Chapter 1

It’s Just a Virus

Gary was born on September 17, 1960, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the middle son of Shirley and Donovan Brausen, and a true scrapper by nature—he likes this about himself. He likes to work hard and he loves a good challenge. Both athletic and disciplined, he loves to shoot the puck around or, as he says, “put the biscuit in the basket.” This is hockey lingo.

In April of 2010, Gary ran an aggressive nine-mile race through the hilly terrain of Hyland Park. In September of the same year, he turned fifty and celebrated by participating in a duathlon with his friend Scott. He also increased his 6:30 a.m. hockey game with work colleagues to two mornings per week.

The next month he caught a nasty cold. It cleared pretty quickly—nothing to worry about, or so we thought. In November the cold was back but cleared again. The end of December brought the return of that persistent cold, so he finally went to the doctor to try and find out what was wrong—why was this cold continually coming back? The doctor didn’t think too much of it, believing it was just a virus or the remains of seasonal allergies.

By mid-January, however, Gary’s energy was dropping, he was losing weight, and sleep was impeded by a persistent dry cough. He decided to stop playing hockey and running our youngest son’s hockey practices until his energy came back. In late February, he went to the doctor again, but this time as he was leaving the doctor’s office, a stern voice in his head prompted him to request a a chest X-ray. When the radiologist reviewed the X-ray, they found pneumonia—finally a diagnosis. But by early March the aggressive antibiotic wasn’t working and the cough was not only persisting but getting worse. His doctor didn’t want to wait the typical four weeks and ordered another chest X-ray. The pneumonia was still present in his lower left lung, so his doctor ordered a chest CT scan.

It all seems so clean and tidy when I write it this way—yes, nice and orderly. First, a persistent cold, then we think it’s pneumonia…no, it’s not pneumonia; it must be something else. But the truth is that while we were engaged with our busy lives, cancer had entered our house like a thief in the night, pulled up a chair, and had joined us for dinner. And we didn’t even know we had a houseguest.

Somehow, slowly over time we had accepted Gary’s deteriorating state as somewhat normal. He was keeping up his typical athletic pace but it was taking him longer and longer to regain his energy for the next day. His mood had altered; he was more pensive and generally preoccupied.

I picked up the slack, and some resentment, like a vacuum. As he went through boxes of Kleenex, I surprised myself with the amount of excuses I could make for my husband’s changing behavior. Our life, though very normal on the outside, was boiling over on the inside.

Finally, Skip, Gary’s friend and coworker, stopped him in the hall. “Dude, I have to tell you the truth,” he said, “you look like complete crap.” Skip’s candor sent Gary straight into the bathroom to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror. He thought, “I look like I’m dying.” But never in his wildest imagination did he think it was true.

GOD LEADS THE WAY

If you have ever spent any time in the Bible, you would be quick to notice how gracious God is to His people. Time after time, He chooses the weakest characters to show His glory and His majesty. It’s not very flattering to speak about, but Gary and I fit this description. We were unprepared for cancer—we could have easily been lost in it except for the fact that God was faithful to make our pathway out of illness clear. He did this in a vast array of signs, wonders, prayers, Scriptures, and conversations.

One of the reasons I trust God implicitly is because He is a God who doesn’t change (Malachi 3:6). He is absolutely consistent with who He says He is and how He has always revealed Himself to be. This means that the God who parted the Red Sea, sent the magi to Jesus, and raised Lazarus from the dead, is the same God who wants to be in a relationship with you and me. And when we invite Him into our heart, He brings all His godliness with Him. His favor rests on us. It’s the best hostess gift we will ever receive in our entire lives.

God also considers being in relationship with you to be priceless. He treasures you and your vulnerabilities so completely that He will hold Himself back lest He overpowers you. He allows you to come into a deeper and deeper relationship with Him in your own time, gently prodding you along the way. Yet He is the One who is God.

God knows each and every one of His beloved children, and He loves to delight in each one individually. He knows you better than you know yourself, and because of this He cares for you in the most sensitive ways. Every relationship needs communication, and being in relationship with God is no different. He will speak to you in dreams and visions, signs and wonders, a phrase that catches your ear and sits in your spirit, a passage of Scripture, or even through a song. So if you listen to what He is speaking, He is faithful to answer your prayers, bring you comfort and direction, or even prepare you for a life-altering event.

In August of 2010, just six months before the diagnosis would come, and while Gary was still feeling terrific, our neighbors Fred and Janet joined us in our front yard for a little chat. They were eager yet hesitant to share their story with us. It was actually a sit-down-and-stay-a-while kind of story. And we could tell by their nonverbals that they were unsure of how we would respond.

Fred and Gary are both engineering managers and had a few meetings together for a brief time in 2008. Engineers and managers at that time were required to keep notes of all their meetings. These notebooks are usually the property of the company they work for, but in many cases these notebooks are lost or destroyed as projects finish. Fred was of the engineer variety that kept all of his notebooks throughout the years. Newly retired, he was anxious to burn them. Fred thought that on an average he probably used four notebooks per year for thirty years.

As Fred was telling us his story, he was being very precise about the details, how big the fire was, how hot it became, and how long it burned, making sure we understood the amount of notebooks that were being burned and how many possible pages they contained. He then explained that he thought Gary’s name might have been on about three pages at the most.

Fred told us that this massive fire burned for about seven hours before it finally died down. There was absolutely nothing left of the notebooks except dust, ash, and one small white piece of paper that was not burned at all except for around the edges. Fred was immediately drawn to the paper that was embedded in the ash. He looked at us right in the eye, drawing us deeply into his story. Then he said, “I am not sure what this means, but it means something. Statistically, this isn’t possible. All the paper was burned. It burned for hours. My 2008 notebooks were in the middle stacks, and there was absolutely nothing left of any notebook except this!”

He handed the paper to Gary and my stomach flipflopped. There it was: Gary’s name as clear as could be in the center of small slightly singed piece of paper. It wasn’t until later that we understood the significance of this sign. For now, Gary graciously took the small slip of paper, pondered it for moment, and then put it into his drawer when he went back into the house. He would later tell me that this little sign completely freaked him out and that as soon as he saw his name he started to sweat profusely. The months wore on and we continued with life.

MY JOURNEY TOWARD GOD

In the Bible Jesus often talks about the need to be born again in order to fully understand His lordship and have eternal life. It’s a radical idea to grasp, and one that even the biblical characters struggled to understand at times with Jesus explaining it to them in person.

Needless to say, I struggled with this concept for years. I had grown up Catholic; my dad was a deacon of the Catholic Church who made sure our home was a rich environment of theological discussion. My mom loved to relate to God through service, constantly lending a hand to others in need, even when she was more than exhausted raising her own ten children. Theoretically, I could talk good Bible, I knew God was God and Jesus was His Son, and I loved to serve others, so I thought I was good to go.

As I became a mom myself in 1997, my desire to know God in a new way was undeniable. Who was this God who knit my boys together in my womb? Who was this God who had blessed me with such abundance? I liken my experience to when I was given a handful of M&M’s when I was a kid. I loved the M&M’s I was given—they were colorful, rich, and satisfying, yet they had to come from somewhere. Where was the rest of the bag of M&M’s, and, more importantly, who was holding the bag?

In October of 2000 I realized that the rest of the bag of M&M’s was in the hand of Jesus. I had been living my life with Jesus in my head. I knew all the right answers, but I had not opened up my heart to the possibility of having a one-on-one relationship with our living God. Some would want to blame this on religion, and for a while I was also in this camp—so...