Hard to believe that it was a year ago today that my family doctor told me I should just go into the ER and get some testing done to make sense of the abnormal outpatient testing I had been going through. To walk into an ER and not have to wait was a miracle in itself to getting the last bed available in the ER.

I also had familiar faces walk into my room as a couple parents of students in our youth ministry were actually working that day in the hospital as my nurse and eventually the radiologist that read my CT scan. It was that day that my world got turned upside down as my friend who is the radiologist came in and sat on my bed. See I was just coming to get tests done to see what was going on and make sense of why I had been feeling so fatigued and run down. I never thought in my mind that it was something seriously wrong with me.

Then I heard the word that I thought couldn't be what was going on with me...Scott you have CANCER. I knew when he put down the side of my ER bed that it couldn't be good but cancer? It was as if time stood still in that moment. I heard him say that I had enlarged lymph nodes and two tumors on my spleen that measured 20 centimeters. He also said that it looks like I have lymphoma and if there was any cancer he would "want" to get it would be this as there is a high success rate of cure. After the shock of it all he took time to pray with Terri and I and then the next 10 days I started the journey in the hospital to get out of the hospital.

I remember it so clearly and over these past 12 months I have seen how God has lead myself and my family through this trial. Last week I was at a FCA meeting sharing with HS students and read James 1 to them about how we are to consider it joy when we face trials. Those next 4 months as I went through chemo treatment I would put in that category of a trial. As I look back I see God's fingerprints through it all and His healing hand on me. 

Today I remember what happened a year ago today and count down the time where I will hear my doctor officially say the word "remission". Right now he says that I am metabolically inactive which means my lymph nodes have shrunk back to what they are supposed to be and my tumors have shrunk down to less than 3 centimeters and continuing to shrink with no active cancer activity. I am seeing him every 3 months for check-ups and every 6 months now for scans over the next couple of years. After year 2 I will hear him say the "remission" word and after 5 even a better word "cured"! In the meantime I am taking each day that God gives me to live it for Him. There are many things I have learned over this past year and one is that we need to take each day as a gift from God and live it for Him.

Thanks to the many who have prayed for me and my family, send cards, letters, texts, phone calls and visits. You have been my Avenger Prayer Team and when the need came you all have heard the call of #AvengersAssemble.

I will continue to have periodic updates here and this journey I have been on until I hear that CURE word. For those that might be going through something similar and you need someone to talk to I am here for you as others have done the same for me. I am in a new club Cancer Survivor and thankful for how God has helped me through this and allowed me to be a member.