A few of you have encouraged me to begin writing about my cancer, and the lessons I have learned from the experience. I feel completely inadequate for this task. I have only dealt with having cancer for a few weeks, while so many of you have battled cancer for years. In addition to this, the experience is still fresh, and I am at the beginning of the journey. My cancer is hereditary, and I will be trying to stay ahead of it the rest of my life. I don’t know that I have learned anything yet. Time will demonstrate that in improved character, greater patience, and a keener appreciation of God’s blessings. I will offer a few preliminary observations, though, in the hope that you veteran survivors will help me assess their truth.

I firmly believe that nothing is more important than kindness. Being fully dependant on others for one’s most basic needs teaches a person that the meeting of those needs includes being cared for with kindness. I have for years prayed over sick beds that the sick “receive the best care possible, and receive it with kindness.” I know that these are not just words.

I feel that there are drawbacks to entering a teaching hospital – even one as renowned as Johns Hopkins. Your nurse can dress your wound as expertly as a Swiss watch-maker, and then an hour later a gaggle of med-students and residents will come in, rip it out, and replace it, after they have all poked a finger into your wound, with something that looks like a three year old child wrapped for mom at Christmas.

I observed that your voices all sound beautiful over the phone, after being away from you.

I am more convinced that God was right in Genesis 2.18 – that it is NOT good for man to be alone, but that he needs a helper suited to him. I don’t know how a man (at least this man) could survive anything so threatening as cancer without a wife. I can never begin to understand, let alone repay, what I owe my wife, and God for giving her to me.

Television is, indeed, a vast wasteland (even some football).

I am beginning to believe I actually do work. God says in Genesis 3 that work is a curse. By definition then, anything you enjoy doing isn’t work. Then joke about preachers is that they only work one day a week. I love what I do so much, and what I do Sunday most of all, that I used to think that I was getting away with something. You, dear friends, beloved brethren, remind me that you think what I do has value for your life, and I appreciate that knowledge more than I can express.

It is nice to have your mom around.

Most of all I am reminded that I am wholly and fully undeserving. Undeserving of your love, undeserving of my blessings, undeserving of God’s grace and care. I am humbled by you, by my family – most of all by Him. That I should enjoy the strength, such love and support provides to me, and then get the best possible prognosis stops me dead in my tracks, makes me frustrated to find words. I don’t know what to say, except.

Thank you, and God is good.