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Love is a Choice

Among the things the Bible says about love are these:

 

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength

Love you neighbour as you love yourself

Love your enemies

 

This kind of loving is not a feeling, it's a choice, a conscious undertaking to seek good not evil.  It presumes an important tenet/axiom/principle, that love is stronger than hate.

I have chosen to love my tumour.  I have chosen to name it as mine rather than distance it from myself as 'the tumour.'

I cannot hate it, because it is 'flesh of my flesh.'  I don't like it, and I know it needs to go in due course, but it is my tumour, and I choose to love it.

Language of 'battle' and 'fight' is prevalent in the world I am entering, and I understand why - to see cancer as a foe to be destroyed gives its host a reason to stay strong.  And whilst it is helpful for many people, I am uneasy about such language in relation to my own body.  It is not that my body is a 'thing' that has turned against some inner 'me', I abandoned that kind of dualism long ago.  If I broke my arm I wouldn't see a fracture as an enemy and I wouldn't hate my arm; if I had a mental illness I wouldn't see my mind as an enemy.  The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of 'treating with special honour' those parts of the body which are less presentable.'   We all assume he means genitals, sphincters and the like, and we're probably correct.  But I am choosing to 'treat with special honour' my tumour, tending it gently until such time as it is ready to leave my body, allowing me to live on without it.

From time to time I may need to be reminded of this, but today I choose to love.

 

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