Struggling with identity

By: Dave Schutter, Northwest Presbyterian Church

In October 2018, after several weeks of checking MyChart updates the way middle school students read school closing crawlers on a snowy night, I received the second opinion diagnosis of the first opinion assessment – later to be confirmed by third and fourth opinions! – that I had a form of blood cancer called myelofibrosis. I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised. Over the previous three months, many medical tests  – starting with a simple blood draw at an annual physical, to ultrasounds and a bone marrow biopsy – that could have returned simple results came back more complicated. I learned firsthand what I’d observed during my work as a pastor during the previous 21 years: cancer diagnoses can be radically disorienting.

What is happening to my body, and why is it happening? What will happen to my body? How will I keep working to provide for my family? Perhaps most disorienting: what does cancer mean for how I look at myself?

None of these questions are unique. I’d been asked them in my study, at coffee shops, over chicken sandwiches, and in hospital rooms since I was a chaplain intern in 1996 at an Army Medical Center. From 2018 onward, cancer has invited me to try on different identities.

One identity proved more helpful than the rest.

"The Secretly Sick Person"

The first identity I tried on was “secretly sick person”. I knew something was happening inside of me that no one else knew. It wasn’t a happy secret but it was a real secret and it was mine. This identity did not last past arriving home at the end of the work day. Married and with three children, this was not a secret that could be kept. 

"The Courageous Patient"

The next identity I tried on was that of courageous patient. Some people needed to know of this challenge, but I would impress them with my courage when I passed on this news. For me, courageous patient was a façade: some days I was courageous and full of defiant hope. Other days I felt overwhelmed as I assimilated medical information, drug information, and complex drugs themselves into my life. 

"The Cancer Warrior"

The cancer care community invited me to try on different identities too. I could be a cancer warrior. I suppose I am: warriors fight, and I’m fighting something. But that something is born out of my complex genetic mutations and manifesting in my bone marrow, my spleen, my liver, and my blood counts. I’m a warrior fighting me. Moreover, some warriors win and some warriors lose. Some warriors lose their lives while helping their army win. Warrior didn’t work for me.

"The Survivor"

I tried cancer survivor too. For years before my diagnosis I participated in the local cancer research fundraising bike ride. I decided to keep doing so, ruefully accepting that now I was raising money for myself as much as for others. The organizers allowed me to check a ‘cancer survivor’ box on the registration form. I received  the first of several bike jerseys identifying me as a cancer survivor. Kim snapped a picture of me before the ride wearing my survivor jersey. My mindset: I’m a survivor as long as I am surviving. But survival is at best, for every person – cancer patient or otherwise – temporary. 

Still, the identity question matters because what we believe about who we are shapes our big picture out look at life, how we fit into life – and the daily decisions we make about how to engage with joys and trials. 

Four years into my cancer journey I found myself sitting in the back of a fancy living room in a rental home in Tennessee. I was sitting next to a friend who was sitting next to an experienced psychologist. We were listening to younger pastors share their stories as part of a larger training week focused on self-awareness. After several presentations the counselor looked at us and asked, “Do you hear how these guys are telling their stories?” We looked mutely back at him. “There’s several different ways a person can tell his story,” the psychologist explained, “and how they tell their story helps me know what emotional need that person has in the moment.” He elaborated. When we tell our stories like martyr-heroes we express a need for admiration. When we  make ourselves clowns and play our story, even our tragedies, for laughs we’re asking to be liked. To tell our story as victims is to ask for care and to be cynical about our story expresses a desire to get distance from our story.

My friend and I looked at the counselor through tearful eyes, aware that we tell our stories in all of those ways depending on who we’re with and where we’re emotionally at on a given day.

So is there a right or better way to tell our story, I asked? I anticipated an indirect answer but his was clear, quick, and tunneled straight to my heart. “Of course. We can tell our story as one who is deeply, unconditionally loved by the God who reveals himself as ‘our Father.’” 

"Beloved Children of God"

I won’t deny that since them I’ve spent some anxious evenings sitting with genetic panels, biopsy reports, and Dr. Google. But, more than courageous patient, cancer warrior, or at-the-moment survivor I’ve found this identity to be more certain and comforting: “1 John 3:1 See  what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called  children of God; and so we are.” Beloved Child is more dignifying than dignity cancer has taken from me; more enduring than time cancer has or will cost me; more admirable than my achievements can render me; and more cared for and liked, loved even, than I can imagine.