No Shave November

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It’s been more than thirty years since I’ve had a beard. Eiley doesn’t care for them and, well, that pretty much seals the deal. This year, though, she graciously (though also rather reluctantly) allowed me to participate in #NoShaveNovember along with others at the Sonora Police Department, which I serve as a chaplain.

In case you’re not familiar with it, the goal of No Shave November is to raise funds and awareness for cancer prevention and treatment, particularly for men. (Sonora Police raised $525—which was matched by another donor—for the Cancer Patient Support Fund at Adventist Health Sonora). I love the fact that the day we presented the donation, one of our dispatchers joined the fun by giving herself a beard!

Part of my motivation this year was to honor my brother, who spent his last two years of high school—and life—battling cancer. Rick was eighteen months older than me and had already fought off a kidney disease before he turned eight. The summer before our family moved to Germany, in our physicals prior to the move, Rick was found to have testicular cancer. (I learned only in the last few years that the cancer was likely the result of an experimental treatment for the earlier kidney disease.) Rick spent his 16th birthday in the hospital recovering from surgery, and over the next two years would spend as much as three weeks at a time in the hospital receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Those treatments, of course, took Rick’s hair, meaning that over his last two years of high school, he had at least three different heads of hair: the straight, auburn hair he grew up with, a sandy-brown wig, and finally the dark red, wavy hair that grew back after chemo. Rick never had a chance to grow a beard. On March 26, 1980—an official high school graduate three months shy of his 18th birthday—Rick passed into eternity.

Rick, this beard’s for you.

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