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“Insensible of mortality and desperately mortal.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

I try not to pay much attention to survival statistics for people with life-threatening illnesses. Yet the numbers do reflect some sort of reality, and they’re hard to ignore entirely. The longevity tables for survivors of cardiac bypass surgery and malignant melanoma, in particular, have forced me to come to terms with my own mortality. And this awakening has brought me closer to God in a way I never thought possible.

It’s not that I lacked faith before those illnesses struck. I began developing a relationship with God in the first years of my recovery from alcoholism, and for more than two decades now I have tried to draw closer to Him.

But coming face to face with the actual possibility of death has deepened my faith, allowing me to have a truly trusting relationship with God, the kind I had long sought but somehow couldn’t quite achieve.

The truth is, I have no idea how long I’m going to live. It could be three more years or twenty more years. My doctors and I will do all we can to keep me around for a long time, but ultimately it’s in God’s hands. And that is a deeply comforting reality.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

God has a plan for my life and its foundation is love.