I’m Still Here

Today I’m sitting in another treatment chair.

I’ve had a hand full of 9rounds of this particular chemo now. There’s been some nausea and dizziness. My blood counts have needed a little help. For a few days, even my tongue and gums were sore enough that eating wasn’t much fun.

None of that is ideal.

But today, sitting here, I find myself thinking less about what’s happening to me and more about all the people around me.

At the Waukee office, Mondays can mean around 150 people coming through. Think about that for a minute.

One hundred and fifty people.

You sit in the waiting room and see all different ages and faces. And once you recognize that green bracelet, you know.

They’re here for treatment too.

I find myself looking around and wondering about their stories.

Who is waiting for them at home?

What did they have planned before cancer interrupted those plans?

Is this their first treatment? Their twentieth?

Are they scared?

Are they hopeful?

Did they come alone?

And sometimes I just quietly pray.

Not because I know their names or their stories. I don’t need to. God does.

Lately, those prayers have felt a little heavier.

In just the past couple of months, I’ve watched two people I knew die from cancer. Tom went quickly. Then Joe, someone I knew through karaoke, was diagnosed and survived only about two months.

Two months.

Those are the moments when survivor’s guilt still finds me.

Why them?

Why does one person live for years with cancer while another person is gone almost before everyone has had time to understand the diagnosis?

Why am I sitting here writing this?

I don’t have an answer.

I don’t think I’m ever going to have one.

I’ve learned that sometimes I just have to sit with that for a day or two. Let myself be sad. Miss the people who aren’t here. Admit that cancer is unfair and frightening and that I don’t understand any of it.

And then eventually I come back to the one thing I do know:

I’m still here.

Not because I earned more time.

Not because I fought harder.

Not because I did something differently than someone who didn’t survive.

I’m simply still here.

And if I’m still here, then I still have today.

I still have people to love.

I still have songs to write.

I still have people to encourage—and people who encourage me, sometimes without ever realizing they’ve done it.

Recently, a letter arrived in my actual mailbox. Not an email. Not a message. A handwritten thank-you from someone whose mother’s story I had been trusted to turn into a song.

I never even met her mom.

But I listened to the stories, wrote the song and created a slideshow to go with it. Later I learned that it touched the family, affected people who heard it, and even influenced what the pastor chose to speak about.

I sat there thinking, Wow.

What an honor.

Then last Sunday I watched my nephew get baptized. I listened to his story, listened to the message, and before long another song was there.

That’s how music seems to come to me now.

I don’t force it.

Sometimes weeks pass and nothing comes. Then suddenly something happens—a conversation, a person, a memory, a baptism, a goodbye—and there it is.

A song asking to be written.

Maybe that’s part of what being here means for me right now.

I’m still working on my next book. I’m still working on my Braveheart books and my website. I’m still making plans. I’m looking forward to a .38 Special concert next month with a special friend.

I’m still living.

That doesn’t mean pretending I don’t know what cancer can do.

I know.

I see it every time I walk into an oncology office.

I see it in the green bracelets.

I see it in the empty spaces left by people like Tom and Joe.

Knowing that doesn’t have to steal today from me.

Maybe it can make today matter more.

So I’ll keep praying for the stranger across the waiting room whose story I don’t know.

I’ll keep asking the nurses how their day is going while they care for person after person.

I’ll keep writing when a song comes.

I’ll keep encouraging somebody when I can.

I’ll keep loving my family and friends.

I’ll keep making plans.

And I’ll keep allowing other people to give something back to me, too.

I don’t know what the future holds.

I don’t need to pretend that I do.

Today, I’m still here.

And today, that is enough reason to live.