A few weeks ago, I participated in a “Care-a-Thon” for the AFLAC Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. For 25 years, my flagship radio station, WSB Radio in Atlanta, has raised millions of dollars to fund resources for children battling cancer and blood disorders, funded research and meaningfully worked to improve the quality of life of kids fighting cancer. This year, the care-a-thon raised over $2 million.

Three days before the fundraiser, I accompanied my wife to her quarterly scans, tests, and oncology visit with her doctor as she battles Stage 4 lung cancer. Given two years to live, my wife is nine years into the fight and her scans are still stable. We were together as our oldest graduated from high school, and we hope to be together when our youngest graduates in 2027.

Today, I am in Jacksonville, FL, participating in a care-a-thon for Nemours Children’s Health Child Cancer Fund. For 11 years, my radio affiliate, WOKV Radio, has raised money to help families battling cancer. The fund has paid for groceries for families struggling with the costs and burdens of cancer. The fund has helped pay mortgages, gas for cars to get kids to the hospital and even funerals and bereavement costs for those families who lost a child.

Tomorrow, I will attend the funeral of a long-time family friend who lost her life to brain cancer. Diagnosed over a year ago, our friend slowly, then ever more rapidly, declined. She leaves behind a husband, a son, a daughter and a lot of grieving friends and family.

There are phases of life as we get older. We get married and attend the weddings of our friends. We have baby showers for each other’s kids. We support each other’s kids at graduation. We attend each other’s parents’ funerals and kids’ weddings and then the baby showers for the kids of our kids. Slowly, we congregate in dwindling numbers at each other’s funerals. Occasionally, the horrors of life intervene as we comfort each other over the loss of a child or spouse too soon. Often, the specter over each is cancer.

Life can be short and cruel. But there can also be so much joy. “Joy cometh in the morning,” Psalm 30:5 proclaims. That line, oft quoted, is preceded by, “Weeping may endure for a night.”

A lot of people speculate, sometimes in despair, that surely someone has a cure for cancer. I have often been given miracle cancer cures for my wife by those who insist not only that some product, often an essential oil, will cure my wife’s cancer, but that doctors, pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies and others have long covered up the cure.

Jonathan Sackler, co-owner of Purdue Pharma, died of cancer. Richard Brewer, the CEO of cancer research firm Myrexis, died of cancer. Senthil Sundaram, CEO of Terns Pharmaceuticals, died of cancer. Perhaps all these CEO’s were willing to die to keep secret the cure to cancer so their companies could profit. Or perhaps cancer is complex, multifaceted, and people who lose hope in a world full of answers and prosperity then console themselves in grief that surely there was a cure, but it was secret. Others, ghouls, metastasize the grief with lies and conjecture.

Much of life is very simple. Some of it is very complex. Humans are good at simplifying the complex and complicating the simple. It is in our nature. It is part of life. What I have learned over my years is that, as tragic as a decline into death is, that decline can be a ministry, if we let it, to prepare a family for a death where a sudden tragedy leaves no room for preparation. I have also learned that the real secret to life is a community of friends and family who are united not over politics but over shared life.

Hard times come in different ways for every person. Those who handle hard times best are most often those with community. In our increasingly isolated time, building a community built on a shared life, not shared politics, will separate those who find joy in the morning from those still weeping when the sun comes up.

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