Posted By zac on April 30, 2010

No, I am not pregnant. But I sure have been hanging out with a lot of women lately.

The epidural went in to my back just fine. It was considerably painful but it is working fine. They have lowered the dosage of oral methodone that I am on and replaced it with the morphine mix I am on presently in the pump.

Secondly, they did a chest r-xay and found a large area of liquid in my lung. So, with the help of an unltrasound we did a real quick Thoracentesis. It was productive: almost 1.5L of liquid were drained from my right lung.

We are still waiting for breathing capability to increase, some of my appetite/constipation issues to be resolved, and the overall pain management to improve. Keep praying!

Category: Cancer | 28 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, epidural, hospital, ultrasound

Posted By zac on April 28, 2010

Well, friends, after a healthy rest, I have some news. The doctors have decided to admit me into the hospital. I am going to have surgery to insert an epidural which will hopefully manage with the pain.

Hello friends, Zac started to write this but is just too tired.  So, this is Mandy. I am going to do my best to fill you in. The past two months that Zac has been on hospice has been rough.  He has found no physical comfort. He is having a hard time breathing and is now on oxygen.  He is not sleeping or eating.  If he tries to eat, he ends up throwing it right back up. Because of that he has lost quite a bit of weight.  Our nurse has been excellent helping every way she possibly can. Unfortunately, the pain he is experiencing,which the Dr. describes as visceral, is hard to treat with oral medication. So we are now at “Plan B.”  He is going in today to have a temporary epidural put it. If he tolerates this well and we see it is helping with the pain, he will then have a permanent pain pump put in.  This pain pump requires surgery. We will know more through the next couple days at the hospital. Our prayer is that the temporary one goes well, he has no pain and that the pump will be a success. If this works we are looking at Zac being pain free for the first time in many months.We ask that you remain from visiting or sending flowers.

We are so thankful for all of the support we have been shown. What a blessing.  We love hearing from all of you that you are thinking of our family and praying for us. The love that has been shown to our family is overwhelmingly wonderful. So continue with us on this journey. Pray with us, hope with us. Always keeping in mind that God is God and God is good, no matter what. Even if this procedure is the end. Christ is All!

Category: Cancer | 36 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, hospital

Posted By zac on April 9, 2010

I had the great opportunity to disengage from the Internet and cell service this week in order to hang out with my wife and kids for Spring Break. We got to rest in the secluded mountains of North Carolina. It was a great time of board games, movies, reading and even some hiking. We made memories we will never forget.

Then, I was given the opportunity to go to the Master’s Golf Tournament in Augusta, GA. Thanks to my friends for pushing me around in a wheelchair all over the golf course. We spent much of the time at the front row of the 15th green. It was a beautiful day and quite relaxing. No cameras are allowed at the Master’s, but several have told me they saw my bearded mug on TV — right in front of the 15th green. If you find one on the AP press or something, send it over and I’ll post it.

I did not quite realize I would be “off” of the Internet for so long, but it was a good rest. Let me just also say, “I love my family so much.” I wish I could spend eternity with Mandy, Lizzy, Jake and Luke. Oh wait! I can!

Category: The Un-Category | 22 Comments »
Tags: cabin, family, Georgia, masters, North Carolina, relaxation, rest

Posted By zac on April 2, 2010

Over the past two days, I have talked about some simple ways a Christian can navigate through suffering. First, we can focus on being still and developing our relationship with God. Second, we can focus on ministering to others through the pain. Today, I present a simple, encouraging way to navigate ourselves through suffering.

Once again, I must set it up with my frustration. When I came to terms with my cancer being back and getting worse — once I realized that it was not going to go away medically — my frustration changed focus. Now I was frustrated with the actual suffering. There is a continual cycle of pain in my body — sometimes to the point of writhing. This leads to an ensuing mess of pills, which leads to constipation and bloating and increased pressure on my abdomen, which leads to increased pain and therefore, more pain pills. As you can see, this endless cycle is literally mind-numbing and has greatly detracted from my ability to participate. Like my grandfather used to say when he was dying of cancer, “I feel fine from the neck up.” This never-ending cycle was — and is — very frustrating.

So I began to ask God why I was still here? I feel like I have put many things into order for Mandy and the kids for when I am gone. They are secure financially and have things squared away. I finally have a real understanding of Paul’s words in Philippians:

Philippians 1:21 — For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

I have a yearning to go to heaven. Not just for pain relief, but because that is truly where I want to go.

