Sunday was awesome.
Working with Grace (the main organizer of the drive), we were able to register 35 new donors to the bone marrow registry. With a congregation of about 100, I think 35 was a fantastic and surprisingly large response. When Grace mentioned to her contact at A3M that we had roughly 100 congregants, he told her that a response of 10 or less was a realistic number. To see so many people walk up to the front of the room immediately after service ended was really amazing. The generosity and willingness of people to help others while expecting nothing in return is a humbling and restorative experience.
I had the opportunity to speak briefly on Sunday for about 8 minutes. It was difficult for me to prepare exactly what I wanted to say during the week beforehand, but by the time Sunday came around I felt like the words and points were right. My “strategy,” if you want to call it that, isn’t very complicated. I think if you’re able to present the numbers and facts in a clear way, they speak for themselves. But cancer begins to lose its meaning when you boil it down to focus solely on statistics and numbers. There’s a deeper identity to health, loss, love and family that cancer creates and that’s what I want to help people understand in whatever amount of time I have to speak. It’s something that I think everyone is able to understand, because it’s not an exclusively “cancer” thing. It’s a humanity thing. Anyone who has loved or lost in any capacity (and we all have) can understand. And regardless of your medical history, I think those experiences bind us all together. At the core we’re more alike than we think we are, which is why when we’re honest with ourselves, we want to be there for each other.
For some other exciting news, Timothy Song may have a match on the registry! Awesome, awesome, awesome. Alice Song is an amazing woman. Not only is she going through such great lengths to save her child, but her efforts will go a long way towards saving the lives of others long into the future. Despite the darkness surrounding her son’s sickness, she’s still able to bring light into the world that far outreaches her present circumstances. Deciding to do good in the face of struggle — there’s no better testament to the determination of the human spirit than that.