Cancer
Cancer is a disease that kills over 10 million people throughout the world every year. The most common forms are:
- breast (2.26 million cases);
- lung (2.21 million cases);
- colon and rectum (1.93 million cases);
- prostate (1.41 million cases);
- skin (non-melanoma) (1.20 million cases); and
- stomach (1.09 million cases).
These would be the areas the cancer originated. But many cancers tend to metastasize to other parts of the body until it eventually kills you. That’s the insidious thing about cancer, it is so ruthless that it invades and conquers causing utter destruction until it succeeds in ending the life of its host, and thereby itself. Cancer is on a suicide mission.
Cancer does not discriminate with regard to age, politics, gender, race, wealth, believers and non-believers. For those who promote DEI; cancer should be your insignia as it is the quintessence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
My sister Maria, the youngest of 4 died at the age of 59 from Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). She left behind a husband, 7 children with the youngest a sophomore in college, and a handful of grandchildren. Maria refused to give up. When her oncologist told her there was nothing more they could do, she found another oncologist who provided an experimental treatment. Right up to the week before she died, she was well enough to drive herself to the hospital for the experimental cancer treatments. During her battle with cancer, she had hundreds of people praying for her. Our other sister refers to them as “prayer warriors”.
A couple of years prior to Maria’s AML, I was diagnosed with Stage III Melanoma cancer. After Maria’s passing it progressed to Stage IV. I am currently at NED which stands for “No Evidence of Disease”. But I have been at NED twice before.
If you have a terminal disease, I recommend Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. They have a beautiful campus with palm trees, ponds with fountains, and walking paths. The care is outstanding. While under treatment, I would visit every 3 weeks. Presently, I am enjoying my NED status and only having to visit every 3 months for scans and bloodwork. In addition to the wonderful campus, it gives me pleasure to see other patients and their spouses’ holding hands. It is a very common, solemn, and beautiful sight; people holding hands and walking in silence. It is very comforting to hold my wife’s hand especially when we are walking into a building for new scans or we just learned they found another growth. Words don’t come close to the comfort and contentment a loved one’s hand brings. The treatments and the procedures are not very pleasant, but you learn to endure them. That’s why they call us patients! 🙂
The treatment for most Melanoma patients is immunotherapy. Other than recovering from surgeries and losing the full use of my thyroid, I experienced very minimal side effects. Even when the cancer was active, no one would know by looking at me. Immunotherapy is not nearly as harsh as other cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. The most unpleasant experience for me is seeing the cancer patients who are half my age and younger, suffering from their disease and/or the side effects of their treatments. It is very sobering and sad.
A few weeks ago, I was walking on a Carolina beach with my friend Steve who also has melanoma cancer. Unfortunately, after two years of being in NED status, his cancer has also progressed to Stage IV and he is back to the every 3-week treatments. Steve and I spoke of how thankful we were to be blessed to have lives worth living with wonderful wives who are our best friends. God gave us both the time to prepare our minds and our hearts for what will be coming. We take comfort knowing our wives will be fine financially, but we are worried for them as we know the emotional difficulties they will face as they adjust to losing a spouse, their life companion. Please add Steve and his wife to the list of people you pray for.
Nothing happens without God’s permission
I remember sitting in the oncologist’s office when he started to recite the 5-year survival rate statistics for melanoma patients. My wife hung on every word while my thoughts drifted to thinking “well then, I better start collecting social security”. A couple of years later, I learn of my sister’s illness and her chances of survival were less than half of mine. Being the oldest, the thought of living beyond any of my siblings had never occurred to me. I assumed I would go first.
I prayed and pleaded with God to take me and let Maria experience old age. Maria was her family’s matriarch, and her 7 children and a bunch of grandchildren all needed to continue to experience Maria’s wisdom and witness her faith in God. My passing would not affect near as many people. I thought God would certainly see that, but human knowledge could never comprehend God’s wisdom.
Prayer
Recently, I received an email from one of Maria’s friends asking for prayers for a woman named Meghan who has pancreatic cancer that has metastasized to her abdominal cavity. If you are a believer, please join the many “prayer warriors” and pray for Meghan and her family.
When we pray for people who are very ill, especially people like Meghan, who is only 39 and the mother of 3 young children, what exactly are we praying for? Obviously, no one wants Meghan to die. Not her friends and loved ones, certainly not her husband and children. We pray for God to grant a miracle and heal Meghan so she can continue to be a wife to her husband and mother to her children. From our human point of view, it all makes sense that Meghan needs to be here, and besides, Meghan is already a believer so heaven can wait, right?
This post is not me telling you how or what to pray for. I am just sharing my thoughts on the matter. I have come to learn and believe that The Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father, is not actually a prayer as much as it is Jesus teaching us how to pray depending on the situation.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…
God is the creator, our heavenly Father and the salutation is fitting. Being the creator, everything belongs to Him including our loved ones. He exists in heaven and His name is holy, revered and respected.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven….
God is always in charge on earth and in heaven. Although He is in charge, God gives us the free-will to submit and be obedient to His will or live as we see fit.
Give us this day our daily bread…
I believe this verse means that God provides us the blessings we need, no more and no less, for each day.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…
It is important to ask the Holy Spirit to help us be forgiving as Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Father will forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you”.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…
One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is discernment. We ask for discernment to recognize and resist the devil’s temptations and to save us from our sins.
In my prayer for Meghan, I look to the first 3 verses of the Lord’s prayer beginning with acknowledging God is her Father and creator and that she belongs to Him. I ask that if it is not against His will, that He allows her to remain here on earth to raise and enjoy her children. I ask Him to continue to give her, her family and loved ones their daily blessings as they wait for His will to be done.
Fortunately, Meghan is a believer and whether her time is coming soon, or hopefully not for another 40 plus years; we know that she will enjoy God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the fulness of their presence when she leaves this earth. Can we say that about all of our friends and loved ones?
Death
I have no doubt where my sister Maria is because in John 3: 16 we read: For God so loved the world, that he gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Maria was a believer. Although her physical body is in a grave, I know her being, her personality, her character, her complete essence, is in heaven. Maria loved her family intensely and I am sure she took that love for them with her.
I am extremely confident that if God gave Maria a choice to come back and live out another 20 plus years, she would respond with an emphatic No! Who would want to spend another minute on this earth when they are experiencing the fulness of God, His light and warmth in an eternal life of abundant joy and blessings. Maria knows that at their appointed time, each one of her family members who believe in and receive Jesus’ work on the cross, will be joining her in heaven for eternity. In the meantime she is enjoying her heavenly rewards for a life lived well.
But Jesus does not mince His words in John 3:17-18
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only
Son of God.”
If God did not send His Son into the world to condemn, who is doing the condemning? Apparently, the people who choose to reject Jesus have already condemned themselves.
As much as we pray for those who are fighting terminal illnesses, there are a multitude of people who although physically well, are in dire need of our prayers as we find in John 3: 19-21:
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
While praying for Meghan and Steve (feel free to include me too), let’s remember to pray for those who refuse to turn towards His light. Especially our non-believing friends and loved ones. Eternity is forever and it would be very sad for them to miss out on His Light!
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