Cup overflowing?

Well, the last few weeks have been a real rollercoaster.

It turns out my dad has something called large cell non-hodgkins lymphoma. It's cancer. It's aggressive. He has two tumours, one 192mm long, the other 176mm.


He goes into hospital next week to get a bone-marrow biopsy and to start chemotherapy. The doctors say there's about a 50% chance of remission, including a 30% chance of complete recovery. Apparently that's really good.

But it's still 50/50.

The glass half full part of me is excited that when the chemo works the tumours will shrink away to nothing. Meanwhile the glass half empty part of me wonders what the other 50% means.


Anne and Mart have been suggesting that as followers of Christ we are called to leave empty and full behind to become cup overflowing people. I'm attracted and exhilarated by this alternative reality, and it feels more real than the binary dimensions we're ordinarily limited to. But I'm still struggling to make sense of it.

What does it mean to have my cup overflowing as my father approaches a sick, gruelling fight for life that is by no means a foregone conclusion?