For the first time in over two and a half years, I woke up recently with a thought I had almost forgotten how to have.

It was simple.

But it was also enormous.

I realized it was the first time I had woken up and thought:

“I don’t have cancer.”

That thought had shaped my life for so long that its absence felt almost unfamiliar.

For more than two and a half years, cancer had been the quiet background noise behind nearly every decision I made.

Every strange pain, every doctor’s appointment.

Every scan.

Every test result.

Every moment of waiting.

At one point I estimated that I had undergone nearly twenty CT scans in that time frame, at least 3 nuclear-medicine PET scans, multiple MRIs, and a long list of procedures and appointments with different specialists.

Some weeks there were four or five different medical appointments within the week; some were booked on the same date.

Add Type 2 diabetes spinning out of control.

Add medications being changed or stopped.

Add the uncertainty that comes with a diagnosis like that.

After a while, it becomes exhausting in ways that are hard to explain.

And if I’m being completely honest, there were moments when I had simply had enough.

Over the last few years life delivered what felt like one emotional blow after another.

The original cancer diagnosis in November of 2023.

By January it had progressed to Stage 3 renal cell carcinoma and I lost my left kidney.

A year of chemotherapy followed.

Then in July of 2025 I underwent emergency spinal fusion surgery after a disc ruptured.

Two weeks later my dog Cooper died — a loss that still hurts more than I know how to describe.

Shortly after that, my partner lost his job.

And then new growth appeared in my lung.

The scans showed it had doubled in size.

Everything about it looked exactly like the pattern renal cell carcinoma follows when it metastasizes.

So the next step was a PET scan.

Then a lung biopsy.

And more waiting.

If you live inside that environment long enough, something strange happens to your mind.

You adapt to survival mode.

You stop planning too far ahead.

Hope becomes something you’re careful with.

Because when hope disappears repeatedly, protecting yourself from disappointment becomes its own coping mechanism.

That had been my reality for a long time.

And then something small happened that changed everything.

On the morning of February 20th, 2026, I was sitting in the garage when I heard a brand-new song by Amy Grant called The Me That Remains.

I’ve always appreciated Amy Grant’s music.

But this song hit me differently.

By the first chorus I was already in tears.

The lyrics seemed to open a door inside me that had been closed for years.

For the first time in a long time, I felt something I had almost forgotten.

Hope.

That moment led me to do something else.

That Sunday I went back to church – a new church, with a much more accepting message than the previous one – for the first time in more than three years.

And then something happened that surprised both me and my oncologist.

The PET scan showed nothing lighting up.

The biopsy results came back benign.

After six months of preparing myself mentally for the worst possible outcome…

the growth was not cancer.

Benign.

The feeling of hearing that word after living in survival mode for so long is difficult to describe.

The pressure that had been sitting quietly in the background of my life for two and a half years was suddenly gone.

And in the days that followed, another realization began to grow in my mind.

When life gives you something extraordinary — whether you call it a miracle, grace, luck, or simply good fortune — you can’t keep that energy to yourself.

Positivity dies if you don’t give it away.

Hope only grows when it moves outward.

One of the simplest ways to restore your own spirit is to do something kind for someone else.

Psychologists have studied this for years.

Acts of kindness actually trigger measurable changes in the brain.

And suddenly the answer became obvious.

When life gives you something good… you pass that goodness forward.

Moments like that remind us that kindness moves in cycles.

For me, this experience has reshaped the way I see many things.

As a creative person, I used to create partly hoping for approval.

Hoping people would like what I made.

But surviving something like this changes that perspective.

Now I create because it’s part of who I am.

Because creativity itself can help you survive difficult moments.

Recently I stepped back into the recording booth and recorded two songs within two weeks.

Something I hadn’t done in over two years.

And the effect it had on my spirit was immediate.

When something like that happens, you start paying attention to the signs.

The song.

Returning to church.

The unexpected medical results.

It’s hard not to see a pattern.

I believe I witnessed something very close to a miracle.

And if life really has given me another chance…

then I have a responsibility to respect that gift.

That means creating.

Sharing.

Helping where I can.

But also learning how to balance how much of myself I give to the world… and how much I protect for my own well-being.

Because surviving something like this teaches you a simple truth.

The miracle isn’t just that you’re still here.

The miracle is the chance to decide what you do with the life that remains.

Some days, life does everything it can to throw curve balls at you. Some days, you get delivered a home run.

There are a few more reflections still to be had that have come from this experience. I’ll be uploading updates every two to three days to get them out.