Surrender

“Hey guys, just came to ask for lots of prayers... My cancer is back.”

That’s the group text I and five others received a couple of weeks ago from a mutual friend who thought her cancer was gone but had just learned that it returned. After the requisite prayers and good vibes poured over our friend, she gave us more detail, telling us her cancer had metastasized to at least one other organ and that it was “uncurable but manageable.” More tests and scans to follow. More updates to come.

A few years ago, I interviewed a cancer survivor who had just passed her important five-year “all clear” mark. “How does it feel to be cancer free?” I asked her.

Her response took me aback.

“I won’t answer that question because I don’t believe the premise,” she said. “I don’t think anyone can ever say for certain that they’re cancer free, including me,” she said.

As the husband of a cancer survivor, I can relate. Once you go through cancer, you live in a sort of perpetual crouch, wondering whether any ache or pain is from “just getting old” or something far worse. It’s not so much a fear as it is a presence, a subtle reminder of the past, as well as the uncertainty of the future.

That may sound fatalistic or even a little morbid, but it’s true. And, if processed the right way, it can be liberating.

When you walk up to the brink and are fortunate enough to be able to step back from it, you tend to have a profoundly different view of the world, a deeper appreciation for the moment, the now, today.

I have a paperweight on my desk that was given to me by a cancer survivor, and it contains a quote from the Dalai Lama that sums this notion up pretty well: “There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live.”

Easier said than done, especially when confronting a potentially life-ending illness, but my recent experience with my friend whose cancer has returned only validates this philosophy.

About a week after her text, she was gracious enough to take my phone call in the midst of the maelstrom that her life has now become. She was in pain from the tube that was inserted to drain fluid from her lungs but was otherwise strong, determined and focused on the present. She didn’t cry or complain. 

One purpose of my call, aside from wanting to hear her voice and see how she was holding up, was to see how we all could help through a GoFundMe page or meal train effort online. She basically said she’s not really looking that far ahead yet until she gets more detail from her doctors on her treatment plan and prognosis going forward, based on tests in the days ahead.

She talked about her near and distant plans... a family vacation in June, a volunteer project in 2025. It wasn’t a wistful discussion, as if calling those plans into question with the news she’s now processing. It was a statement of confident fact. Like, “I’m doing this.” It’s what I’d expect from her.

A few days later, more substantive test results came in. “It’s bad,” said her text to me late that night. “I’m heartbroken,” she texted my wife. She sent along her PET scan results that showed the cancer had spread to her lungs, chest, liver and bones.

The next day, we spoke by phone and she was just as strong as the last time we spoke. She was focused on an upcoming meeting with her oncologist to map out their action plan going forward and had broken the news to her kids. Her youngest, an eight-year-old boy, only knows that she’s sick. She joked that he said, “Mommy if you’re a human, why do they keep giving you PET scans and CAT scans?” We both laughed. We needed it. 

One of my favorite books is called “The Power of Now,” by the contemporary spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. It’s one of those rare books that gives practical advice about dealing with adversity in life, not new-age gobbledygook that sounds good on paper but doesn’t make much sense in the real world. In it, he says: “If there is truly nothing you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.”

As my friend said, “My doctors told me that my cancer isn’t going away. I’m not a survivor anymore. I’m a warrior.”

My friend surrendered. And she’s free.