Rules for Living with Cancer (or other really scary things).

I have lived six years come February with “terminal” cancer. Here is what I have learned.

1. Whatever your belief or spiritual practice, go deep. Read, study, pray, meditate and listen to the voice of your higher power.

2. Find A cause or project you can be passionate about and devote yourself to it body and soul.

3. Don’t ruminate about the past. There is nothing you can do about it.

4. Don't focus on the cancer. What you focus on, you empower.

5. Don't let worries about the future bother you. These are pictures we form in the mind about what might happen, but they rarely match what does happen.

6 Turn the medicine over to the doctors. Find a good one and let him run the show.

7 Anything too big to handle yourself, turn over to God.

8. Live a lifetime every day and don't forget to thank the Creator for it.

9. Help someone. Never let a chance go by to do a good deed. Make it a habit.

10. Push the envelope. Go outside your comfort zone. (Was terminal illness within your comfort zone?) So, push the boundaries--do what you were afraid to do; take a risk. Dare to live fully. Let life be an adventure.

And, remember always how God loves you. Yes you are walking into a fiery furnace, but he is going with you. You are his child. You are not forgotten. And he has said he will come and take you by the hand and bring you to the place he has prepared for you.

We did nothing to earn this body of flesh. It was given to us to use. We did nothing to earn the gift of Christ’s blood, it was something we received like mother's milk. So, what's not to be happy about? Life is great; death is not the end. Be happy!