Learning Through the Cancer Journey - Episode 148 - Health, Hope & Inspiration : City of Hope®

Learning Through the Cancer Journey – Episode 148

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Featuring: Tom Caswell

Published: January 26, 2019

Host Rev. Percy McCray has a heart-to-heart conversation with cancer patient Tom Caswell, who shares lessons he’s learned while on the journey of faith, and how being diagnosed with cancer helped to deepen his faith and his understanding of what it means to be a child of God.

Show Notes:

Tom Caswell will tell you he hasn’t had an easy life, but the journey has been worth it. Recovering from many years with battles of addiction, Caswell admits that while he had faith in God, it was a struggle. “I’ve always had faith and belief, but my dedication to it has not been good. When I first started my walk, I had to realize that there was something bigger in this world than me. And I had to realize that I’m not in the driver’s seat.” He experienced his share of ups and downs, and then for a while, Caswell says he became angry with God when his life didn’t seem to be improving. “Everything was just mediocre,” he says.

Caswell’s cancer diagnosis brought him to his knees. “I got really, really scared when I started going through some of the tests. And that’s when I had to back up and say, ‘Okay, God, here it is.’” Even though he experienced some setbacks during the treatments, Caswell says he began praying for others—and then his wife suggested he should begin praying for himself. “When I did, it seemed like things started slowly changing. Things were starting to get better and better and better. And to this day, every day that I wake up, I thank God I’m above ground and I’m feeling just a little — not much, but a little bit better than yesterday, and that’s progress.”

Caswell now realizes God’s faithfulness compels us to change, even if it’s just a little at a time: “God has taught me how to take that little bit of progress — that little bit of progress is just as big a step as a big thing, you know?”

Quotes:

“I had to realize that I can’t do these things on my own. And that was a pretty big pill to swallow because I’d always been independent and stubborn. But when I started realizing that I needed God in my life to make this transaction and rid myself of the addictions, and I saw it working. And when I started seeing results, that just kind of added to my strength, to my faith.”
“When I hear certain things that are going on, I remind myself and I go back to the foundational principles of the point and the purpose and the potential of what was done on that old, wonderful day when Christ was born and came into the Earth’s realm, that we have access to that, and that gives us a great hope to continue to work through all that we face.”

Resources:

CLICK HERE to download this week’s resource: “Reducing Your Risk of Cancer”

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