Now Is The Time

   The time has come.  I am asserting that the chapter of my life that has been dominated by cancer and chemo and blood counts and ports and meds is now merely historical in nature.  Today I choose to set it all aside.  I had my port removed yesterday and, while I am quite sore today, the whole thing came out rather uneventfully (at least that is what I was told because they put me under for the procedure).  The removal of the port signifies that I am finished with this lymphoma episode that lasted about eleven months.  It is now recovery time in more ways than one.  It is time to renew my commitment as father and husband.  I did not relinquish those titles as I went through this cancer, but I need to now reclaim those in an active sort of manner.  It is time to not be a cancer survivor, but now I am a father-husband-teacher again.  It is time to re-establish my priorities which were thrown out of whack because of what I was going through since November of last year.  It is time to live life again.
   Sure.  It could be argued that I was living by surviving and by getting through that whole experience.  But I need to give up on those things that were a part of that experience and be more of what I was intended to be, to live in a way that builds relationships, that reaches out to others in more proactive ways, to be what I could not be for a while.  I want to wear my seatbelt over my shoulder instead of under my arm, a trick I learned to protect my port area that was in the left side of my chest. But more than that.  I want to coach again, to be a good dad again, to support and nurture my wife rather than the other way around, to renew all of that without the cloud of cancer serving as that omnipresent asterisk behind my name.  It is time.

   Thank you to those of you who have cared and prayed and read this blog.  If I do write more -- someday -- it will be in a different format under a different set of circumstances.  This then is the final installation to this collection.  There will be no real epilogue, no Paul Harvey "the rest of the story" sort of ending.  This entry wraps things up.  Thank you, God, for your healing touch in my body, for giving me a sense of normalcy once again.  Thank you to all of you for encouraging me with your cards and thoughts and meals and responses to this blog, but now is the time to put this chapter of who I was behind me.
   I must move forward with the life God gave me instead of checking my rear view mirror all of the time.  First Corinthians, to quote it completely out of context, says that "the old has gone, the new has come."  Thanks again.  Now continue your prayers for others in need.  Thank God my health is not in need of healing prayers any longer.  Please thank God on my behalf that I can wrap up this blog with the news I have of being cancer-free.  Now I need to go.  I have things to do.