If there is no afterlife.

Last week I got the chance to listen to a talk by Quaker Pastor and author Philip Gulley. He shared a lot of powerful ideas, but one in particular has stuck in my mind.

When asked about his thoughts on the afterlife, after a reflective pause he replied, “If there is no afterlife, I won’t feel cheated.”

It is without exaggeration or hyperbole that I say this. That one sentence has changed my life.

This experience felt especially timely too. You see, a few days after I heard this line, I heard another line, this time from a doctor, telling me that I have thyroid cancer.

For those of you who don’t know me, the brief background here is that I’m 24 and have been having thyroid issues for about a year. Recently, as I said, they found out that one of the nodules on my thyroid is cancerous. The survival rate is one of the best of any cancers, darn near 100%, and so the prognosis looks to be very good. But as a 24 year old, it still makes you think.

And I have to tell you, that not once in this whole process have I felt afraid.

This past week I got to have a drink with my college roommate and his wife. It was a couple hours of sentences that started, “Remember when…” and “What about that one time…” and I left there, that night, thanking God not only for the wonderful experiences and people that I have met, but also for the amazing friendship both of these people have given me.

A few days before that, I was having coffee at my favorite weekend spot and a girl I have seen there from time to time asked if she could share my table since the place was packed. A couple hours later, I left thinking about how that was one of the best conversations about literature I had had in the past few years. I was grateful for that wonderful way to spend the morning.

And now, if I think about the worst case scenario for next week, I don’t feel a sense of betrayal from God or slighting at losing future possibilities, instead I am thankful that I was able to have that couple of hours in my life.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been nervous sitting in certain doctors’ offices. (Seriously, hasn’t someone found a corollary between flickering florescent lights and raised anxiety levels yet?) And I have had a lot of concern about how my friends and family would take this news, but not even at my lowest have I felt even the slightest hint of fear. And do you know why?

Because even if something goes wrong in surgery, or I am that one in a million who doesn’t wake up from the anesthesia on Monday, I can tell you one thing for sure.

I won’t have felt cheated.