The oncologist looked to my wife and said, “Your husband has Double-hit, non-Hodgkin’s Large Diffused B cell, stage IV Lymphoma. It shows up in about 70% of his bone marrow. This is a super-aggressive cancer.” Translated for me, “Your husband is a very sick man… close to pushin’ up daisies.”
The following is how my life was Lost-‘n’-Found, from cancer diagnosis to remission. This is not a book on how to cure cancer it is primarily a story of how cancer cured me. Maybe it will turn your life around; and I don’t mean from depressed and miserable to miserable and depressed.
Like medical treatment you want done well—and done well the first attempt—so with your belief system. You want it to work well, and the less pain the better.
We live in a culture with too much to live with and too little to live for… more interested in how we look than how we see. Without cancer (or other major sting, challenge, trouble, crisis) life can seem like a game. We go ‘round and ‘round the board, passing “Go,” trying to collect all the money and gain all the property we can. But there comes a day when it’s all over—when Father Time has nibbled away all of what Mother Nature gave you—and like the game, someone will place you neatly in a box, close the lid, and put you away.
Was I more concerned about my income than my outcome? Did I have enough affinity for infinity? Did I practice what I preached, and could I preach anything I practiced?
Did I think Scripture was full of promises of God, or of premises about God? Did I merely believe in God or did I actually believe God? Did I just know what He said, or could I also hear Him speaking?
This was not the script for my life that I would write, but who is to say it was not the right script? I would not want to repeat the experience, but there are some things only learned—and/or best learned—through suffering. When God is all you have, it is then you realize that God is all you need. So hold tightly to God and loosely to everything else!
I was dying to live until I lived like I was dying.
