lucky — adjective \ˈlə-kē\
: having good luck
: producing a good result by chance : resulting from good luck
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I shouldn’t read about cancer online. I know from personal experience that doing Google searches of symptoms and prognoses and treatment options isn’t empowering like I wish it would be. Instead, one link leads to the next, and within minutes, I’m reduced to tears. Especially when researching my particular brand of cancer. The statistics are grim, and I am weak.
I know that about myself.
But sometimes, when I see a headline about new research or scientific breakthroughs, I can’t help myself. Last week, I found myself slumping when I read about new research suggesting that “two-thirds of cancers may simply be due to bad luck rather than to hereditary and environmental factors, which have dominated cancer research and hopes for prevention.”
Bad luck? I didn’t need millions of dollars of research to tell me that cancer is bad luck. Because the truth is, even if I fall into a high risk category, not everyone with the same genes or the same habits gets cancer. Only some people. Only the ones with bad luck, apparently. The ones like me.
What’s needed then, commentators suggested, is earlier and better detection and more effective treatments. As someone who has endured the physical and emotional rigors of effective treatment and routinely experiences the stress and frustration of detection regimens every three months, this does not feel very hopeful. Especially if bad luck is still lurking around the corner.
Then today, I read this: “By the middle of the century, [cancer] could be more or less eliminated for most age groups, new research says.”
I feel tears form in my eyes, because the year 2050 could be in my lifetime. My heart stirs because I imagine if I live to be 80—the age I have often used as an expression of successfully beating cancer—then I will, in fact, have successfully beaten cancer. And from where I sit, cancer-free for almost two years, that suddenly seems like a possibility.
But it takes only a minute or two for me to realize that many friends and family members were this close to reaching that mid-century goal and missed it. I think about diseases in the past that were cured or eradicated and how many people died just before the cure. I also remember other diseases that were “eliminated” but then seem to show up again later as the population grows and changes, like tuberculosis.
I also wonder how the results of both sets of research could be true at once: cancer is just the result of bad luck, but it will soon be gone. Is humanity suddenly about to get lucky?
In my Christian vernacular, words like “lucky” fall empty, because truthfully, I believe luck has nothing to do with the events of my life or the acquisition of disease or the course of world history. We can cross our fingers and knock on wood and throw salt over our shoulders all we want; in my mind, luck’s got nothing to do with it.
Sometimes, Christians swap “blessed” for “luck,” as in “Be Blessed” instead of “Goodluck.” I suppose that works on some level, though really “blessed” is more about being happy than resting in the hope of favorable odds. If in pronouncing the well-wishes, we mean, “Be happy no matter the outcome,” then maybe we’re using the word well.
The bottom line is this: I believe God is more powerful than I can imagine over cancer and all sorts of difficulties that happen. I believe He’s more loving than I—or you or you or you—deserve, and He has a plan that turns bad things on their head for good if we will love him back. I also believe the world, though still amazing and beautiful in many ways, has been corrupted by sin all the way down to our DNA, and God restrains himself in fixing it for purposes I can’t fully understand. It’s not bad luck that cause cancerous mutations of cells. It’s DNA that doesn’t work the way it was designed. Not now, anyway. But I also believe that one day, we will be restored back to the way we were created—people, animals, plants, culture—all of it. Because it’s not the elimination of cancer that brings hope to humanity—or me. It’s Jesus—his daily presence with us and his future presence promised to us.
Truth is, I’ll probably keep reading about cancer online, at least occasionally. Because in this life, it matters what my cells do and whether or not the place I live or the food I eat or the activities I engage in harm me or do me good. But I’ll also keep hoping in Jesus, because only in him will all things, all the way down to our DNA, finally be made right again.
And though I may not be lucky, that news makes me as happy as can be.
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WORD COUNT: 791
What’s YOUR word of the week? Drop it into the comments section, or share it on this week’s Facebook post. If you post about your word on your blog, please slip the link into a comment below so I can stop by and join you.
Photo by Cindee Snider Re, used with permission. Definitions of my word of the week are from Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online.
“Lucky” is such an interesting word. I actually kind of like it. It reminds me of the word “mystery.” So many things don’t make sense, like your experience with cancer. I am grateful you are in a season of respite.
On the Googling thing, when my daughter was waiting to get the results back from her test for mono, she went online and was convinced she had throat cancer.
Megan – I actually kind of like the word, too. I use it. I think it has evolved for me to take on some of the connotation you describe. It encapsulates things I don’t understand.
Google is dangerous that way! Well, not Google itself, but the things it turns up and the way we use them.
I love this, Charity. For one thing, I relate to the google searching. When I was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease I was warned not to read about it online. Right. That only enticed the rebel in me to do just that. It was not encouraging research.
Yesterday I saw my pulmonologist for the results of my most recent diagnostics. In spite of the dire predictions the internet revealed and to my pulmonologist’s surprise, my lung disease has not progressed in 5 years. (It’s why the one word I shared on FB was grateful.) Last year he ended the visit with, “See you next year unless you begin to deteriorate.” This year it was, “This makes me very happy.”
On the drive home, I contemplated the common expression, “but for the grace of God go I” I have sometimes spoken and often hear when someone feels blessed at their good fortune when others are not as “lucky,” But it doesn’t sit well with me. It seems to indicate that the unlucky person was not blessed or the recipient of God’s grace.
Am I grateful for good news? You better believe it, but like you, I have that same hope in Jesus and his good news, as well as the assurance that there will be the same grace for whatever news my diagnostics reveal.
Patricia – I love your response here. It echoes my own heart to work out what it means to be blessed, what it means to be lucky, and whether or not our standard definitions of either of those things really fits with Scripture. I also read this today in Proverbs 17, though: “He who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.” I have a feeling this is referring to the calamity of others, but I also wonder how this verse connects with “Rejoice always, I will say it again, rejoice” that Paul commanded. I think we are safe to feel the weight and difficulty of bad things, as well as the lightness and ease of good things, and in both scenarios believe we are loved and blessed by Jesus. And I am so happy about your news, too!