The day I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, our children were 4 years old, 2 years old, and 9 months old, respectively. On a Sunday morning, I went to urgent care after weeks of feeling progressively more exhausted. By that evening, we knew I had some type of cancer. By Monday afternoon, we learned it was acute myeloid leukemia. I don’t think we fully understood what that meant. We only knew what the oncologist told us. He said this would be the hardest thing I would ever do and that I needed treatment immediately. But he also told me I was young, otherwise healthy, and needed to remain determined to fight. He didn’t tell us the survival statistics. Instead, he gave us hope. His attitude shaped ours from the very beginning.
How do you explain leukemia to a 4-year-old when you’re still trying to understand it yourself? At first, we told them, “Daddy was very sick and needed to go to the hospital to get better.” They had noticed how tired I had been, so that explanation made sense. We didn’t burden them with details they couldn’t understand, but we also never lied to them. That afternoon, I told my siblings and children, shaved my head, and packed our bags. I didn’t want the kids to be surprised by how different I looked the next time they saw me, so I asked them to help shave my head. We had only a few hours together between learning how serious the diagnosis was and being admitted to the hospital.
For 33 days, the closest we came to being together was through a window at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Our families brought the kids to the parking lot below my fifth-floor room. We called them while watching from above as they waved, danced, and covered the pavement with sidewalk chalk. They didn’t understand why they couldn’t come inside, but they knew where Daddy was. Every visit reminded us why we were fighting. There were days when I didn’t feel like eating, walking, or even getting out of bed. But I wasn’t fighting only for myself. I was fighting for three little children who needed their dad.
We explained leukemia in simple terms. We told them my body was making the wrong blood cells instead of healthy ones. Sometimes our bodies make mistakes, we explained, and no one really knows why. Chemotherapy had to destroy the unhealthy cells before healthy ones could take their place. As the months and years passed, our conversations grew alongside them. Our middle child began asking, “Daddy, are you going to die?” We answered him honestly, “Yes, someday I will. We all will. I just don’t know when. I’m hoping that day is a very long time from now, and I’m doing everything I can to get better.” It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the truth. As they grew older, so did their questions.
When I received stem cell transplants from both of my sisters, about a year and a half apart, they asked, “Why is Aunt Lisa giving you her blood?” We explained that their aunts were giving me healthy blood-making cells because mine no longer worked properly. We never tried to convince them that cancer wasn’t hard. It wasn’t something we could hide. It touched every part of our family. Our children watched me spend more than 450 days in the hospital over two years. They saw me come home exhausted and violently ill. They lived through years of quarantine to protect me from infection. They knew our lives revolved around blood counts, transfusions, chemotherapy, prayer, and hope. I wasn’t the dad they had known, and I realized they might never remember who I was before cancer. They saw days when walking from the front door to the car required every ounce of strength I had. They saw oxygen tanks, IVs, and boxes of pills. They saw me too exhausted to play.
But they also saw me do everything I could to remain present, even when all I could manage was read a book or sit beside them on the couch. We tried to give them hope without pretending everything was okay. When chemotherapy made me look worse instead of better, we explained that the medicine was doing an important job. Truthfully, it helped remind us, too.
The hardest chapter came when the leukemia returned only a few months after my first stem cell transplant. For the first time, we genuinely believed we had to prepare for the end of my life. My oncologist gave me a 5 percent chance to survive. Not long afterward, we learned the leukemia had spread into my central nervous system. I needed brain surgery so chemotherapy could be delivered directly into my spinal fluid. Strangely enough, hearing the words “brain surgery” felt like a path forward. There was a treatment. The doctors recognized what was happening. There was still something left to try. When my blood counts dropped so low I could barely stand, Casey reminded us that it meant the chemotherapy was doing what it was designed to do. When a tumor in my arm paralyzed my hand, we believed it could be removed. When infections became resistant to antibiotics, we clung to the belief that the suffering was not meaningless. That became the rhythm of our lives.
People often ask how we managed the anxiety that naturally comes with a diagnosis like this. The honest answer is that we couldn’t control the outcome, so we focused on what we could control. We chose gratitude. Not because life was easy or because we ignored reality, but because every day contained something worth thanking God for. Sometimes it was another treatment option. Sometimes it was a good blood count. Sometimes it was simply one more ordinary evening around the dinner table.
