An Unlikely Source of Inspiration

     It's the worse three words you ever want to hear a doctor say, "You have cancer." Your heart drops to your stomach and you don't even know how to react because you are numb by the prognosis. It takes time for your brain to process all that those three words mean. I should know, I've had to hear this from two different doctors within a fifteen-year time frame. It truly is a tough pill to swallow and the second time around does not make it any easier.

      The first diagnosis came just after the birth of my youngest child. A husband, father of five, thinking this should be the best time of life. The cries, "Why me? Why

can't some heinous murderer on death row have this instead of me?" And then, the reflective reply, "Why not me? Who am I that I should get a pass? What makes me so special to think I would be exempt?" The sad reality is, even prisoners on death row get cancer. It isn't a discriminator of who gets it.

      So, how do you get into the best place in your head to meet this challenge? My Christian faith tells me that prayer is the best place to start. After a short time, I began to see the cancer to reassure my life. To let it make me more acutely aware if

what truly is meaningful and important in life. Suddenly, I wasn't consumed with cancer and thoughts of whether I will make it through surgery and the follow up treatments. My mind was reset to be thankful that I had cancer. Wait, how on God's green earth can someone in their right mind even think of being thankful after receiving a cancer diagnosis, let alone two? Well, let me explain.

      I was thankful that "I" had cancer, not my wife or any of my five children. What loving spouse or parent would want to take away their loved one's pain and diagnosis onto themselves? My mental therapy was that God saw fit to permit "Me" to have cancer so that my wife or children didn't have to go through it. Cancer helped me realize how hard it is for those that can't transfer it onto themselves for the sake of their loved ones. In both cases, my level of coming out successfully was a conjured-up percentage by some set of medical statistics that really didn't mean a hill of beans to me. Because I was thankful that it was me dealing with the issue, I

went into the first surgery after having one of the most peaceful night's sleep I can ever remember without using any medications. Be aware that comes from knowing

that I may never wake up or be the same once that ten-and-a-half-hour surgery

began. All I had to do during the surgery and treatments that followed was to lay down. I was prepared as well as I could be without any guarantees of the outcome. God saw fit to allow my life on this planet to continue as a husband, a father, and a testament that finding out what really matters in life can come from something as dark and ugly as cancer. If I had the power to pick life with or without cancer, I would choose "with" every time. It showed me the meaning of life from a very unexpected place.

(This is my own personal, true story)