I remember where I was sitting in the room when I -- what's the word?
Heard it? Felt it? Sensed it?
I knew the voice. I had interacted with it many times throughout my 38 years.
At times that voice had been calming in the midst of the chaos of my life's situations.
At other times that voice had been correction after a poor choice I had made.
What was that voice? I call it God's voice.
It's not the normal voice that I speak to myself with, yet it still sounds like my voice because it's within my head and within my heart, if that makes any sense.
So, that room I was sitting in, I was near our normal "spot", if you will, on a Sunday morning.
It was near the end of July, and I knew that I had cancer growing in my body.
The tumor growing on my tongue had ballooned up quite a bit, and it was becoming uncomfortable to talk and eat, even though I hadn't bitten it in quite a while somehow.
I had already had it inspected by a variety of doctors until one recommended a biopsy surgery the following week. The results came back as cancer.
The thoughts came flooding into my head at that point.
How do I have cancer?
I'm still young and invincible.
Cancer?
What do I do now?
Aren't I too young to die?
What about my wife and kids?
All the questions came flooding into my mind.
Yet on that Sunday morning, as I prayed for healing and I cried for peace, I heard that familiar voice speak to me.
And it was enough.
The voice said, "I will give you the healing you're praying for, but it will not be the instantaneous, miraculous healing that others are asking for. I will heal you over the long haul."
Immediately, and I truly mean immediately, the peace I had been crying for came flooding over me, and I knew I was going to be ok.
Now, in theory, I still knew the journey ahead would be just that--a journey, but what the voice told me was enough that I could hold onto as I walked the journey toward healing.
Today, over a year and a half after that Sunday morning, I write this much further down the road toward that healing that was spoken to me.
It has been a journey.
It has been a long road.
It has not always been smooth.
There are many moments I would easily trade out for more of the easier moments.
Yet as I look back over this journey, I am also thankful for this journey.
Not everyone gets to go through a cancer journey.
Not everyone gets to experience everything I have experienced.
Not everyone gets to see how tenacious they can be, how much of an overcomer they can be, how resilient they can be, by going through this type of journey.
Granted, I have seen some of my own friends face their own cancer journey and NOT make it through.
I can't speak to their journey or why theirs went the way it did, but I do know my own journey and what it has created within me.
This journey has made me better.
This journey has refined me into a better man.
While I have not yet received the "all clear" from the doctors, I know my body is stronger and healthier now than it was before it all started.
Can I tell you something that amazes me?
Something that even moves me to tears right now as I reflect on it?
Everything has been training for this journey.
A year before I started this cancer journey, I read a book called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.
The message of the book is rooted in Stoic philosophy, which--boiled down to one of its core values--is this: you can only control the controllables.
Ryan talks about what to do when an obstacle is in the middle of our path.
We have some options when we meet an obstacle.
We can turn around and go back.
We can go around it, over it, under it.
We can move it.
Sitting down and complaining about the obstacles we face doesn't do anything to improve our situation. The obstacle blocks our way in those moments.
Some people choose to turn around and let it be a permanent block, a permanent obstacle that does not allow them to become who they were meant to be.
Yet the obstacle becomes our way forward when we choose option 2 or 3.
When we choose to move around the obstacle, it creates a new path forward for us--it becomes our "way" forward.
Can you see it? Because the obstacle is in the path, it becomes our way to keep moving in life.
We become more resilient because we had to problem-solve how to get around the obstacle.
We become stronger because we had to climb over it or dig out from under it.
We become better when we let it refine our thinking and our attitude about having to change up our regularly planned-out-life.
It's because of the obstacles in our lives that we are given the opportunity to become better, to become who God actually designed us to be, to become stronger, healthier, smarter, wiser.
So what will you choose to do with the obstacles in your life?
You might not have a cancer diagnosis like I did, but your obstacle is just as real.
Your obstacle is just as daunting and intimidating and as looming as anything else it could be.
But the question is this: what option will you choose?
Will you simply turn around and cry because it's not the perfect life you created in your mind ahead of time of how it was supposed to go?
Or will you figure out a way around it or over it or under it to get to the other side?
Will you figure out a way to move it so that it will not block someone else's path?
What will you do?
From my own experience, I propose that you let it change you...for the better.
Learn from it.
Lean into the struggle.
Lean into the pain and the tension and the hard questions.
Wrestle with the obstacle to learn everything you can from it.
It's in doing those things that you prove that you are an overcomer,
just. like. me!
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