The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 14 – Dr. Jeff’s Journey

Episode 14: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff shares his personal journey through a six-month cancer battle while leading Summit Ministries during the COVID-19 pandemic. After running a half marathon on his birthday in October 2020 while unknowingly having cancer in his body, he was diagnosed with seminoma testicular cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes just one month later. Throughout his three-month chemotherapy treatment, which involved four hours of daily treatment with three different medications, Dr. Jeff found strength in the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and the biblical promise that God’s mercies are new every morning.

Despite the physical and emotional challenges faced by both him and his wife Stephanie, Dr. Jeff completed treatment successfully in March with his lymph nodes returning to normal size. He reflects on how this experience has given him a new perspective on life’s significance and reduced his fears, drawing inspiration from the biblical story of Caleb who at age 85 asked for the land where the giants still lived. The episode concludes with his gratitude for the prayers and support received during his journey and his commitment to continuing Summit Ministries’ mission to reach young people with Christian worldview education.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey, it’s Dr. Jeff. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. On this show, I interview major thought leaders to demonstrate that worldview changes everything. But this episode is going to be a little bit different because I don’t have anybody to interview. I’m going to tell you some things that have been happening in my own life that I wanted to share with you and some lessons that God has been teaching me that I hope will be powerful and give you a sense of hope in your own life.

You probably can tell that my hairstyle has changed here. That is not something I chose. And I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story about that because I am on the backside of an almost half year long cancer battle. We recorded a bunch of episodes for this show before I got into this battle and then we’ve just picked it back up here and I wanted you to know a little bit of what’s been going on in my life.

(01:08):
And I just have a sense that there’s so many people who are facing difficult times right now. Maybe you’re experiencing anxiety or depression. A lot of people have said, “I’m not even sure I want to go on living.” I can’t remember a time where so many people had such an extraordinarily difficult time just making it from day to day.

So my hope is that this is going to be helpful. My fear is that I’m just here. I wrote out some notes of things that I wanted to emphasize and communicate, but I don’t want this to be a, “Oh, poor Jeff had cancer.” Nor do I want it to just be, “Oh, everything is great and fine and happy and let’s just move on. And aren’t we all good? And God’s a healer and so we don’t have anything to worry about. ” So I don’t know how to exactly strike the right tone here.

(02:08):
And I’m a little concerned because this is so different from any of the other podcast episodes that we’ve done. But why don’t I just dig in a little bit about how I came to be at Summit Ministries to begin with, and then talking about our COVID experience, and then share with you what’s been going on in my life and what God’s been doing.

(02:33):
I came to Summit Ministries as a student. This ministry has been going for 58 years now, and I’m 55. So when Dr. David Noble started this program, I was not even a glimmer in my parents’ eye. But by the time I got through high school, I was upset with the church because I didn’t find answers to a lot of the questions that I was asking.

And I know a lot of my questions were obnoxious. I’m grateful for the people who loved me and put up with me, even in spite of everything, but I had pretty much decided that when I graduated from high school, I was going to graduate from church at the same time. Well, my parents arranged for me to attend a Summit Ministries program, and so I did. I came out to Manitou Springs, Colorado. A lot of you have been onto the campus of the Summit Hotel.

(03:27):
It’s called the Grandview Hotel right there in Manitou Springs. Little bitty hippy town tucked in right at the foot of Pikes Peak. Hope that if you haven’t been, you’ll be able to come visit someday. I walked right into the building and there was David Noble, the founder of the program. And I said to him, “I hope you have a lot of answers because I have a lot of questions.” I was about the most obnoxious 17 year old imaginable, but David Noble won by heart immediately.

He didn’t say, “Hey, look kid, we have all the answers here. Don’t worry, just listen, take good notes, you’ll get all the answers.” Instead, what he said to me is, “At Summit, we aren’t afraid of questions.” And one of the big questions I had at that time of my life, and that honestly I think I have had at different times in my life is how do you reconcile God’s goodness with the reality of pain in the world?

