"Cancer Changes Things"

"Cancer Changes Things" is one of the common things posted around the hospital.  I think it's worth mentioning that cancer changes things for both the better and the worse.  The worse are obvious, and I refuse to spend more time talking about it.  The better is worth a good whole-hearted discussion.

Any bad situation can be turned around into a learning experience for the betterment of inidividuals involved.  Like I read last night, "challenging" situations are sent to us as character-building experiences.  They teach us to reach higher and lower than we ever thought humanly possible.  They teach you about what is really important in life.  They teach you how to cherish each day.  They teach you what love really is and what it really means to promise to stand by someone 'til death do you part... for better or worse... and in sickness and in health.  They teach us that there are certain things in life that we CANNOT do without God's help, and that we really must surrender to Him to get through these situations.

As Brent and I have sloshed through our own situation, amazing things have happened in other areas of our lives.  Our worries about money and other material things has changed.  Everyone still has to have money to eat and have a roof over their heads, but we have been freed from the control of many material objects.  We spend more time caring about each others concerns, happiness, and comfort, and a lot less time arguing about stuff that doesn't matter.  We have both been incredibly humbled.  It's still hard to ask family for help with different things, and for me to even accept help from others, but it has been a valuable lesson.  It's OK to need someone, but it's still a little hard to swallow my "I can do it by myself!" footstomping attitude.

The hardest and saddest thing to realize is that most of the amazing positive changes in our lives would NOT have happened without a big slap like cancer.  It's hard to swallow that something this serious is the input to force major changes in our lives, but it is.  Again, everything happens for a reason.