Now I must add here that there is some obvious bittersweetness in my emotions. I desperately want to live to see Lizzy get married or see the boys accomplish their dreams or travel the Mediterranean with Mandy. But there is a very real confidence in knowing that all four of them will be with me in heaven soon and that will be greater than any earthly memory. But I live in this frustrating struggle.

Why am I still here? What is next for me? Should I make another video? The first two were so powerful! What else would I say? Should I write a book? Who would publish it? So, as you can see, the questions and the musings were constant and caused me great grief with God. I felt like I had been giving all glory to Him since this began. The more debilitated I get, the less I feel I can do. And the less I feel I can do, the more I wonder why I am still here.

But then I had lunch with one of my best friends, Lee, who taught me something. Maybe I should not know what is next. Maybe we shouldn’t be praying for God to show us what is next and help our frustration. Maybe we should continue along and let Him surprise us — as He always does. We agreed that it is best to focus not on the frustration about what is next, but rather to focus on obedience. Frustration can be replaced with surprise and anticipation.

The third simple way a Christian can navigate through suffering is to focus on the exciting future God has for you instead of the painful present you find yourself wallowing in. Frustration with knowing what is next versus trusting God that what is next will be exciting is an easy choice. And so my focus moves from “what should I be doing?” to “where does God have me?” In fact, I believe not recognizing the position God has put me in can quickly turn into disobedience. God has promised us that He will complete the work.

Philippians 1:6 — And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

So: where am I? I have found that for me, personally, the obedient step is to continue forward — encouraging others, writing and sharing my feelings and praying for those around me. By doing so, my frustration has plummeted even though the pain cycle still remains.

On that note, I am happy to welcome a complete new wave of people to the blog. In the past few days, I have seen my story used so far and wide that the impact is beyond belief. Thanks to John Piper, Los Whitaker, and Kelly’s Korner, among many others for sharing my story. Please feel free to share my story as much and as often as you like. So many churches have called and are using the videos in their services. Where as just a few days ago I was so bummed out about my purpose in life and my continued existence, thousands and thousands have interacted with my story since then. (I even got a comment on my blog from Robbie Seay!)

So let us take our suffering and frame it — together with where God has us in the present and with the excitement that is coming next. This will help us from spinning out of control in the doldrums.

I also want to quickly acknowledge something else that has helped my family and me rise up out of the doldrums. We have received so many cards, checks, gift cards, wads of cash, notes — all manners of tangible encouragement. We are eternally grateful for that. We appreciate the heart behind that. If you would like to help us out or send us a note of encouragement, please send them to:

Zac Smith
c/o NewSpring Church
PO BOX 1407
Anderson, SC 29622

Another option is to participate in the second annual Flat Zac Classic. This is a fund-raising program some friends of mine set up. If you want to donate via PayPal, that is the place to do it. Thank you all so much for your kindness.

Lastly, may we all look upward and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. If the resurrection never happened, then this is all in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). But Jesus did rise from the dead and we celebrate that on Easter. Please go to church somewhere this weekend and bring those with you that need to hear the Gospel story. Let us help make heaven a crowded place.

To God be the glory.

Category: Cancer | 34 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, God, suffering

Posted By zac on April 1, 2010

Yesterday, I wrote about one way a Christian can navigate through suffering: by focusing on personally and spiritually growing their relationship with God.

A few months ago, God showed me another way to navigate through suffering. But to set it up, I must express some frustration. I was very frustrated with my diagnosis of cancer — with my condition of having cancer. I had cancer, I underwent treatment, the cancer disappeared and things started to make sense. I sensed that God had been trying to get my attention and now He had it. I learned to embrace the stillness and saw His workmanship. And the cancer was gone. Mandy and I spent some time planning the future. I was so excited. I was ready to take on the world for Jesus. But then the cancer came back. My frustration level increased exponentially. How could I accomplish some of my new dreams? How could I fulfill what I felt God Himself had shown me? I spent weeks in this cycle of confusion.

It was during this time that I had a dream: I was at a restaurant with Mandy and my parents. I was in a wheelchair; I could not walk very well due to the amount of pain I had in my abdomen. The restaurant was full of people. In a nearby section of the restaurant, there was a table that was elevated above the others. There was a man and a woman sitting there. The woman was in a wheelchair and she could not walk at all. The man saw me in my wheelchair and asked me to bring him some butter. I took some butter from our table, stood up, and hobbled over to their table. When I got to their table, I did not give him the butter, but instead I spread the butter on the woman’s legs with my hands. She then smiled and stood up out of the wheelchair. She walked around the restaurant. Everyone in the restaurant was smiling and happy. Mandy brought my wheelchair over and I fell back into it and she pushed me back to our table. Someone near us asked me why I didn’t use the butter on my body. I replied, “Because this is the way God wants it.”

