"Love Like A Cancer" by Courtney LeMay

Cancer is a very serious thing to me. I lost my stepdad (hereby referred to as “Dad.” My real father is “Daddy”) my senior year of high school after a nine-month fight with esophageal cancer, so I’ve seen first-hand what it can do to a person. I’ve not only watched it consume a person’s body, but I’ve felt its cold, cruel hand reach into its victim’s family to eat away at their lives as well. So when posters about donating hair to Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths program started to line the walls of Glide-Crawford my freshman year, I began to entertain the idea. The only problem was, I had never let my hair grow out enough to cut a substantial amount off and not become instantly bald.

Me and Dad on a family vacation

When the appointed haircutting time arrived that spring, my hair was still too far away from the necessary “Eight Inches from the Neck Down” length to be cut, so I waited. And waited. And waited. Long hair wasn’t so bad, I decided, but I never forgot my ultimate goal, tucked away in the back of my mind as my hair grew its monthly half an inch. By April, I couldn’t wait to cut it all off. When school was out, I made my appointment—it helps to have a step-sister who happens to be a fabulous hair dresser—and counted down the days.

With a few snips, it was all over. Four precisely brown (don’t even try to tell me it’s “mahogany” or “russet” or any of those colors boys don’t know exist) ponytails filled a quart-sized Ziploc, and my hair suddenly looked a lot more like post-“Tangled” Rapunzel for a change. It was a different sense of accomplishment than usual, because there was a feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself or personal appearances. I knew that somewhere across the U.S., five other women were making the same sacrifice in order provide a wig (and hope, if you ask me) for a complete stranger, and this was a beautiful thing.

Little did I know how soon my family would be relying on the kindness of strangers. Less than a month later, I received a frightening call. I should have known something was up when Daddy tried so hard to reach me while I was out of the country on vacation with my mom. Surgery. Cancer in his liver. The words flowed over me as my thoughts sunk farther and farther away from the sandy beaches of St. Maarten. It didn’t sound too serious, but any surgery came with risks. And that was the most surreal part—the surgery was scheduled the day after my return to the States. Daddy and I had been to Europe that month and he was fine; how did things change so quickly?

To cut a long story short, the surgery was a success and the doctors cannot find a trace of any more cancer. My daddy is undergoing some chemotherapy just to be safe, but there is no denying that his healing was nothing short of a miracle. (It is quite a rarity that the cancer is caught early enough for complete removal. In fact, there are so few people in this situation that there have not been any studies on them). God has blessed me in so many ways, especially in this amazing healing, and I will never be able to thank Him enough for keeping my daddy in my life.

"Shakespeare in the Park" with Daddy

But the blessings haven’t ended there. Besides seeing my daddy have a renewed passion for God (and for life in general), I too have found a new perspective, a different way of looking at things. Instead of holding onto my mistakes and the shortcomings of others, I want to let go. There are so many more important issues than fighting over a boy or holding petty grudges, and I don’t want to let that hold me back any longer. I want to love like a cancer, to see God’s love spread through me to His body, the Church, and out into the world. I want to really feel for the people around me, and I’ve been challenging myself to let God have His way in my life. Really, I just reached the point where I felt so helpless, that there was absolutely nothing I could do but turn to the one who can do all things. A coworker of mine last summer shared his testimony with me, affirming the absolute power of prayer in bringing about change; if I wanted to see a change, I knew it had to start with God.

So that’s my goal for the year, to be open to God’s calling on my life and to be sincerely involved in the lives of my fellow students (not the nosy, Facebook-stalking kind of involved, though, so don’t worry). I’m not sure what that will look like just yet, but I know who to ask (Hint, it’s God). I guess I just don’t want to waste what little time I have in this life on stupid things that won’t matter in a week, let alone at the end of my life. And I wish I could tell all of you that I’ll stick to this 100 percent of the time, but I know I won’t. All I can promise is to keep trying, because as awful as actual death may be, dying long before you stop breathing is far worse a fate.

Today, August 16, 2011, would be my dad's 57th birthday. Not a day goes by that I don't miss his smile, the way he made my mom and I feel safe, his awfully corny jokes. But I know deep-down this is how things are supposed to be, how God wanted them to be somehow. God has His own sense of timing. Just a few days ago the "thank you" letter came in the mail from Pantene; my donation had been sent off at the end of May. Even so, I started crying reading that simple form letter. Sure, they had printed it off along with probably hundreds of this same letter to send to hundreds of other donors, but that doesn’t mean my gift had any less value to the sick woman who received that wig, or that her family didn’t feel any less comfort in that donation because I wasn’t thanked in some extravagant way. Recognition has never been what sacrifice is about—it’s about the positive impact in others’ lives.