(04:31):
Most of the students I work with have this question, and it’s kind of a logical question because if you think about it, if God is really all good and he is all powerful, then he would want to stop evil evil from taking place, and he would be able to stop evil from taking place. So the fact that we have evil shows either that God is not all good or that he is not all powerful.

A lot of people, this criticism was like a wound that was scratched open again during COVID. There’s not anybody who’s listening to this episode right now or watching this episode who hasn’t been personally affected by COVID. You probably know someone who was very, very sick, maybe someone who died.

(05:34):
Certainly being locked down in your house has led to a lot of difficult emotional and psychological issues. And I don’t even think we’re close to grappling with the consequences of all of those things yet. But that part of it was a little bit easier for me because as the head of an organization, when bad things happen, you don’t get a lot of time to just worry or fret or wish that it was different. You have to act.

And when I first came to Summit Ministries as a student, I think there were 35 students in my summit class, 35. Now we’re reaching more than 50,000 young people a year through our programs and our curriculum courses, and then untold millions more through all of our online social media, digital impressions on all of that. So when COVID hit, I came to our team and it was a virtual event.

(06:34):
It was our first Zoom meeting and I said, “Gang, I think the Lord is putting two things on my heart that I want to share with you.” I’m not saying that this is a direct communication from God, but I believe as the Holy Spirit is walking with us, there are two things I want to emphasize. The first thing I want to emphasize is this, we are not of those who shrink back.

(07:02):
And I quoted to them, Hebrews 10:39, “We do not shrink back. We do not shrink back.” Whatever it is that we’re going through, we’re going to go into it. We’re going to go right into the heart of it. And if there are giants that our students are facing because of COVID or anything else that’s going on, we’re not going to move around the side. We’re not going to try to take a detour. We’re not going to try to ignore it. We’re not going to engage in happy talk. We’re going to walk alongside of them. We do not shrink back even in the midst of difficulty.

And the second thing I said is that we are called to press on to the high calling of Jesus. And I quoted them Philippians 3:14. I said, “So those two things, we do not shrink back, we press on to the high calling of Jesus.” I said, “Those two things are going to guide us.”

And the question really is this, how is God going to grow the work that he has called us to do because of the circumstances in which we find ourselves? At the time I was saying that, you know how you say things and you think, “Well, that was really good.” And then all of a sudden later you realize I had no idea what I was, I had no idea of the depth of that or how it would be tested.

(08:37):
We saw amazing things happen at Summit Ministries during COVID. First of all, just looking back at the sheer numbers, we reached 10 times as many people in the year 2020 as we did in the year 2019, 10 times as many people. We had virtual events. They were international in scope.

All 50 states, I think we’re counting the number of countries of people who’ve engaged. I think we’re up to 90 countries now. That’s almost half of the countries in the entire world. A lot of them are closed countries, countries that I can’t even really mention on the podcast, but closed countries where persecution is real and people are under constant threat because of their faith. They were able to engage with some ministries really for the first time.

(09:27):
And so we went all the way through the summer of 2020. We got into October. My wife and I took a vacation and we were out in California just hanging out on the coast and I was running and we were bicycling and just having a great time. In fact, that was on my birthday, on October 3rd. I woke up in the morning, Stephanie asked, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I’m going to run a half marathon this morning because I can.”

I was physically fit. I had gotten rest from the summer, and so I got up, ran a half marathon, came back, took a shower, we went on with the rest of our day. And I’m not saying that to brag, I just want you to understand that was the level of physical fitness that I was at in October of 2020. Just so that you know this, one month later, I was in the hospital having cancer surgery.

(10:31):
At that moment, I was running that half marathon on my birthday, my body was being consumed by cancer and I didn’t even know. Well, when you go to the doctor and say, “I think something is wrong, can you check this out?” And they say, “We need tests immediately.” Then your alarm bells start going off. When they say, “You need to get into a specialist, this person’s not available for months, but I personally called them and you’re going there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, that gets your attention.”