I instantly woke up and God brought to mind the story of Paul in Acts 28 that I had read earlier that day.

Acts 28:8-9 — It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him healed him. And when this had taken place, the rest of the people on the island who had diseases came and were cured.

The concept that hit me was that Paul suffered greatly from a thorn in his flesh. Scholars have speculated, but we really do not know what this thorn was. We also know that Paul asked God to remove that thorn from him three times (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). How frustrating must it have been for Paul to undergo physical pain, ask God for healing and then not receive it? Would that frustration have not been exacerbated when Paul was then used by God to heal others? I recognized that Paul was constantly ministering to others THROUGH his own pain, suffering and problems. He did not wait for his pain, suffering, problems to go away first. And neither should I.

The second simple way a Christian can navigate through suffering is to focus on ministering to others — through the suffering, not after it is completed.

If I was a healthy man who did not have to worry about insurance premiums and deductibles, then there is so much I could be doing for the kingdom. But my illness and my pain and my suffering do not IN ANY WAY preclude me from getting involved in kingdom work. The focus simply becomes: how can I minister in my current condition?

I have three distinct groups of people that I can minister to even though I have cancer and I sleep a lot. All three groups are people God has put in my way to minister to. They are, in order of importance:

1. My wife and kids — my primary mission in life is to minister to my wife and then to my children. Now, even though I am sick, I must lead them. There are many things I used to be able to do with Mandy and with the kids that I can no longer do. I am physically limited from doing them. But we have modified our way of life to better allow for quality time together. We implemented a nightly devotional time where the five of us sit and discuss something about God and then we pray together. This takes half an hour but is easily the most meaningful thing we have done in years — we were just too busy to do it before.
2. My employees — Although I don’t work much anymore, I still have a team of nine people who look to me as their boss. From a task-standpoint, these nine people are very efficient and capable of getting their work done. But God has shown me that even if I am not their boss anymore, I can still be a spiritual leader to them just by hanging out with them. Everyone is married and most have children — there is much we can share with each other about living life together.
3. The rest of you — the third group is a little less defined. It is the people God has put in my path who are following my story. These may be folks who read my blog, other relatives and friends who know me, people I go to church with, doctors, nurses, etc. Basically, I want to be as transparent and honest as possible about how I feel so that no matter who reads my story can be impacted for God’s glory.

So I have realized that even though I have big dreams about what a healthy Zac would do, there is much for sick-Zac to do. When you find yourself suffering try to divert the attention away from you as soon as possible. Stop the whining and the complaining and try to figure out what ministry Jesus has for you right now? How can you use your suffering to give God glory and increase His kingdom?

Category: Cancer | 35 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, God, suffering

Posted By zac on March 26, 2010

I am a Christian. By this, I mean that I follow Jesus. I believe Jesus is the one, true Son of the one, true God and I believe that Jesus is the only way for humanity to make it to heaven. I am also suffering greatly. Since my diagnosis of Stage IV cancer eleven months ago, the pain I have undergone has increased rapidly. Now, it is at the peak, yet I know the peak will continue to rise. I cannot go to work any longer and am presently under hospice care at my home. These circumstances not only affect the physical pain, but provide a variety of new emotional and psychological pains to deal with. And through all of this, there is a constant spiritual struggle between God and me.

There are doubtless many other people in the world who suffer far greater than I do. And yet most of the people I know cannot relate to the level of suffering I have. But we do not boast in our sufferings. I know that every follower of Jesus will undergo times of suffering and it is to that audience that I write. Regardless of the level of suffering, I want to share some amazing things that God has shown me over the past few weeks.

The first thing God has shown me while I navigate through suffering is to focus on personal, spiritual growth with Him. There is no shortage of fast-paced happenings in our world that keep us from being still and being quiet. Even in my most fruitful times of ministry, I can look back and notice that I was still missing quite a bit due to my lack of solitude and silence.

Psalm 46:10 — “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

We are commanded to be still. The Bible provides us many examples of times when stillness was the catalyst to an increased relationship with God. Jesus often walked somewhere to go be alone and pray. It is clear that not all of us are very obedient to this command to be still. It appears that many others were not obedient in this either. What God showed me is that sometimes He creates stillness in our lives. And while this stillness is something we wrestle with, it is something that we can benefit from. Paul, for example, had a dynamic fast-paced ministry traveling around planting churches. But over and over again, God allows Paul to be put in prison. When we read Paul’s lsetters from prison, we can detect a disdain for prison. No one wants to suffer in prison. And yet much of the New Testament canon that Paul wrote was written during his time in prison.

