Sitting here today I ask myself if it’s really true. “Do I really have lung cancer? Is it really stage 4? Are the stats really as bleak as I hear they are? Do I have this death sentence on me that everyone understands but only I fail to fully grasp?” I wonder if I HAVE completely comprehended it. I no longer have the thought that maybe I’ll wake up and and discover it’s all only been a dream. 

So many things have changed since this all started in March to prove it’s not a dream.

Ann Sophie and I moved from Hawaii to Minnesota. I’ve completely been unable to run or swim or exercise like I have most all my life. My lungs are filled with fluid with pain so they barely function if I do anything faster than walk. Spending the night in a chair and wandering around our apartment all night instead of sleeping next to my wife is the new norm. My Mom has virtually moved from her house in Michigan to help us get through this. She also resurrected this blog for another round of “getting through this” in her life and ours. Going to the hospital for treatment or things, treatment-related has become my new full time occupation. No other job is possible. 

But this isn’t meant to be some self-pity party at all. It’s not only difficult things that have changed. I’m just grappling with my situation and this change in general.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they taught us that, when you find yourself being pulled toward self-pity and the negative, write up a gratitude inventory. 

Make a list of things you’re thankful for. 

It’s actually a simple thing to do. So what’s first? 

I’m thankful, mostly for Ann Sophie, by far my favorite person in the world. There is no one like her and I’m still blown away I get to hang with her every day, and now for more hours in each day than ever.

…for Willard Nelson Nyman. 

I’ve become a father for the first time at almost the exact same time I was diagnosed with Cancer. 

Every moment I get to be Will’s Dad is a good moment and no one can take those moments from back from me… or from him.

I’ve been given this sharpness having to do with my perspective on time. The idea of having “more time” is really just an idea when it comes down to it anyway. Each of us has only the moment we’re in right now, so all of us essentially have the same amount of time. I’m thankful for today.

I’m thankful it’s just the beginning of Summer in Minnesota… 

that, so far, I lived almost 50 of the fullest years a person can live. 

I’m thankful to have joined YWAM all those years ago and to have been to all those places and met all those amazing people. 

I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned in leadership from that place. 

I am grateful for the Mayo clinic, for talented doctors, for my cousin, Luke, who introduced me to them, 

for people who believed in me over the years and put their money where their mouth was.

I’m thankful for the God of second chances who uses even mistakes and works them together for good somehow. 

I’m thankful I wasn’t supposed to go over 500 words writing here or I might go on forever. And one last one: I’m thankful and blown away by the kindness, generosity, and prayers of all of those who have come forward and helped our little family in some way during this time.

Try it out sometime when you get down. Just write one thing after another you are thankful for. It will ignite something in you if you let it. 

“Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me,
and to the blameless I will show my salvation.” (Psalm 50:23)