I cried over a cookbook today...

We received a package from Amazon.  I thought, "That's weird, I looked at a cookbook yesterday on Amazon, but I didn't order it did I?  Julia had the package in the back seat of the car, so I asked her to open it.  It WAS the book I looked at yesterday on-line, The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen.  I am sure I did not order it and it couldn't have come 16 hours later.  How did that happen?

There was a note inside, it was from my cousin Kim.  The timing was amazing.  I dropped off the kids at hula and drove to the store.  I picked up the book and looked through it, it looks great.  Then I looked at the invoice and there was a note, it read: " Dave and Nancy, a friend gave me this book when I was first diagnosed - it's full of information and I hope you can use it well.  Kim, Bill and the girls."

My cousin has breast cancer, she just finished months of chemo and surgery is in a few weeks.  I was so touched that she did this for us and I immediately realized that some time down the road I will be ordering this same book for a friend newly diagnosed with cancer.  It hit me at that moment that cancer will be part of all our days this side of heaven.  The next months we will feel consumed by it at times, but even in the coming years, what I feed my children will be different, how I pray for my children will be different.  Every medical form I fill out for the kids will say they have a "history" of cancer in the family.  And I cried.  We have been entrusted with this gift of cancer, what will we do with it?

Hopefully we will have the story book ending and five years from now, in 2016 the doctors will say Dave is cured.  (They don't say that I guess until you have been free of cancer for 5 years)  And we will be giving encouragement and cookbooks to those walking down a similar road.  Thank you Kim for choosing to encourage us, even in the midst of your own journey with cancer.  We are forever changed and grateful.