Chapter 1: your tree of life

   Our first learning point is this:YOU ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN YOUR CANCER.  IT IS ONLY ONE PART OF WHO YOU ARE.  Cancer is so all-consuming.  We become fixated on questions like:  When do I take my medicine?  How soon can I take another pain pill? and How can I get comfortable?

   Now is a good time to put your life in perspective.  In my book, Fear Not! Learning from your Cancer, I use the metaphor of a tree to look at our entire life so far.  Our Scripture is Isaiah 61:3b "They will be called Oaks of Righteousness."

   If possible actually draw a tree in your journal.  You have already considered your roots in Post Roots and how your background affects who you are right now.  Now draw the trunk of your tree.  Just as trees contain notches and burls and galls, so do our lives.  Reflect on the changes in your life as you grew up.  Perhaps you had sickness as a child or lost a parent.  Maybe you were affected by a move or a financial change at a critical point in your growing up years.  Draw these as burls on the trunk of your tree.  Add notches at the turning points in your life.  Someone may have a smooth trunk from roots to this cancer point.  However in leading this workshop I have never had a student whose life was that perfect and smooth.  Look at your unique life and what you have already overcome.  Your tree is strong and you have survived.

   Now move to the branches.  Look at the fruit your tree and your life has borne so far.  You can add acorns or apples or whatever you chose.  On each fruit write some good you have done in your life or some good that was done through you.  We are often too hard on ourselves.  We emphasize the bad and give short change to the good.  As you continue to ponder, more fruits may come to mind.  I had a student once who said, "I'll need a lot of time to think about this."  After a while, simple, small gestures or acts of kindness that helped others, will surface
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   Our tree and our lives also have broken branches.  I have yet to meet anyone who has not experienced failure or loss.  It is a part of being human.  Add these broken branches to your tree and label each one.  It may be as universal as a loss of youth or, as individual as a failure in a relationship or marriage.  Reflect on your losses and how they have affected your life.

   Now just look at your unique tree.  This is your life with all its shortcomings and possibilities.  When I do this exercise in class and students  share their trees, I am always amazed at how unique each one of us is.  No one has ever lived a life exactly like yours.  Recall our Scripture. You are called to be an Oak of Righteousness.  An oak tree exemplifies nobility, endurance and strength.  You, as a cancer survivor, embody all three.

   Unique in God's forest, loved and cherished by God, we give thanks for the gift of our individual, distinctive life.