many of you heard about Andy’s health issue today during one of the three Worship Services on Sunday. Some of you may have heard about it from an email or from a posting on Facebook or Twitter. For others, this will be the first time you have heard any of this.  

This past week, our Senior Pastor, Andy McQuitty was diagnosed with Colon Cancer. As he said that is the bad news. The good news is that the cancer has been caught very early and the doctors believe that the surgery they perform later this week will take care of the problem.

We know how much you all love Andy and Alice and would love to be an encouragement to them at this time. And they would love to be encouraged, but they have requested that you allow them to have this week as a private week for the family. They would covet your prayers most of all. For those of you who want to share you thoughts and prayers with them, we’ve provided a couple of ways to do just that.

Here  is a link to a special section on Table & Fire for you to visit. If you come by IBC and visit Town Square, you will find note cards and pens if you would like to write them a few words. We will make sure that the notes cards are delivered.

We anticipate that Andy will be back in the pulpit in about six weeks. In the meantime, the beauty of having a Preaching team is that they have already been preparing for the next series and they are ready to launch into that next Sunday. While we will miss Andy’s presence, we will be well led by the team. 

On Thursday evening, we will post an update on the IBC website about how everything is progressing and we will give you another update next Sunday as well.

For now, I leave you with some words from Andy to you . . .

 

My Dear Friends, 

It looks like the Lord has scheduled me for a very interesting journey over the next little while. As I prepare to disembark, I’d covet your prayers.

On Tuesday of this week I was diagnosed with colon cancer . That’s the bad news. And that’s my “journey”.

But there’s lots of good news as well. We think we caught it early. A CT scan on Thursday showed no evidence of the cancer’s spread to any other organs. The surgery to remove the affected area will be done laparoscopically by one of the best surgeons in Texas. Best of all, the Lord is my Shepherd, and none of this scary stuff even phases Him.

My surgery will be this Thursday and I’ll be in the hospital for 3-5 days. Please pray for the hospital staff; I’m a bad patient and they’re going to need much grace from God!

Determinations about the need for follow-up chemotherapy will be made after the procedure. 

I’m not looking forward to all this and truly wish it wasn’t on my plate, but it is what the Lord has teed up for me and I’m at peace with that. After all these years shepherding other people through these situations, it’s my turn now! Alice and my family are confident and trusting and a huge bulwark of strength for me, and I think the Lord has much to teach me in these days. So we go forward.

My doctors are very hopeful that we will have a very good outcome to this surgery and that the procedure itself will be curative. Ah, but that’s where the Great Physician comes in. We’re just putting it all in His hands. I’m just glad that I’ll finally be able to get that pesky ten pounds off that I’ve been battling for the last two years.

Lord willing, I’ll be back in the saddle in about six weeks or so—preaching, teaching, golfing, leading, and eating way more fruits and vegetables from now on (but I won’t drag you into all of that!).

The Lord is my  Shepherd, and yours too. . . we shall not want! Love and appreciate you all more than you know. . .

10,000 Blessings

Andy

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