Andrew Olson

[NCAA March Madness @MarchMadnessMBB]

ONE SHINING MOMENT 🙌

#MarchMadness

[Brian Bosiljevac @kcbonescoach]

@HuskerHC My son’s name is Lincoln. We live in Kansas City. He’s obsessed with Frager. Wants to be him for Halloween. It was an All-Time moment!

[Cody Nagel @CodyNagel247]

Every college says it has the best fans in the country.

Nebraska actually backs it up. Absolute sickos.

[Nebraska Men's Basketball @HuskerMBB]

WATCH AND DREAM.

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

NEBRASKA EARNS ITS FIRST MEN'S NCAA TOURNAMENT WIN EVER‼️

[Nebraska Men's Basketball @HuskerMBB]

SOME DAY IS TODAY.

[NCAA March Madness @MarchMadnessMBB]

HUSKER HISTORY IN OKC 💪

#MarchMadness

[Robin Washut @RobinWashut]

Nobody in the building deserves this more.

[Andrew Olson @a21olson]

BUILD THE STATUE!

#HUSKERS 🌽🌽🌽🌽

[Nebraska Men's Basketball @HuskerMBB]

Cement who we are.

[chris gotterup @ChrisGotterup]

The people’s champ

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

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

[Andrew Olson @a21olson]

@RobinWashut 2014 @ #9 Michigan State has to be up there too, yeah?

[Nebraska Men's Basketball @HuskerMBB]

𝔖𝔲𝔫𝔡𝔞𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔫𝔡𝔞𝔯𝔡

[Andrew Olson @a21olson]

I was hoping “Rhule year 3” would end much better than with a blowout loss at home to our rival and a half-empty stadium filled with opposing fans in the fourth quarter.

[Andrew Olson @a21olson]

@HuskerOnline Interested to hear what the staff’s plan is moving forward and whether the fan base is satisfied with a potential 7-5 regular season this year.

[Nike @Nike]

Priorities unchanged. Another major secured.

The wins keep coming on and off the course for Scottie Scheffler

[Andrew Olson @a21olson]

@WhizBangHoops @RobinWashut @HuskerMBB Couldn’t decide between White, Copeland, Glynn Watson, or Isaiah Roby. Would be fine with any of those guys! Went with White in the end just because a matchup of White/JPJ/Petteway vs. Williams/McGowens/Gary seems like the most hypothetical fireworks.