“SHHHHH . . . I have a secret!”

For a time I had a secret.  Bonnie knew, she knows my secrets, but others didn’t.  I walked around during the day; walked around a lot of people and they didn’t know, they had no idea.   I was in bed at night and slept some and thought more about my secret and when and how I would share my secret so it wasn’t a secret anymore.

I tried to imagine how a woman might feel who now knew that she was pregnant; a miraculous life was taking shape in her; it had started, a process of cells dividing, multiplying and growing.  She had a secret of life to think about day and night and ponder and excitedly determine when and how to share her secret with others.

My secret was different but analogous.  There were cells secretly multiplying, knitting together, and growing in my body that hadn’t announced their presence yet.   Had my secret had a “gestation period” of months to grow undetected it would have given birth to death.  My secret was cancer in my colon found by a “routine colonoscopy.”

Just as a couple discovers that they are expecting a baby and they prepare for the future and know that everything about their lives would change, just so, we knew that and were doing that.  So it was with our secret.  It prompted quiet, tender, intimate conversations and included tears and even some laughter.  “Sacred” is an adjective to describe the times alone and together.  There were thoughts of preparation . . . lots to do to get ready; not the painting of a nursery or purchase of a crib and changing table but revisiting, remembering, rereading things I had shared with others when they shared their secrets with me.

In the midst of that preparation I really see the value of this secret not being a secret for any of us.   No, we don’t all have cancer growing in us but yes; we are all carrying death around in us.  Carrying life “shows” as maternity clothes must become part of a pregnant woman’s wardrobe.  There is no hiding that life is in her.  Death doesn’t “show” as readily; the gradual aging process can be disguised, hidden a bit sometimes.  The truth is we want to miss seeing it but it is there, in each of us, and it is good for us to know it is there, inside every single one of us.

Of course it is scary but it, like nothing else, allows us to know whether that is the only reality or if there is another reality, which is both more mysterious and complicated to know.  We can carry around death and life in the very same body at the same time.  Both are growing.  Both are waiting to be seen; one in all its ugliness and the other in all its beauty and gloriousness.  Both can be seen before their “end points” too.

Knowing this “secret” that death is working in us really does make the importance of the “secret of life” in us all the more valuable, and important and precious doesn’t it? We rightly say life is precious but how much more precious is that which gives life to life and means death to death?

By the stunning and magnificent and mysterious grace of God I’ve been born again to a living hope, which will be nothing less than eternal life that starts now and continues beyond my temporal death . . . life from the dead because of the One Who lives beyond His grave!   That is a secret I won’t promise not to tell!

My “secret of cancer” will require some surgery, some cutting and my “secret of life” which I promise to tell, requires some cutting, pruning too but it’s all to the end of more fruit that brings glory to the One Who gave life to me while I was in the process of dying.

Bonnie and I and our family appreciate your prayers for us.  I am scheduled for surgery on July 17^th and expect to be in the hospital 5-7 days.  This certainly is a part of our “wandering home” and know that we will post more later.

Thanks for letting me share my secrets with you.   

Keith and Bonnie