In a community meeting today a colleague named Mary told us that cancer has returned to her body. It’s the third recurrence. She had just come from her oncologist and was celebrating that she had found a great doctor, a woman, someone she liked and felt was easy to talk to. Three occurrences, three kinds of cancer in eight years. “I’m proof”, Mary joked, “that you don’t need all your organs.”
I heard her talk about her faith. Not in a pabulum, saccharine way but hard won faith. Won in Cancer Land. I could feel everyone in the room –me too--shift in their assessment of their own day. Bad bosses, too many bills and even minor mishaps in marriage pale at comparison with three kinds of cancer.
Mary knows that her story has that effect. “I tell my friends” she said, “hang out with me and your life will seem really, really good to you; you’ll be so much happier.”
And she’s right.
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