In fact, I told my doctor, I said, “I’m not going to the specialist at nine o’clock in the morning. I’m getting on a flight in Denver at 10 o’clock in the morning.” He said, “You’re not getting on a flight. You’re going to this specialist, cancel everything.” So I went to the specialist, he went over all of the test results and he said, “Yep, you’re going to have to have surgery.”

And just jokingly, I said, “Oh, I just canceled a trip. I’m free all day.” And he looked at me, he picked up the phone, made a phone call, turned back to me and said, “I’ll see you at the surgery center at two o’clock.” From nine o’clock in the morning to two o’clock in the afternoon, my world was completely turned upside down.

(12:01):
So I had the surgery, the doctor said, “I think we might have gotten all the cancer, but we have to do all these tests to find out what’s going on. If you’ve ever been in that situation, you know the weight is forever.” So finally he called back and the conversation was actually a little odd. He said, “Seminoma, that’s the word you need to get to know.” I said, “What’s that?”

He said, “That’s the kind of cancer you have and it is spread into your lymph nodes. I’m sorry to tell you.” But he said, “But this kind of cancer responds very well to treatment. I think we have a very good prognosis.” I think the conversation with my wife, Stephanie, about that is one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had.

(12:57):
I didn’t realize the difference between going through something and having to walk alongside the person you love the most going through something. It really was a struggle to watch Stephanie’s tears. It was a struggle because we are so in love and we pictured moving toward retirement and getting a sprinter van and traveling around the country with our dog. And we had these dreams of things we wanted to do. And when you hear the word cancer, it’s life altering.

And I know, I’m not saying anything new, but I’m sure there are people who are watching right now or listening to this and you’re thinking, “Yep, that’s exactly right.” You’ve been there. I had a phenomenal medical team, absolutely the best medical experience I’ve ever had. And I know there are people from lots of different countries who are watching this or listening to this right now, but I just want to say I’m super grateful for the medical care that we have available here in our town in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

(14:30):
I had the tests immediately when I needed them. The insurance company cooperated fully in this experience. I was kept aware of everything that was going on. We had a treatment plan that we could follow. And I’m a big plan guy. If you’re not sure what to do, make a list because it doesn’t really matter. Just do something, right? That’s kind of my philosophy of life.

But starting in February, I went into a three month long process of chemo. A lot of people have gone through chemo. There are lots of different kinds of regimens. Most of the people in the cancer clinic that I was a part of would come in once a week for an hour, something like that.

(15:21):
My treatment was four hours a day every day with three different kinds of chemotherapy medication. And I didn’t, for me, it was just trying to keep my head above the waves. For Stephanie having to watch this, I’m just now starting to understand how extraordinary of a person she is. In COVID, you can’t go into the cancer center with the person you love. You can’t be there. Like you drop them off at the door and goodbye. I hope it goes well. Stephanie said when she dropped me off, she just pulled into a parking lot and just cried.

(16:11):
And as I was coming out, in fact, when she came to pick me up, she was just telling herself, “Be brave, be strong, put on a strong face.” And she said, “I looked at you and it’s like your skin color had changed. You looked exhausted.” I’d never seen you like that before, she said. It was extraordinary, because just weeks before I’d been running, half marathon, I hiked the Grand Canyon with my daughter 11 miles in a day, and now here I am barely able to function.

Stephanie told me later, I only found this out after the chemo was done. She said, “There were times where you’d come back from the chemo treatments and you’d just lay down to take a nap.” And she said, “I would stand at the door and I felt like I was looking at a corpse.” What it felt like on the inside to me, if you’ve ever had the flu and you know that feeling of you can’t catch your breath, you can’t sleep, but you can’t stay awake, you feel nauseated all of the time, fatigue, headache, all of that, it’s like having that for four straight months, three months of chemo and a month of recovery.

