Thanks Millet, that was very inspiring. I just got this email that was written by Tony Snow after his cancer came back. More reading, but also very inspiring -hope you don't mind me posting it here.
We all know we will die, but to know you only have a little while to live can give you a whole different outlook on things.
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SNOW'S TESTIMONY...Acceptance of Cancer, His Fears, Courage and
Great Faith
This is a testimony from Tony Snow, President Bush's Press
Secretary, on his fight with cancer.
Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had
colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined
the Bush Administration in April 2006 as press secretary.
Unfortunately, on March 23, 2007, Snow, 51, a husband and father of
three, announced the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his
abdomen - leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy.
Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but
has resigned since, 'for economic reasons,' and to pursue 'other
interests.'
'Blessings arrive in unexpected packages, - in my case,
cancer. Those of us with potentially fatal diseases - and there are
millions in America today - find ourselves in the odd position of
coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God's will. Although
it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence 'What
It All Means,' Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.
The first is that we shouldn't spend too much time trying to
answer the 'why' questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can't
someone else get sick? We can't answer such things, and the questions
themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to
solicit an answer.
I don't know why I have cancer, and I don't much care. It is
what it is, a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into
a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our
maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We
are imperfect. Our bodies give out.
But despite this, - or because of it, - God offers the
possibility of salvation and grace. We don't know how the narrative of
our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval
between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.
Second, we need to get past the anxiety. The mere thought of
dying can send adrenaline flooding through your system. A dizzy,
unfocused panic seizes you. Your heart thumps; your head swims. You
think of nothingness and swoon. You fear partings; you worry about the
impact on family and friends. You fidget and get nowhere.
To regain footing, remember that we were born not into death,
but into life - and that the journey continues after we have finished
our days on this earth. We accept this on faith, but that faith is
nourished by a conviction that stirs even within many non believing
hearts - an intuition that the gift of life, once given, cannot be
taken away. Those who have been stricken enjoy the special privilege
of being able to fight with their might, main, and faith to live
fully, richly, and exuberantly - no matter how their days may be
numbered.
Third, we can open our eyes and hearts. God relishes surprise.
We want lives of simple, predictable ease,- smooth, even trails as far
as the eye can see, - but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us
with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy
our endurance; and comprehension - and yet don't. By His love and
grace, we persevere. The challenges that make our hearts leap and
stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of
wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.
'You Have Been Called'. Picture yourself in a hospital bed.
The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your
feet; a loved one holds your hand at the side. 'It's cancer,' the
healer announces.
The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as
a cosmic Santa. 'Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything
simpler.' But another voice whispers: 'You have been called.' Your
quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer
to the issues that matter,- and has dragged into insignificance the
banal concerns that occupy our 'normal time.'
There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived
an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of
calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before
us the challenge of important questions.
The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things
change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy,
passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a
world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills,
boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think
of Paul, traipsing through the known world and contemplating trips to
what must have seemed the antipodes (Spain), shaking the dust from his
sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.
There's nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, - for it
is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies
and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer,
and the most we ever could do.
Finally, we can let love change everything. When Jesus was
faced with the prospect of crucifixion, he grieved not for himself,
but for us. He cried for Jerusalem before entering the holy city. From
the Cross, he took on the cumulative burden of human sin and weakness,
and begged for forgiveness on our behalf.
We get repeated chances to learn that life is not about us,
that we acquire purpose and satisfaction by sharing in God's love for
others. Sickness gets us part way there. It reminds us of our
limitations and dependence. But it also gives us a chance to serve the
healthy. A minister friend of mine observes that people suffering
grave afflictions often acquire the faith of two people, while loved
ones accept the burden of two peoples' worries and fears.
'Learning How to Live.' Most of us have watched friends as
they drifted toward God's arms, not with resignation, but with peace
and hope. In so doing, they have taught us not how to die, but how to
live. They have emulated Christ by transmitting the power and
authority of love.
I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting
cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928
edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his
family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was an
humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with
pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained
his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious
moment. 'I'm going to try to beat [this cancer],' he told me several
months before he died. 'But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side.'
His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though
God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity, - filled
with life and love we cannot comprehend, - and that one can in the
throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that
will help us weather future storms.
Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or
do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve,
humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our
limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter
so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?
When our faith flags, he throws reminders in our way. Think of
the prayer warriors in our midst. They change things, and those of us
who have been on the receiving end of their petitions and
intercessions know it. It is hard to describe, but there are times
when suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you
feel a surge of the Spirit. Somehow you just know: Others have chosen,
when talking to the Author of all creation, to lift us up, - to speak
of us!
This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to
sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere
thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness
more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with
sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him? We don't know much,
but we know this: No matter where we are, no matter what we do, no
matter how bleak or frightening our prospects, each and every one of
us who believe, each and every day, lies in the same safe and
impregnable place, in the hollow of God's hand.'
T. Snow
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Robert Anthony Snow was born June 1, 1955 in Berea, Ky.. The
family moved to Cincinnati when he was 2. He graduated from Princeton
H. S. in 1973 and is remembered for being bright and musically
inclined, playing a saxophone in a local band. Survivors include his
wife Jill Ellan Walker, whom he married in 1987, and three children;
one boy, Kendall, and two girls, Robbie and Kristi. His father,
James, was a social studies teacher and assistant principal. His
mother, an inner city nurse, died of colon cancer when he was 17. She
was 38. His father married his stepmother, Dottie, in 1974. After
receiving a philosophy degree from Davidson College in North Carolina
(1977), he studied philosophy and economics at the University of
Chicago. He taught physics and geography in Kenya and substitute
taught in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Tony Snow was Roman Catholic. His funeral was at the Basilica
of the National Shrine of the Immacujlate Conception, on the campus of
Catholic University, in Washington, D. C.. The homily was given by the
Very Rev. David M. O'Connell, President of Catholic University in
which he said the following.
"The measure of this man's life can be found in his character,
in his optimism, in his joy and humor, in his courage, in his passion
for what is good and right, and in his love for God and family and
neighbors and country. Tony Snow did not need a long life for us to
measure. It was, rather, we who needed his life to be longer."
Tony Snow died at 2 a.m., Saturday, July 12, 2008 at Georgetown
University Hospital at age 53.
_________________
Patty
I drink wine to make other people more interesting 
