500 Miles And Counting.........

Today was another mile marker. After 2  1/2 years of recovery since my last post (see below.....a single mile). I have managed a strong recovery. In the last 6 weeks.....skirting surgery (my port was finally removed in my chest) and summer heat that has hit record highs (105+ degrees with no rain) I have managed to commute by bicycle to work 500 miles (20 mile round trip daily). It is no small feat from where I have been physically. I never thought I could regain health that would permit me to accomplish anything remotely close to this. I had almost given up on my body, assuming.....expecting meritocracy at best.  I am thankful...... I am truly blessed. This journey of cancer is a difficult one.....no less difficult post cancer. Though the body heals, the heart, mind and soul are all deeply wounded. They can be subtle wounds at times almost forgotten, but with the capacity to rear their ugly heads at the most unexpected times. I would love to say that I have overcome.......that I have discovered some metaphysical way to rise above this disease.......but the wounds run deep, the scars remain both physically and emotionally. I wish I could say that I have succeeded in all that I have set my mind to since treatment, unfortunately that has not been the case. The last 2  1/2 years have been filled with both joy and tears, both success and complete failure. The mind is such a fickle place. You might assume that once diagnosed with cancer and faced with system failure as a result of the very drugs designed to save my life that I would have motivation to scale even the most highest obstacle . Unfortunately, denial, fear, a sense of loss and shear human stupidity can lead even the most grounded individuals astray. Life after cancer is still.......Life, in all of its raw glory. Life laid open, stripped of the false security that most of us live with. A false sense of immortality. We are described as "survivors" post cancer. I have never been sure what to think about such a term. It has never seemed like a designation that held "power" or "control". Unfortunately when I think of survivors, I think of people who are "spared" during a plane crash while hundreds of others perish.......or survivors that lived in the path of a horrific tornado devastating a town, seeming to take life and spare life indiscriminately. It makes little rational sense. My own case is no different. My own brother and I.....same disease....same age of onset. He is gone. I remain. Same treatment. Same faith. He is gone. I remain. My religion talks of faith. My physician talks of treatment protocol. We all spoke of Hope. Yet he is gone and I remain. It is if I stand in the wake of great destruction and for no effort of my own, or in no rational way am I able to understand why I live. I am thankful for life. Perplexed. But I am thankful. I am thankful for a second chance. Overwhelmed that I still have the audacity to squander my days, to take them for granted, to not savor the very breath I breathe. I remember death......or at least the presence of death. I know what it feels like to wonder if I will live, to face a point where it looked as if it were over, to stand on the edge of eternity and hope that my theology is correct, where boyhood beliefs and an immature faith is suddenly get put to the test. I know what it is like to grasp for breath feeling as if I were suffocating, convincing myself that I am still alive simply by watching my O2 stats as they dipped into the 80s.....the 70's......the 60's. I remember. Some days it feels like a dream. I look down and my body is whole. My strength is back......the scars remain.....the fear lingers.....like the tick, tick, tick of a clock. Life moving, slipping through my very grasp with every movement of the second hand. I once felt immortal in my youth......boyhood fantasies. Now I know mortality, it is an intimate bedfellow, always whispering to me drawing me on in a cold seduction. Survivor........life.......future.....these are words that are hard to grasp, they are fleeting realities with no real form as one glimpses meteors briefly lighting up the sky.....momentarily.....where only the memory remains. What I do know is a deeper understanding of the Sovereignty of God.....or at least a deeper realization of that reality over our lives. I have no answers, no clarity, no "reason" for sickness or death.....no "reason" even for life....except if we are spared by grace we must grasp on to the fleeting and fragileness of our existence. We are finite.....mere dust. It is this reality were the true wonder of life begins to immerge. Such weak and finite beings hold the very image of God and purpose that bridges the gap of eternity spanning not only generations but time itself. Why? I do not know except for Grace and Love bestowed upon us from a Creator God, Merciful God, a Sovereign God. And these things remain.....Faith.....Hope.....and Love.......the greatest of these.....LOVE. This simple word is manifested in unending ways by so many different people on this journey of Cancer. I am thankful not just for life and a second chance but for the hundreds of people who have stood by me. My friends, my family, my children, my wife. Thank you for loving me. Helping me. Praying over me. I once asked my father how I would ever repay him and my mother for all they have done for me, he told me "son......just do the same for your own children someday". Life after Cancer is much the same. Thank you is not enough. There is no adequate way to repay the countless souls that have graced my life in the last few years........the only way to "repay" anyone is simply to LIVE! I dedicate these last 500 miles and the many more to come to all who have graced my life. Thank you. I Love You All........God Bless.