(17:42):
And I remember a time during that, I was actually staying in the guest room because obviously I’m not resting. I can’t keep Stephanie up all night, so I’m up and down and I was laying there wide awake in the middle of the night and as I was laying there, the words to the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness came into my head. When I was a little kid, we went to a church where we sang all kinds of hymns, most of them were just from the Baptist hymnal, but I’m almost positive Great is Thy Faithfulness is in there because somehow I knew most of the words by heart.

(18:35):
And then I couldn’t remember some of them, so I actually, I Googled it real quick just to cheat, but I just laid there just singing this song over and over and over again, Greatest Life Faithfulness. And it’s based on Lamitations 3:22 and 23, where scripture says that God’s mercies are new every morning, that his faithfulness is great.

And I remember in a previous situation in life where I was just going through what I thought was the worst time that I could ever have gone through, I remember that verse because I would wake up in the morning and think, “God, I can’t do another year of this. ” I can’t imagine five years from now my life being like this, but it was as if every morning God would say, “We’re not going to do five years. We’re not going to do a year.”

(19:33):
“We’re going to do today.” And I want you to know if you’re going through a tough time, it’s God’s mercies through new every morning, that’s what really counts. He is faithful today. Let five years from now take care of five years from now. Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow. God’s mercies are new today. And there was, I mean, I remember one time where I woke up and I thought, “Okay, I believe that your mercies are new, but I’m not even sure I can do today.”

And it was as if God said to me, “Hey, look, can you make it to lunchtime? Let’s just make it to lunchtime.” I thought, “Okay, I can make it to lunchtime.” And that was right. That’s exactly right because God’s mercies are new every morning, right? Okay, I’m here. I’m coming with you. Let’s go. I’m right here.

(20:45):
The next morning, after that experience of just laying awake, singing the song, Greatest Life Faithfulness over and over again, I got a couple of cards in the mail. I’m so grateful for cards of people saying, “We’re praying for you. Our hearts are with you.” I kept every one of them, but two came in that day, two cards came in the mail and I remember it because I remember just looking at the two pieces of mail and opening one of them. And the card said, “God’s mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness.” I thought, “Wow, that’s incredible.”

So I opened the second card and it said, “God’s mercies are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness.” In fact, the second one was from my brother and his wife and my brother’s a musician and he had actually written out the words, the lyrics, to the verse that I had forgotten from that hymn. He wrote it out on that card. You’ve got to keep in mind, this was sent in the mail four days before this experience ever happened, that God was just preparing me for that kind of a day.

(22:10):
A couple days later, I mentioned something about this on Facebook, and I only posted Facebook updates for my friends. For some reason, I just didn’t want this to be public. And if you’ve seen my Facebook, you’ll know that there are two posts that are public about my cancer journey. All the rest of them, it’s just for friends.

And this is really the first time that I’ve tried to talk about it. I don’t know if it’s just because I feel like I’m a private person or I didn’t want to worry people or that I just felt like, “No, this is a journey that I’m going through. This is for my family and for me. This is for our Summit team.” But a friend of mine sent this framed print of the song, the way it would appear in a hymnal, Great is Thy Faithfulness, printed out and framed. I almost brought it with me to the studio today.

(23:15):
It is a constant reminder of what God has been doing in my mind and in my heart over the last few months. Well, I came to the end of the treatments, and this was end of March, so the end of March, March 29th, my last chemo treatment, had to wait a couple of weeks, get a CT scan, wait a little bit longer to go over it with a doctor, but I sat down with the doctor in the office, and again, Stephanie can’t be there, so she’s joining in by FaceTime at this point.

And he said, “Wow, the lymph nodes that were affected, they’re all back to the normal size, except for this one, and we think that it’s on its way back to the normal size as well, because it’s shrunk significantly.” And then he pulled down his mask and he smiled at me and said, “So congratulations.” He said, “You flew through this.”

