Battle with Cancer?

As my cancer is beginning to make itself known I am interested to look back fourteen or so years to something that I wrote after surgery. I think it was for my recently-expired website. The theme seems all the more relevant now that I am actually feeling pain.

A year after surgery, when it became apparent that my prostate operation had not been completely successful I was shown an article by Christopher Newell of Tasmania and Christine Newman of Rotorua. In it she insisted that she wasn’t “having a battle with cancer”, she was simply a “person who has cancer”. It was, she said, part of herself and she celebrated herself. 

Christine wrote - 

To embrace my cancer

is to take life moment by moment and to see it in all its glory.

To embrace my cancer

is to see life from a bigger perspective rather than my own little world.

To embrace my cancer is to know
            That my days are numbered,

That I had better get on with things in life that matter,

That I should view life as a treasure not to be wasted

and through all these things, to no longer fear if a tumour appears.

Embracing my cancer

for me brings freedom and acceptance, not fear and rejection.

Embracing my cancer

sees not Satan at work but a God who is in control, no matter what...

I am not quite sure about the "God in control" bit, but I still find her views extremely  helpful.