How Cancer Cured Me
Dealing with Cancer and Other Stings of Life
by
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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.”
The prognosis was no better news than the diagnosis. “He may not live through the first chemotherapy treatment of five days.” Translated for me, “You’re close to pushin’ up daisies.”
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.
A friend told me, “In order to make a man, God breaks a man.” (That’s comforting, isn’t it?! There’s a nice poetic ring to it.) Maybe it’s like a slingshot—God pulls us back to propel us forward. It reminded me of the tale of the parrot, chicken, and eagle, each with a different approach to life’s problems. One talked a lot; one flew a little; and one soared. It’s one thing to flap your mouth (talk), or even flap your wings (do a little). It’s another thing to soar (rise above).
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. Yet the two concepts are complimentary. Perhaps from this reading you will gain fresh insights about soaring. Sure, there are always choices to be made—which doctor, which hospital, which treatment. But equally important is to choose to live with courage and humor and dignity rather than to be cranky and angry and wallow in self-pity. Maybe it will turn your life around; and I don’t mean from depressed and miserable to miserable and depressed.
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.
Confrontation with death can make a person determine the degree to which he or she is a genuine sinner or a fake saint. 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? Maybe good could come from this.
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? Processing these concepts was difficult—not because of the paralysis of analysis, but because there’s no easy way to get there from here. And it takes time and challenges to create the environment for confronting and contemplating such questions.
It is easy to have faith when it is easy to have faith. You don’t need much faith. Just act on the faith you have. Fortunately, God has given each of us a measure of faith (Romans 12:3). It is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Sure, there are always reasons to doubt. Faith is not acting without doubt, it is acting despite doubt. Learn to doubt your doubts, not your faith. My little faith was defined and refined somewhat, but it was still little faith.
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. Our lives can get stuffed with so much stuff, however good, with ceaseless motion and commotion, that the important is neglected. Suffering is like cleaning out your refrigerator: you discover items (usually in the back or under a stack) that have exceeded their shelf life and are no longer useful, wanted, or necessary. 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. Don’t you think the Lord is just as concerned about the state of the living as He is about the state of the dead? There is:
• no pain He cannot relieve
• no sickness He cannot heal
• no problem He cannot solve
• no broken relationship He cannot fix.
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About the Book
Mark shares a personal journey through cancer. It is real, but done with wit and wisdom. You,ll laugh and cry, and along with learning practical ideas about healthful living, you,ll be inspired with hope.
About the Author
Choosing a simple country life, Mark and Eulita have spent about half of their forty-four married years on a modest mountain farm near Boone, North Carolina, with a small orchard, berries, grapes, a greenhouse, and herb, flower, and vegetable gardens. They heat with a wood cookstove, have gravity spring water, and use solar- and wind-generated electricity. Mostly while their son, Josiah, was home, they kept a dairy goatherd, along with an assortment of sheep, horses, donkeys, a cow, emus, ducks, prairie dogs, chickens, honeybees, and ponds stocked with fish. Mark’s favorite hobbies were white water canoeing, snow skiing, primitive backpacking, a fast game of soccer, and travel to foreign countries as a tourist or for short-term mission service. He still can enjoy gardening, music, photography, woodworking, and manipulative puzzles. He has worked in multiple factories, started a few small businesses, was a volunteer chaplain for a rehab hospital, an editor of a sermon resource, served as a pastor for twenty years, and directed a ministry that assists pastors and teachers. While having penned numerous articles by alias ‘Dewey C. Wright’, this is his first book.