Earlier this year, my brother received a devastating cancer diagnosis.
He didn’t choose it.
He cannot control it.
And he is most certainly not living life on his own terms as he is ferried from appointment to appointment, scan to scan, and as chemotherapy floods his system.
This is the same man who offered me a seat one Christmas. Migrant workers cut off from their families. Me, adrift and alone. All of us gathered around a banquet to break the isolation. At least for a moment.
That he should now be enveloped by this level of darkness is something I can’t square.
But here we are.
Now, it would be all too easy to cast my brother in some kind of divine light. To thoughtlessly put him on a pedestal in an attempt to honour his resilience.
But he would hate that. Because he’s not a saint.
He’s a human, demonstrating that who he is exists beyond, and is untouched by, the diagnosis. And as a result, the darkness of the moment and the constraints of his treatment don’t get the final word on how he shows up for himself and the people who love him, or the decisions he makes each day.
If it were me, I’m not sure I could contain my rage against the injustice of it all. And I have no doubt that my brother and his family spend a good deal of time navigating that tension.
But when we speak, it’s not what I get to experience.
He asks about my son, my wife and my business. I hear him waiting at the door with his young son, excitedly anticipating the Evri delivery driver arriving with a secondhand Hotwheels playset. I hear about his drive to London to collect his daughter after her first semester at university. And I hear about his wife, the safe harbour and update holder, who bears the unimaginable weight of processing her own grief whilst stewarding an endless stream of well-meaning well-wishers.
Indeed, everything I write about my brother’s courage is really their courage. And I cannot honour him without honouring her too. She is astonishing.
As a father, my brother is not defined by the cost, but enthralled by what he has. A steady presence and an example to all of us who are watching.
The friction hasn’t buried the man. It has exposed who he has been all along.
Mundane miracles
Many are praying for a miracle. But in looking up there, it would be easy to miss the one that’s happening right here: who he is burns brighter than it ever has because of what he’s facing.
He can accept what is true without pretending, treat others with care, and act decisively precisely because of where he plants his feet: on the solid stone of his immovable, unchangeable, intrinsic worth.
The part of him that no diagnosis can diminish.
As a Church of England priest, my brother holds this truth with deep conviction: a God-given foundation that endures when all else is swept aside, a life held in hands far greater than his own.
When I read this chapter to him, he was quick to admit that without that footing, he could easily find himself washed away by the waves. But faith isn’t just something he has. It’s something he’s built a life around. Something he trusts enough to let it inform his decisions.
This is wholeness: not the fruit of raw belief, but faith made flesh. It’s the soul-level muscle memory, forged over the last fifty years, that gives him the strength to rise as a complete being whose reason to face the day is not determined by his circumstance.
Super / natural.
He didn’t choose this AND he has choices.
He can’t control the weather AND he can choose how he leans into the wind.
Pacing himself, showing up for appointments, taking each day as it comes. When the doctors present another round of treatment, another scan, another protocol, he asks: At what pace? Through what means? How do we manage the schedule?
And though the panic of the diagnosis doesn’t get to dictate the rhythm of his days, he does need to fiercely manage the energy to face them. Guarding the boundary around what he can actually carry. Telling the truth even when it’s unbearable. Deciding which calls to take, and which to ignore, on any given day.
And holding space for the simple things, like a Hotwheels delivery, so an eight-year-old knows he matters too.
In his own way, he’s serving the work, not the outcome.
All of it incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the work requires.
The hope we carry
You might not be facing a life-altering diagnosis, but none of us live life on our own terms, because none of us live in a vacuum.
We are all nose-to-nose with a reality we can’t control. Whether it’s a personal crisis or a business reality, the coalface burns all the same as we’re ferried from decision to decision, feeling the panic rise, wondering how we are supposed to keep the fire burning.
My brother shows us the answer: the storm doesn’t diminish who you are. It reveals it.
Like yours, his worth exists beyond the reach of any diagnosis. To touch that bedrock is to experience wholeness, but it’s all too easily obscured when the storm rolls in. It’s why we all have moments when we feel complete, and why we often don’t.
And it’s why wholeness cannot be confined to something we feel. It must become something we choose. A stance we hold, a muscle we develop, a sanctuary we raise, knowing that the storm will always return.
But even that is not enough, because wholeness needs a direction of travel. We need to allow it to flow through the actions we take and the decisions we make.
My brother didn’t choose his storm, and we didn’t choose ours.
But we all get to choose how we stand in it.
The darkness is real. The injustice burns. The weight is unbearable.
And yet.
Nested within every storm is an invitation to discover who you actually are when the world starts coming apart. To learn what you’re truly made of when you can no longer control the outcome. To find out what it means to remain whole when everything else is stripped away.
This is hope.
Not false hope that suppresses the grief you need to feel, or cheap optimism that promises seven figures if you grind relentlessly, or bravado that buries the reality of another long day, or the hustle that believes it can out-work an empty bank account.
An iron hope looks straight into the pitch, sees the rain is coming, and steps into the storm anyway.
The frictions we’d edit out if we had the choice: the isolation, the failure, the redundancies, the break-ups, the budget constraints, the diagnosis. They are your coordinates. The soil from which genuine service grows.
I will not stand here and pretend that suffering is a gift, or that devastation is some kind of twisted form of divine intervention. But the blood it draws and the scars it leaves are not evidence against you.
They are the raw materials that qualify you to extend an invitation to others who are bleeding from the same cuts.
The wound is the way.
That is what cuts through the darkness.
Where We Are:
This is Week 29 of a year-long practice.
Movement 3: Action - eight weeks exploring the architecture of conscious action, how to stand in the weather, and the courage to make contact.
Rip a Hole in the Night ← You are here
The Distorted Creator
Touch the Leper
Present Like an Artist
You Can’t Steer a Ship That Isn’t Moving
Why You’ll Fail
Icon / Action Taker