If this hasn’t happened to you yet, I’m pretty sure it will. Someone finds out you or your loved one has cancer–or some other serious diagnosis–and begins to tell you a story about a relative or friend of theirs who had a similar one. I’m sure it’s an attempt to …
Category: attitude
Jan 04
How to Have a Close Encounter of the Divine Kind
I don’t know if this cancer diagnosis is the first one your family or friend has faced or simply the latest in a string of such bad health news. Lucky me…I was the first in our large extended family to find out my DNA had “slipped up” and allowed cancer to “slip …
Nov 30
How Anyone Can Beat Cancer (or any other disease!)
My friends Sandy and Ron Good are a fabulous example of “beating” cancer. Sandy was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer in June 2008 and Ron has been her biggest cheerleader (and laughter “therapist”) along the journey. “Losing my hair was extremely difficult,” Sandy recalls. “I knew it would come out …
Nov 23
Unexpected Blessings from God
I was always amazed when the discussion at my support group meetings turned to the blessings that had come through the survivors’ cancer experiences. Somehow the words blessing and cancer in the same sentence just don’t make sense. I’m a very logical, rational person and having colon cancer at the age …
Aug 31
Don’t Waste Your Cancer
Those are the words penned by author-pastor John Piper on the eve of his surgery for prostate cancer in 2006. Our cancer support group often spent a meeting discussing one of Piper’s ten ways we can “waste” cancer by allowing it—instead of God—to be foremost in our lives. (You can read his wonderful …
Jul 20
Really Ticked Off
If you had asked me after my diagnosis whether I was angry about my situation–stage 3 cancer at age 36 with three young daughters and a husband who already had buried his first wife–I would have responded that I was not. After all, it’s not really proper for a Baptist minister’s wife to get …
Jul 13
When you do everything right and it still goes all wrong…
Monday morning started out great–in fact it started out perfect. My husband was fly-fishing for the day, so I wouldn’t feel as if I was ignoring him when I spent the day concentrating on my lengthy to-do list. I had plenty to get accomplished, but I wanted to make sure I started the day right. …
Jun 01
Becoming the “Ideal Patient”
Are you or your loved one an ideal patient? I’m not asking whether you do everything the doctors tell you to do. I’m not referring to whether your disease is easily treatable. And I’m not talking about whether you have the right personality. What I do mean is this: Do you have the right blend of realism and …
Apr 13
Finding the Right Attitude
It’s often said that there are two kinds of people in life: optimists and pessimists. You probably think I’m going to tell you to be an optimist, but I’m not. I think the best attitude for someone facing cancer is neither total optimism (without a doubt, I’m going to be cured) nor total pessimism (without a doubt I’m …
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