Pray for Ben Sasse

One of my favorite former US Senators has Stage Four Pancreatic Cancer.

I’m occasionally asked who my favorite (and least favorite) U.S. senators are. I won’t name them all here, but one I got to know during my years in the lobbying world was US Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE).

He didn’t serve long - not even two full terms - but I remember the first time I met him, when he was the GOP nominee for US Senate in 2014. He was feted on the cover of National Review, a rare endorsement from the stodgy conservative magazine.

I first met Sen. Sasse at a fundraising breakfast in Williamsburg, VA, introduced by a former boss and another favorite Senator, Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Kyl himself is one of the most impressive public servants I’ve known. He took the estimable Sasse under his wing, something I don’t recall him doing for anyone else. Interviewing him over breakfast, I was instantly impressed. Affable, wise beyond his years, and whip smart. He was so nice that I thought he might get chewed up in the US Senate. He is genuinely humble and a man of faith, and no pushover.

Later, I would co-host a fundraiser at the Union League in Philadelphia for the Senator’s reelection. I saw him as presidential timber. That he was no fan of President Trump mattered little to me, and had little influence over my own opinions of the 45th and 47th President. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about or reaction to Trump, usually either viscerally loving or hating the man, and you’re welcome to yours. However, Sasse influenced and inspired me in other ways.

He would leave the Senate early in his second term, no doubt frustrated by its sclerotic culture favoring process and deliberation over results. He would become President of the University of Florida, leaving early due to his wife’s Epilepsy. He authored terrific books, including a personal favorite, The Vanishing American Adult (still timely). Kyl may have been the Senate’s best lawyer, but Sasse was its best writer and one of its finest, if less charismatic communicators.

Another book he wrote in 2018, "Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal,” was among the very first to address growing political polarization. It also remains timely and an inspirational must-read. It helped inspire me to venture into the challenging world of civil political communications, which I continue to navigate with frequent detours.

"As traditional tribes of place evaporate, we rally against common enemies so we can feel part of a team," Sasse wrote. "No institutions command widespread public trust, enabling foreign intelligence agencies to use technology to pick the scabs on our toxic divisions. We’re in danger of half of us believing different facts than the other half, and the digital revolution throws gas on the fire." Prescient, even prophetic.

He announced this week on Facebook and X that he has stage four pancreatic cancer. He’s right; it’s a death sentence, and not a humane one. Detection and survival rates for all cancers have improved, but not for Stage Four. I’m sharing his post here for those who don’t follow him.

This is superbly written, and both heart-wrenching and inspirational. Please pray for the Senator and his family.

“Friends-

“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

“Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

“I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

“Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

“There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

“Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

“A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

“Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

“Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:

“When we’ve been there 10,000 years…We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise.”

“I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

“But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,

Ben — and the Sasses”