I hope you will take the time to read through this blog post, and the subsequent related ones, about the past ten years. It’s been a journey for sure and you have taken a part in this journey in one way or another. I certainly don’t want this to be about me, but am so grateful for all the Lord has done these past ten years and for all of you who have walked this journey in 2014 and now today, especially my parents. THANK YOU!!!

The overarching question in my history courses is, “How’d we get here?” A question designed to help students connect the past to the present, it’s a question that makes you pause, reflect, and consider. I sit here pausing, reflecting, and considering my own, “How’d I get here?” to July 23, 2024.

Ten years ago today I lay in surgery and then the ICU having had my second brain surgery to remove the cancerous tumor, the first brain surgery just a month earlier. Just two months prior, my doctor used the word “cancer” to define what we thought was just a brain tumor. It was a road of many doctor appointments and tests (and a couple recoveries from tests) to find out what was happening. My life and future were forever altered in those words of cancer and what my future might look like after surgery.  

Then that evening ten years ago in the ICU my neurosurgeon declared, “We got it all.” While my mind was still clearing from the surgery and anesthesia, there certainly was a moment of relief and joy that night. There were smiles and sighs of absolute relief. The storm wasn’t over by any means, and in many ways was just starting, with radiation and chemo that fall, but there was no cancer and that was certainly something to celebrate. 

It’s an odd thing to say, but in this storm fighting cancer was life. There’s such a quandary though about that statement because cancer doesn’t bring life, it brings death, but who can bring death to life, Christ Jesus Himself can, and that’s where the beauty of it all came from. Out of this storm of cancer, and in the months and years after, I was given a new life, a life I never anticipated. I have always been someone to dream about what life might look like at certain stages, but this was not a dream that ever crossed my mind, nor one I ever wanted. Cancer was a word I didn’t want to hear, and the journey was not one I would have chosen, but looking back ten years, I am grateful for it all!

I look back on a journey where I lost everything, but in the end gained everything, a nearness and intimacy with the Lord that I had never experienced before in my walk with Him. He is a faithful God, and He was closer in those months, and now years, than I had ever known before. This was and is all about HIm, and not about me. This was a journey He took me on, for my sake and His glory.

It’s been the most remarkable journey of this life and I would not trade it for the world! 

Over the next ten days I’m going to post 10 short takeaways from the past 10 years of not just the storm, but life after the storm. I pray they are a blessing to you and hope that you look back on the storms of your own life with great hope in our GREAT God!

My church does a series on various testimonies called “God at Work.” Mine is linked here: God at Work.