I Know Nothing

I don’t know anything more than I did before I got cancer. Nothing about pain. Nothing about suffering. Nothing about forgiveness. Nothing about love.

I simply got cancer. Cancer caused me pain, brought suffering, all those things—even made me forgive and love. But it was no different than the pain, for example, I endured in giving birth to my son. No different than the suffering of abuse I endured as a kid. And as to forgiveness and love, I’ve studied both throughout my life. I did not need necessarily to learn them again in the classroom of cancer.

For cancer is not a classroom. It happens to people no matter how good or bad or rich or poor. No matter what nationality or gender. Cancer happens.

It doesn’t matter that when it happened to me I assumed I deserved it. Just as it doesn’t matter that I figured out a way to have a good attitude about it. None of these things, I see now, can change whether you will live or die after cancer.

I see now that there are no formulas, no assumptions, nothing that changes anything about cancer. Except God. God overrides all. Suffering, pain, love and forgiveness are all part of God’s universe. A universe created by God. In cancer, I can draw near to God. But that does not mean God gets any closer to me than God already was.

That’s because God is inside of me. Whatever I know about anything is because of God. Cancer happened to me, but it didn’t teach me anything God hadn’t already taught me. It simply was a part of God’s plan for me to get cancer—else it wouldn’t have happened.

If I know anything from cancer, it is that it happens, and my mind will not conceive of why it happened to me. At least not now, on earth. For now, I know nothing apart from God.