Dear Will:

Well, I did it: Turned 50, just like I said I would. And once I got over the shock of the whole thing, I suppose it wasn’t that bad. I played golf with some good friends, and my wife threw me a party, and my daughter gave me this awesome picture of the Gossamer Albatross. (Google it. It’s super cool.)

Not bad at all, when you think of it. You might say it was a pretty great birthday, in fact. That is, until my doctor called and informed me that (are you ready for this?) I have prostate cancer.

Well, that’s pretty annoying, isn’t it?

I guess you could say that I’m upholding a family tradition. When my dad was in his 50s, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Last year, my brother (five years my senior) was diagnosed as well. So I pretty much assumed this day was coming. I just didn’t think it would come so soon.

I imagine that it isn’t that often that you hear the words mild and cancer in the same sentence, but that’s essentially how my doctor described my condition to me. As a matter of fact, my cancer is so mild that had it not been for my father and my brother it is unlikely that anyone would even know about my condition. However, thanks to our collective vigilance, we have caught it in the earliest possible stages. I don’t even have any symptoms, to be honest. I even pass the standard blood test that is supposed to give early warning of the disease.

Mild or not, I am going to have to deal with it, however. Next month I’ll go down to Mission Hospital and my doctor will use some fancy robotic device to remove the gland altogether, after which (he says) I’ll be “completely cured.” Just like that. I’ll have to take a few weeks off from work (and from teaching my early morning Seminary class for the high-schoolers), but otherwise I should be good to go, without any significant, long-term side effects. Which I suppose is why I feel more annoyed than threatened by the whole thing.

To sum up: It’s true, I have cancer. But I also have a good job, excellent insurance coverage, a highly-skilled doctor using the most sophisticated equipment in the world, and the earliest diagnosis possible. It leads me to repeat something I said to you last month: In that which matters most, I am one of the truly lucky ones.

So my otherwise pristine life is now dappled with this little blotch—an irregularity that forces into greater focus all of the good things which are also mine. And so, rather than curse God for “allowing this to happen,” I feel rather inclined to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins instead:

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
   For skies of couple-colour as brinded cow;
     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
              Praise him.

PW