When doctors diagnosed David with Stage 4 Lung Cancer, all he wanted was physical healing. Nothing less and nothing more. David soon discovered God had bigger plans. By the time David received his cancer-free report two years later, God had healed much more than his body. God had healed his whole life! In How Cancer Cured Me, David, seasoned Pastor and Cancer Survivor, shares fifteen ways God used cancer to heal him. The topics range from becoming more courageous to growing in faith to finding his get-up-and-go. Readers will be inspired and encouraged as David shares the many ways his cancer experience impacted his most important relationships. In addition to his own experiences of transformation, David shares stories of many cancer patients who have inspired him; reflections on Scripture promises, and helpful pastoral teaching. The book is well written and a pleasure to read. David’s honesty and humor are refreshing. It is entertaining, insightful, surprising, and clearly inspired. Cancer patients will find David to be a helpful companion and this Book to be a valueable resource. He shares everything that helped him not only survive but thrive. His story provides hope and a life-giving vision of what the cancer journey can be. He writes about the time between diagnosis and physical healing and focuse on what God can accomplish in that time of waiting. HCCM isn’t just for those with cancer. It’s also not just for those who believe in God. This book is for anyone facing life-threatening adversity of any kind. It's for anyone broken and longing for healing. All will be grateful for the way this book brings together David’s pastoral and theological experience and his cancer journey to help others.​​

The Inspiration for How Cancer Cured Me Upon my diagnosis with stage four lung cancer on September 1, 2017, I started journaling regularly, usually every day. I had always loved to write, and I had journaled off and on throughout my life. My mother encouraged me, knowing my writing would help me deal with my cancer, and might be helpful to others at some point. In my journal entries, I wrote about the Scripture I read in my daily devotional time, my prayerful reflections, as I tried to process and connect the realities of cancer with my life and faith. In those holy moments, the Lord ministered to me. I experienced divine comfort, strength, wisdom, guidance, and more. After a few months of journaling, I read all I had written. The physical healing that I had already experienced was phenomenal. My tumor was less than half the original size. But what amazed me more were all the other ways God had been healing me. I had become more courageous, faithful, strong, etc. God had delivered my marriage from on the rocks to a solid rock and then a mountain top. All things were working together for good. I discerned a thread running through all my journal entries, a theme - God using cancer to cure me. All these wonderful transformations had happened within the context of cancer. In that moment, God gave me a mission to write this book and a vision for it. Each chapter would be devoted to one of the aspects of my healing. The Book would be a helpful and hopeful resource. As both a pastor and a cancer patient, I felt uniquely positioned and qualified to write this book and a responsibility to do so. I could blend my firsthand account of my cancer and faith with my Biblical and theological training and ministry experiences. I had seen the impact cancer has on people and their families, including members of my own family. During the process of writing, I discovered a calling to help cancer patients connect with Christ On July 9, 2019, doctors told me I was cancer free. I was writing the last couple chapters at the time. I thank God for my physical healing, whether my cancer is cured or controlled. This book remains focused on life between diagnosis and being cancer free. It is about how God can use cancer to cure each of us. David Gira 4/21/20

With the diagnosis of cancer and each following step, I encountered new fears. It’s like the creepy cancer bus pulled up to my front door, and all kinds of fears unloaded into my life. The fear of death and FOMO were just the beginning. After that, came scanxiety, the fear of the scan results. What are they going to find? And the fear that the cancer has suddenly spread everywhere. It could be in my liver, spine, brain... Then came the fear of biopsies, results, and treatments. Can my type of cancer be treated effectively? Is there medication? What kind? Will I need radiation? Surgery? There was the fear of insurance companies. Will my required treatment and medication be approved? I feared not being able to get the drugs I needed more than the side effects. I feared the hospital billing departments and running out of money. I feared how disruptive cancer would be to my life and my family. How will this impact my kids’ schoolwork? I feared I would lose my job. Will the church want a pastor with cancer? The fears kept coming. Honestly, I struggled with a lot of fears before cancer. We’ll call them my pre-existing fears: the fear of failure, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of being rejected, the fear of criticism, the fear of asking for help. I felt ill-equipped to deal with a whole new busload of fears. Each year, our family enjoys watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. In one scene of the movie, Lucy attempts to diagnose what’s wrong with Charlie Brown. She hypothesizes that he might have a phobia and runs through a long list of possibilities, including the fear of responsibility and the fear of cats. She names and defines them all, but none seem to be Charlie’s issue. Exasperated, Lucy says, “Do you think you have pantophobia?“ “What’s pantophobia?” Charlie replies. “The fear of everything.” “That’s it!” Charlie says. Between my old fears and my new cancer fears, I was starting to feel like Charlie, afraid of everything. I felt like I was drowning in my fears; they were getting the best of me. Good grief!

