How a book called “Redemption” Saved me

When they looked me in the eye to tell me I had cancer, I was still a little too loopy, coming out of my last surgery, making the same joke over and over to my wife. The joke was that I didn’t remember who she was. It was infantile. I realize that, but I blame the drugs.

“So you’re saying that based on the shape of this thing, you can tell it’s cancer even without a biopsy?”

“Yes, Mr. Aguilar.”

“So surgery?”

“Yes.”

“And chemo?”

“Yes.”

The easy questions were out of the way.

“So what about,” I hesitated because of the gravity of the next word. It was heavy in my mouth like someone had slipped a lead weight in there, sour, old, and heavey. “What about survival?”

“It’s impossible to make promises,” the doctor said, making that motion you make when anything could be possible, a grand shrug with the arms up nearly as high as a football ref calling a field goal, but a lot less exciting.

“And what about a bag? Will I end up with...” hard swallow, “one of those?

This time the doctor didn’t say a word, but she made another grand anything could happen motion.

Then they left. We sat there for only a moment in silence, my wife dizzy with the what-ifs of losing me. And I was dizzy from the anesthetics, but at that moment, I had somewhat of a life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment.

I remembered a book called “Redemption” by Mike Wilkerson. It was about redeeming past hurts, past sin struggles, and even current sin struggles. I was not a huge fan, truth be told, but I was a team player.

I read about the Isrealites being led out of Egypt by their God. The main teaching takeaway from the chapter was something like, “You are not the center of the story. You like one of those Isrealites is a minor character in the larger story of God.”

My day was Sept 6, 2020. In the matter of a breath, I went from a healthy, youngish man that people looked to for answers to the sickest person I know.

Thinking of that pesky notion of not being the center of the story, when the doctor and nurse left us, I felt something jostle within me, an idea, an opportunity. I felt like I heard over the intercom of my heart a word perhaps from the same God I’d read about back in Wilkerson’s book. I had the thought, and it was in God’s voice, speaking in first person, “Now is your chance to worship me as your first response. You only get one chance to worship first.”

I excitedly hurried my wife beside me with a bible in hand.

“Let’s thank God,” I said, so we tearfully shouted thank-yous and hallelujahs like we were two bible thumpers on the way to Wednesday night bible study, but happier--maybe.