(24:25):
He said, “Now get out of here. You’re too healthy to be here.” I cannot tell you as I walked out of that cancer center that day, how joyful I felt at what I had seen as God’s provision, but I had to walk by a lot of people who were my fellow patients, some of whom are no longer living, and that’s a startling realization that God provides healing in different ways and to different people and at different times.

(25:11):
I can’t explain the experience of everybody else, but I just want you to know that I believe God has provided healing in my situation up to this point in time. I have no idea what will happen in the future because of the mission that we have at Summit Ministries and what God has called me personally to do through being a husband and a father and a teacher, that we are in a mission critical time. I’ve taken on, in fact, recently something that I remember reading in scripture as I was, you have a lot of time to read if you really can’t do a lot. And as I was reading in numbers, I read about Moses having 12 spies go in to check out the Promised Land.

(26:11):
All 12 came back, they were all listed in scripture by name, by the way, but you only know two names. You know Joshua and Caleb. The other 10’s names are listed, but we don’t know who they are because when they came back, their hearts melted with fear. They caused panic among the people and said, “We can’t go into the promised land because there are giants there.”

Well, fast forward 45 years, and it’s in the book of Joshua and you can look this up for yourself. Joshua is settling all of the people into the promised land. It lasts four decades and it took five years to get everybody settled. So Caleb shows up and he says, “Joshua, you know that of all the people who came back from the promised land as spies, I remained faithful to God. You know that, don’t you?” And Joshua knew that.

(27:04):
And then Caleb said, “I’m ready to claim my inheritance.” You know what he said? He said, “I want you to give me the part of the land where the giants still are.” He said, “Look at me. I’m 85 years of age,” he said, “I’m as strong for battle as I was at age 40.”

So I’ve taken that back to our team and I said, “There are all kinds of giants in this culture that would set aside, set us aside and set aside this generation.” And I said, “May God be pleased if we are willing to step into the land of giants and say, God, give us this inheritance, the place where the giants still are. I don’t think I’m a fearless person, but I have a lot less fear than I did four months ago, five months ago. I mean, if somebody says something really nasty about you and you’re thinking, “Hey, look, I could have died. I battled cancer. I am not afraid of you.” It changes your whole perspective on things.

(28:27):
And I want to kind of wrap up with this. I can’t believe we’ve talked for almost 30 minutes. One of my friends who, I’ll just say he’s kind of socially awkward. I love the guy, but early on I told him, “Hey, look, I’ve got cancer. I’m going to be going through this battle.” And he said, “Man, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll be praying for you.”

And then he just kind of reflected and he said, “Wow, we sure have lost a lot of good ones lately, haven’t we? ” And I was like, “I’m not dead yet.” But then inside, I thought in many ways I have never been more alive because now I see the significance of every single day.

(29:12):
So I don’t know what it is that you’re going through or why you needed to hear this episode of the show, but I just want you to know that God’s mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness is great and that we are walking together in an extraordinary time of history to pursue God’s purposes in partnership with the Holy Spirit and recognizing that Jesus has risen from the dead to do things that will enable us to be a blessing to the nations of the earth.

So I’m so thankful. There were hundreds of people who were praying for me through this. Thank you for your prayers. To my wife Stephanie, who I think, it is harder on a caregiver than it is on the patient very often.

(30:07):
So thank you to her for her strength in this whole time. And I want to say thank you to everybody who’s downloaded and enjoyed this show. Next week we’ll get back to doing interviews, but I wanted to take this time. Just first of all, I knew you’d be asking why this evolved all of a sudden.

And I thought, no, this is a time to tell the story. This is a time to testify to what God is doing. Whether I feel that it’s good or for ill, God’s working, he’s working in a powerful way and he’s working through you and he’s working through me to accomplish his good purposes. Thanks for taking time to hang out with me today.

Ryan Dobson (30:52):
Hi everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting Podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17, we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks. I’ve returned every summer for 34 years. This summer, your student can attend an in- person conference. That’s right, in person.

Summit Ministry’s Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 24 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in person with other students learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience and it’s amazing. Change your students’ life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.