There are times when God forces stillness on our lives when things are going well. Like Paul or John. John was a faithful elder to the churches in Asia Minor and we have no indication that anything was wrong. But suddenly he was arrested and sent of the deserted island of Patmos. It was there that he wrote the book of Revelation. God forced a long stillness on his life so that God could reveal what might be the most dynamic and colorful book in the Bible. Indeed most of our understanding of the afterlife, the end times, heaven and hell all come from this that was revealed to John.

There are other times when God forces stillness on our lives because things are not going well. Jonah is an easy example of this. He was clearly disobedient to God and so God forced stillness on him: three days and three nights in the belly of a fish.

The point is this: if you find yourself in grave suffering, do not first curse it, but first determine if this is not a gift of God for your growth. Is it possible that you were doing something wrong and God needed to redirect you? Is it possible that things were going right in your eyes, but God needed to get your attention? Is there a sin issue God is trying to point out to you? Even when everything seemed right, Job finds himself learning so much more about his relationship with God through the suffering he endured.

It seems to me that if we constantly found times of stillness, solitude and silence in our lives and were disciplined to stay in them, that God would use those for our growth without having to force stillness upon us. Please understand what I am NOT saying. I am NOT saying that if you spend five minutes in solitude with God every day you will never get cancer or suffer. What I am saying is that God used cancer in my life to force confinement and stillness on me. I was in ministry, working for a church and my life was full of godly things, but I was not still. Getting cancer forced me to be physically and emotionally still. And it took several months after having cancer for me to realize what was happening. But now that I do understand, my relationship with Him is so much more enjoyable and rewarding.

Find solitude, silence and stillness and spend that time with God. And if you find yourself suffering, point towards God and learn how you can grow through it.

Category: Cancer | 50 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, God, suffering

Posted By zac on March 18, 2010

It has been over ten months since I was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. Not long after that diagnosis, I wrote about getting your affairs in order. I can personally attest that this is a difficult process to undertake. It is hard to sit down and process the finality of some of this.

I understand there will always be something somewhere that needs taking care of, but after these many months, I feel that we have finally come to the point where things are in order. Today Mandy and I wrote our Last Will & Testaments. We also made a number of changes at the bank. And it is through all of this that I am so grateful to God for giving me these months of life. For many people, death is an instant and sudden shock. Death simply happens and chaos is left behind. But because of God’s grace, we have been given time to teach each other what needs to happen.

I would love to be around for a long time and care for my family, but I am more and more confident every day that Mandy is excellently positioned to take over. She is an amazing homemaker and mother. Now she has added a job to the mix and she is thriving. I also see her quickly learning and taking over our finances. She is an amazing woman and I do not know anyone else in the world who could do what she does. I am thankful to God for giving me so many years of life with her and even more thankful that I get to leave my kids with her when I die.

Let this be an encouragement to you — whether you be sick or well: get your affairs in order. Do not leave your family in chaos if you die. Teach your spouse what you do.

Category: Cancer | 23 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, Mandy, will

Posted By zac on March 11, 2010

The past few days have taken their toll. The cancer in my abdomen is growing. I can feel it expanding with my fingertips. The pain is getting worse. Every day is worse than the day before. I am taking pain medicine around-the-clock now. I sleep about 60-90 minutes at a time. I yearn for an uninterrupted six hours of sleep. Or for an hour of no pain.

And yet through it all, I am seeing blessings. People continue to shower us with notes of encouragement or with checks. Those who love us are helping us get things in order. While it hurts to finalize things, it gives me peace knowing my wife and kids will be taken care of.

Everything is a gift from God. This life appears to be simply a sequence of blessings prompting a response of worship to God. And so I worship Him through the pain. He shows me kindness.

John Piper says it beautifully in his book on Job:

The Lord has made me drink
The cup of his severity
That he might kindly show to me
What I would be when only he
Remains in my calamity.
Unkindly he has kindly shown
That he was not my hope alone.

God unkindly showed kindness to Job. And He is unkindly showing kindness to me.

God has never promised me tomorrow; but God has promised me eternity.

Category: Cancer | 30 Comments »
Tags: Cancer, God, John Piper, kindness