What I can’t figure out is how to say, “My father, Anthony Davis, has cancer.” I can’t figure out how to say it because it seems so fatal, so unreal. The thoughts that haunt my waking and lying down are in need of green pastures, in need of quiet waters, in need of a whispered assurance that—it’s going to be alright. It IS going to be alright.

I have known in the back of my mind that my father was sick, but it was in the back of my mind for a good reason—I didn’t want it in the front of my mind. Now that he has been diagnosed with cancer, it is in the front of my mind. While I was busy with the concerns of life, death sauntered in and announced what I knew but had tried to ignore—we are all mortal. Our eventual death has been a reality since the Garden, and it is only the comfort and protection I enjoy that allowed me to forget this truth.

The dark thoughts that parade through our minds are from the valley of the shadow of death, and it is there that we now walk. Above us are mountains of hopelessness More >