Since you can’t take out your anger on cancer, I probably took it out on the people around me who loved me the most. I snapped at my family, spoke unkindly at times, and acted impatiently. I withdrew from friends and family. I felt more anger toward those who had hurt me in the past. In some way, everyone made me angry. The guy who pulled out in front of me just as I approached the intersection—Hey, jerko! Learn how to drive! I was on my way out of the post office when my oncologist called. I stopped in the middle of the lobby and listened to some bad news about my recent scans. Unsure what to do next, and lost in my thoughts, I stood there frozen. As people came and went all around me, doors opening and closing, post office boxes being checked, packages and letters being sent and received, I heard God speak to me. Well, you said you wanted them out of your life. You may just get your wish. I knew what God meant. The message had been delivered. If cancer killed me, I wouldn’t have to see any of the people who had hurt and angered me ever again. Never again would I be frustrated with my wife, my kids, extended family, and friends, coworkers, neighbors, church leaders, or anyone else. Problem solved. I could learn to forgive and get over my anger, or God could take me out of the equation, which would be far easier. The choice was mine. My hypocrisy could not have been made any clearer if a mailman had plowed his truck through the wall, into the post office lobby, rolled down his window, and handed me the message. God wasn’t angry with me. God forgave me. God didn’t keep a record of my wrongs, shut me out, wish me harm, or pray I would die. God loved me, no matter what. Jesus had died for me so I could be forgiven and forgiving.

A few days after the weekend trip with Marcie, I went in for a scan of my chest. My oncologist wanted more images of my lungs and to make sure cancer hadn’t spread to my brain. I made jokes with the nurses to calm my nerves. It was my first MRI. I looked at the poster on the wall across from me as the nurse slid the needle into my arm and started the IV. The poster proclaimed, “Life is full of little pricks,” and pictured an actress, famed for her mean character on a popular tv show, dressed as a nurse, smiling slyly and holding a disturbingly large needle in her hand. A few minutes later, I laid back on the narrow exam table protruding from what looked like a ten-foot-wide silver donut standing vertically. The technicians explained that the procedure would involve a series of scans of varying lengths, from my waste to the top of my head, loud knocking sounds and buzzing, and the injection of the magnetic dye into my arm at the halfway point. The technician put a pair of headphones on me to help lessen the noise and to allow them to speak to me, gave a thumbs-up, and returned to the control room ten feet away. Through my headphones, she said, “This first scan will take three minutes,” and the table began sliding into the doughnut hole. I gave her the thumbs-up and watched her in the control room, push a series of buttons. “Let’s go!” I heard her say, and the knocking and buzzing began. Her “Let’s go!” surprised me, and I thought about it as I laid there. Let’s go. Where am I going? I’m flat on my back, strapped to this table, having an MRI. I’ve been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Hopefully, it’s not spread to my brain. This is my fourth scan in three weeks. With each report, the diagnosis worsens. Let’s go? The first scan ended, and the tech said, “Are you okay?” I gave the thumbs up and smiled. She introduced the next scan. “Okay, this scan will take five minutes. Let’s go!” For the next three minutes, as I felt the vibrations and listened to the knocking, humming, and clanking, “Let’s go!” echoed in my mind. The words began to sound like God calling me to move forward into a promising future. Let’s go, David. I have plans for you. This cancer isn’t the end for you. It’s the beginning. It’s not a death sentence. It’s a call to live.

I felt like Peter being called by Jesus to step out of the boat and onto the stormy sea to walk with Jesus on the water. If I kept my eyes on Jesus, I could walk on water. I could handle cancer. But like Peter, the stormy waters commanded my attention and caused me to take my eyes off Jesus. The moment I looked away from Jesus, I started to sink into a sea of doubt. On more than one occasion, I could feel Jesus reaching out to catch me and hear him saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). The challenging circumstances revealed some of my faith faults. “Holy amnesia”: I would forget everything God had already done for me and all God’s promises. “Peekaboo faith”: I believe you if I can see you, God. And my personal favorite, “Stinking Thinking”: Instead of thinking positively about what can happen with God for whom “nothing is impossible” (Luke 1:37, ESV), I would start thinking that everything was somehow impossible. No one wants to be around you when you’re “stinking thinking.” I didn’t want to be around me. I recalled an assignment from one of my favorite seminary professors, Dr. Davis. We were studying the great pastor, poet, and mystic John Donne. Dr. Davis asked us to pick one of his sermons and show how it could be applicable today. I spent several days writing a long paper about how it wasn’t possible. A few days later, I got my paper back with a big, fat, red “F” written on the front, along with a note from Dr. Davis, reminding me that the assignment was to imagine how the sermon could be used today. Fortunately, for my GPA, she allowed me a chance to try again. I accepted her offer and rewrote the essay and rewrote one of Donne’s sermons, “The Fear of the Lord, “ which I have since preached multiple times. It’s made a big difference in the lives of many people, including myself. I will never forget that lesson. It wasn’t just about academia. It was also about me and my faith. I spent way too much time envisioning, sometimes in grand scale and meticulous detail, how things were not possible, how badly it would all fall apart. That’s what my night of terrible visions was about. In the same way, I needed to approach my cancer with faith in what God could do and all the good things possible. I knew the difference that faith makes and how important it is. Faith has the power to change our lives and the world. I remembered Jesus’ bold promise of the power of faith. “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).