Endurance

 

The short version:

I had my Jan 2026 scan yesterday and the results are back. It shows a possible area of concern. There is a new enlarged nodule in one of the lymph nodes around my windpipe (1.7x1.3cm).  I go to my oncologist on Monday the 19th and we will probably be scheduling more diagnostics to try to determine what is going on. A positive, there was no other areas of concern found anywhere else neck to knee.  There also is a possibility that this area could be enlarged from an aspiration event I had over the weekend.  So until then, we wait. 

The longer, musings version. 

How I am feeling as I hear for the third time that "there is something that looks concerning"...

There is a moment—usually it's not dramatic—when you realize that the unthinkable has not stopped life.

The possibility of cancer returning, I've discovered, does not arrive like a single blow as the initial diagnosis usually does. Rather it seeps in. It lives just underneath the surface in the appointments, in all the scan schedules, in the way your body suddenly crumbles over into a question mark again. And somehow, even after you hear the words, you make dinner. You answer emails. You laugh at something silly on television. One looks around at the hustle and bustle going on and recognizes that the world does not pause and.... neither do you.

That is not denial I've started to understand. 
It is endurance.

Scripture has language for this, though it rarely sounds the way we expect. Paul writes, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” (Romans 5:3–4). This verse is often misunderstood or even weaponized, to try to suggest that suffering itself is good. But that isn’t what I think Paul is saying. He is naming a reality: once suffering arrives, something else begins to form inside a person—not by choice, not by optimism, but by necessity.

Endurance is not chosen ahead of time.
It emerges when the fire does not go out.

History confirms this truth in ways that sometimes feel almost disturbing. People raised families during the Great Depression. They baked bread with almost nothing. They told jokes in soup lines. Entire cities have gone on living in war zones—children, even today still, attend school beneath sirens, shops open under occupation, and birthdays celebrated in the shadow of bombs. Not because the danger disappeared, but because human beings somehow, someway adapt. The unbearable becomes familiar. The extraordinary becomes routine.

Scripture never pretends otherwise.

David writes, “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.” (Psalm 27:3). The war is still there. The army is still encamped. Confidence does not come from safety, but from learning how to live while surrounded.

This is what recurrence fear teaches you: the body and soul learn a new pace. Hebrews calls it “running with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). Not the race we would choose. Not the terrain we would design. But the one we are already in. You do not stop running to become strong—you discover strength because stopping is simply not an option.

This kind of endurance is uncomfortable. It is not inspirational. It does not photograph well. It looks like functioning while afraid. It looks like carrying grief and still paying bills. It looks like faith that does not erase dread but somehow finds a way to coexists with it.

God never promises to keep people out of the fire. Isaiah says instead, “When you walk through fire you shall not be burned” (Isaiah 43:2). Not untouched. Not unscarred. But also ... and hear this...not undone.

Perhaps that is the quiet miracle in all of this that no one prepared me... or you?: humans—and by grace, believers—can go on. That life continues even when it shouldn’t make sense. That fear does not have to disappear for faith to remain. (Hear that again all those feeling shamed because you haven't yet been able to master the ill worded "Faith over Fear" mantra that was recently so popular.) Hope is not the absence of threat, but the refusal to stop living inside it.

Endurance does not mean you are brave.
It means you are still here.

And sometimes, that is the holiest thing a person can be.