ErinRx

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

[The Calvin Coolidge Project @TheCalvinCooli1]

🚨Good News: Former Nebraska Senator
Ben Sasse has announced during an interview this week that his tumors have shrunk by 80% thanks in part to a new cancer drug

Ben Sasse: “I'm down 99%, in five months, of how much cancer is in my blood.”

[Gem 💎 Balboa @RealGemBalboa]

@SteveLovesAmmo Blue Angels in NY for the 250th

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@BenSasse Happy birthday to the best boss i ever had. Love ya.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@lyndseyfifield Most thoughtful man on the Hill.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@JohnJSSoriano Classic Ben.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@DavidBahnsen 💯 right on. What a blessing it is to be even a small part of his circle.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@WarrenColeSmith Same!

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@rcbl Always. Classic Ben.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@McCormickProf Same, sir. Same. 💔

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@mschlapp Really disgusting to lead with that sentiment amidst such devastating news.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@nachamasol @mschlapp Amen! 🙄

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

Please pray for miraculous healing for Ben, and for strength and peace for the entire Sasse family. The world still needs him, but more importantly, his family needs him.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

I’m speechless and heartbroken. I’ll never be able to put into words my love and appreciation for Ben and Melissa and what they have meant to me over the years, especially during my years as a young Capitol Hill staffer.
Cont. in comments…

[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

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

Ben was a truly inspiring boss and mentor as well as one of the lone men in politics who gave me hope for our future. He is one of the wisest people I’ve ever met and I credit much of who I am today to his example over the last 20 years, both while I worked alongside him…

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

and then watched him from afar. He was always humble yet undeniably brilliant and it was an honor to see how he navigated being a young father and husband while leading our office.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

Melissa’s resilience throughout her years of health issues has always been inspiring as she’s continued to fight and to be an amazing mother, wife, and leader.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

Brilliant...

[Astronomer @astronomerio]

Thank you for your interest in Astronomer.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@nolanbowser_ @TVPlusUpdates Found this.

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@nolanbowser_ @TVPlusUpdates Following…

[ErinRx @erin_rexroth]

@realDonaldTrump #pbmreform, a bi-partisan legislation, is the solution you’re looking for.