Our children had their own questions about the unknown. Our oldest would ask, “When are you coming home?” And the answer was almost always, “We don’t know.” Our boys wanted to know when the tube in my chest would come out so I could wrestle with them again. They didn't understand central lines or chemotherapy. They simply knew Daddy couldn’t play the way he used to. We usually wouldn’t learn I was being discharged until that morning, and even then, we rarely told anyone until we were in the car on our way home. We wanted to protect our children from the disappointment of another delay. I realize now that we weren’t only teaching our children how to wait for mom and dad to come home. We were teaching them that not every question has an immediate answer, and that it’s okay to live faithfully in the waiting.
We knew families who had lost loved ones to this same disease. We understood that their story could become ours. That reality did not make us fearful. It made us deeply grateful for every day we were given together. Whenever there was a break between treatments, we made family memories. We took short trips, just the five of us. We scheduled family photos. I recorded videos for each of our children because I wanted them to know me and my story. I wanted them to hear my voice, receive advice from their dad, and know how deeply they were loved.
More than anything else, our faith sustained us. Our hope was never solely found in medicine, although we are profoundly grateful for every doctor, nurse, researcher, and treatment that carried us this far. But we believe that heaven is real. Because of that, death itself was never my greatest fear. My greatest fear was leaving Casey and our children behind. I grieved the possibility that they would have to live a life none of us had planned. I hated imagining our children growing up without their dad. Those conversations were heartbreaking, but they were also full of peace. We believe this life is not the end of our story. We believe we will be together again. That hope changed everything. We don’t know how we would have parented if cancer had never entered our lives because our children were so young when it began.
We don’t rush ordinary moments anymore. We say “yes” to spontaneous adventures. We read to our children at bedtime every night. We understand that family dinners, riding dirt bikes, taking trips, and teaching our kids to read are extraordinary gifts disguised as ordinary days. I know what it feels like to lose the ability to do those things, and I no longer assume they will always be there. Our kids saw the hard parts because they lived them with us. Even now, more than two years into remission, they still ask, “Is your cancer gone?”
There was a season when leukemia took more than my health. It took the ordinary ways I fathered our children. There were no flips on the trampoline, no daddy-daughter dates, and no wrestling matches on the living room floor. Simple things like driving the kids to school had to wait while my body fought to survive. We all felt those losses, even when our children were too young to fully understand them. I leaned on my brothers-in-law to wrestle with them and roughhouse in the living room.
Today, those moments have returned. Hearing, “Daddy, will you play soccer with me?” or teaching my children how to drive the tractor are moments we will never take for granted. Giving my nephews rides around the farm, harvesting grapes and wildflowers together, and simply having the strength to say “yes” are gifts I prayed I would experience again. They remind me that healing isn’t measured only in blood counts or scans. Sometimes it’s measured in a father’s ability to simply be a dad again.
Cancer also showed us that we were never meant to carry life’s hardest burdens alone. When I became sick, Casey’s mom moved into our home for six months to help care for the children. During my second stem cell transplant, my mom moved in because Casey spent every possible moment with me in the hospital. My sisters and brothers-in-law cared for our children and carried responsibilities in our family businesses that we simply could not. They prayed with us, worked beside us, and loved our children as their own. The kids were learning something I never intended to teach them—that love looks different in different seasons, and strength means accepting help.
Our children are growing up surrounded by cousins, aunts, and uncles who are deeply involved in their lives. We celebrate together, work together, worship together, and help raise one another’s children. Living on a farm has reinforced these lessons and our children are learning these truths alongside us. Farming teaches you to expect seasons of growth, waiting, loss, and renewal. We watch tiny vines become thriving vineyards, newborn animals grow strong, and barren fields come back to life each spring.
Through the changing seasons, our ordinary farm life teaches our family extraordinary truths about perseverance, patience, and hope. If cancer has taught us one thing as parents, it is that we cannot protect our children from every difficult thing. What we can do is show them where our hope is found.
