Faith tempered
Cancer shakes one couple's relationship with God.

By John J. Shaughnessy
john.shaughnessy@indystar.com
August 28, 2004

Jim O'Donnell couldn't understand why God would treat his family this way, especially after they had sacrificed so much to follow what they regarded as a call from God.

To change his life, O'Donnell had taken an 80 percent cut in his $200,000 salary as a financial investor. He, his wife and their three children had also left family, friends and a beautiful home in Boston to move to a small town in northern Indiana, to try to have an impact on the future of young people.

Privately, O'Donnell believed he would be blessed by God for making the move to teach ethics at Huntington (Ind.) College. Yet three months after he and his family took their leap of faith, their world -- and their view of God -- was upended when Jim's wife, Lizzie, faced two health conditions that doctors believed would kill her.

"Once in Indiana, Lizzie's life came under relentless attack, first from a terminal cancer diagnosis, then from end-stage heart failure," O'Donnell recalls. "As Lizzie's crises deepened, my simple trust that God would never let me down began to give way to dread and fear that perhaps I'd misunderstood who God is."

The struggle to find faith and hope amid tragedy and suffering marks the life of O'Donnell. That struggle also marks the theme of his recently released book, "Letters for Lizzie: A Story of Love, Friendship and A Battle for Life."

After Lizzie was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in 1994, O'Donnell began writing emotional letters to friends in the East, seeking to start a prayer network for her. When cancer treatments kept her alive after nine months, the family had hope -- at least until doctors determined that the treatments had destroyed her heart.

Lizzie not only had to fight the cancer, she had to hope for a heart transplant.

"Then, and only then, did I think my faith in God was misguided," O'Donnell, 56, recalls. "It would take a couple of years to come back from that wasteland of toxic skepticism."

Lizzie received her new heart in 1996, after a 21-year-old committed suicide.

Eight years later, Lizzie is still alive. She has kidney and degenerative disc problems from taking medicines needed to battle organ rejection. The threat that the cancer could return is still there. So is the knowledge that the average heart-transplant patient lives 10 years after getting a new heart.

Still, she has marked 33 years of marriage to Jim. She has also seen her children grow. Their oldest son, Nick, 28, is an actor in Seattle. Andrew, 25, is an investment banker in New York City. And Jon, 16, is a high school sophomore.

"My faith was very challenged by the diagnosis of cancer and the poor prognosis for me, a wife and a mother," Lizzie recalls. "I was shaking my fist at God. But I came to the point of just putting one foot in front of the other and finding grace where I could. There were times when I lost hope, but my hope was changed into living out each day the best I could."

At 51, Lizzie volunteers at a hospice, trying to give comfort to those close to dying.

"I know what it's like," she says about being a hospice patient. "I'm not afraid to be around people who are dying. I'm just trying to help them live the life they have left in the best way they can."

Her concern has also extended to her husband as she watched him struggle with his faith as he juggled caring for her, rearing their sons, running their home and starting a new job.

She's glad to see his faith has become more mature and solid. Still, Jim O'Donnell says, it's also touched by pain and doubt.

"God is good, but serving him is not safe," he says. "When we came to Indiana, I thought God was going to shower us with blessings. Maybe through all we have been through, and all he has preserved us to do, maybe those are the blessings -- writing the book, speaking to frail, suffering people all over the country, Lizzie being a hospice volunteer."

Still, he won't offer any easy words for a life-changing time that has been anything but easy.

"Underneath a mature faith must be the certainty that God loves us, cares about us and is competent to help us in our hour of need," he says. "But those certainties are often shrouded -- at least for me -- in the midst of our suffering."

Call Star reporter John Shaughnessy at (317) 444-6175.

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See press coverage of Lizzie's health struggles

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