My Cup of Chicken Soup Overfloweth

Hello again! It's been a long time since I posted on this cancer-related blog. That is mainly/wonderfully/thankfully because I don't have cancer anymore. My life has moved on and so have my thoughts and doings.

That's a huge, big deal not to be taken lightly. I feel like a compatriot of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: I was brought through a fiery furnace unharmed, unsinged, unscorched, without even the smell of fire on my clothing (Daniel 3:27). In modern American life, that means I am not emotionally singed or scorched. I do not go out among people, constantly reminding them of how bad things have happened in my life. I no longer mourn. I do not see myself as a victim deserving pity and special treatment.

However, this doesn't imply that I have forgotten the experience or have not been changed by it. Quite the opposite. While I do not spend every day dwelling on the experience (in fact, when people at church ask how I'm feeling, I go through a moment of surprise at their kind concern before remembering that they mean cancer-wise), I certainly was burnished by the fire.

That's what I mean to record. Rather than leave this blog untended, I will go back to complete it for the sake of others and as an act of joy for myself. I will pull from my private writings to give a more complete picture of the experience and I will extend the posts to include reflections on life enriched by trial and on struggles I still face. Oh, and plenty of reflections on the pleasure of regrown hair, something I never would have expected to bring me such satisfaction.

My main reason for revisiting this blog right now is that a new opportunity has been presented. I wrote of a cancer-related experience that has been accepted in a book in the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series:

The book will be available on October 23, 2012 (my daughter's 8th birthday!).

While I did not specifically mention God in the book submission, He is the underpinning of my hope and my life, the current that carries me along and directs my course. And so, in my "by-line" in the book, I mentioned this blog and mean to use it to fill in more details of my story. So don't be surprised if new posts appear about past events -- it's just me completing the picture by moving material from my private writings into this blog.