Incurable

I will never forget the feeling the word, “incurable” had on me when the oncologist told me that I had a form of cancer that was incurable. At 64 years of age, I was declared incurable. It felt like a judge had sentenced me to death.

Yesterday, I listened to Tim Timmons on a YouTube video (  https://youtu.be/PSJZoEoVPy4. )
where he stated that he was diagnosed with incurable cancer 12 years ago. My first thought was, 12 years sounds pretty good.  My second thought was, we are all suffering  from an incurable disease. It’s called “life” in this sick, broken world. We are all going to die. We all know that, but we seldom live that way.

I know since the diagnosis, my days feel more scarce and yet I don’t really feel like death is imminent. I believe God is healing me. I believe that I am victorious over this, but the incurable nature of this prognosis, has me thinking differently than ever before.

In many ways it’s a good thing to believe that I am incurable. It makes me consider my priorities. It makes me consider how to spend my time, how to speak to others, what my legacy will be, etc. These are things we should all be concerned with, every day, no matter how long we think we have to live. And yet there’s just something about that word, “incurable”.

I spend more time in contemplation. It’s a mixture of praise to God, prayer for whatever and whoever comes to mind and a time of meditation and reflection. I am close to God and oh so grateful that this is not just a reaction to cancer.

I desire to be with friends and family more than I used to. As an introvert, family and friend times tend to be energy-draining and yet, now I find myself more outgoing than ever.

I’ve heard of Christ followers who, when they are at a restaurant will ask their wait person if there is a need that they could pray for. I’ve thought many times that this is what we are called to do. Why did I wait until the incurable label was placed on me to try it? It was great when we did it recently at Cracker Barrel.

Francis Chan asks us to consider in what area of our lives are we walking by faith. Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ in other countries must trust God for every aspect of their existence. In America, most Christians aren’t nearly as dependent on God. But I am, now. I don’t have a future on this earth without God showing up and that changes everything. Now that I must depend on Him for life, depending on Him for everything else is easier. Potentially making a fool of myself for Jesus by talking to a waitress about my faith is easier. I truly felt that I had nothing to lose (being attached to a tube running to a bag pumping chemo into my body helped keep my pride in check, too) and what difference did it make anyway. Nothing that could have happened in that restaurant could have turned out worse than being told I was incurable.

It’s kind of like Mark Twain said, “Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Sharing my faith became so much easier once I realized I’m dying.  I mean, what else can happen to me worse than that?

I pray that many years from now, I will never forget the incurable nature of life and the sense of priority-setting it has had on me.