Thy Will Be Done

Editor’s Note: This post looks back on a moment from the beginning of my cancer journey — and was written more than a year later. I’m writing from the other side of treatment, but as any survivor knows, “the other side” doesn’t mean finished. It means still fighting, still watching, still trusting. — Scott

I’ve heard those words for as long as I can remember.

But there’s a difference between knowing the words, understanding what they mean, and finally reaching a point in your life where you have to decide whether you actually believe them.

For me that point came while I was walking through a door to have a piece cut out of my tongue to find out if I had cancer.

I’ve told the story of the 5 days leading to the biopsy before.

I’ve told you about the fear.

I’ve told you about lying in bed Sunday night with my mind racing until a verse I’ve known for years came back to me.

Be still and know that I am God.

And I’ve told you about Monday morning when they called my name.

I stood up.

I walked towards those doors.

And quietly, almost under my breath, I said:

Dein Wille geschehe.

Thy will be done.

What I haven’t told you is what those words meant to me.

Because the prayer didn’t begin in that waiting room.

In some ways it began generations before I ever reached it.

Words My Family Planted

My grandmother was of German descent. My dad’s family was too. German was just naturally spoken in their homes growing up.

Grandma said those words. Mom and Dad said them. No matter what hardship showed up on their doorstep — no matter what they wanted or how badly they hoped something would go a certain way — their faith always seemed to bring them right back to the same place.

Thy will be done.

Nobody ever sat me down and taught it to me like a lesson. They just lived it in front of me. Well — Mom may have preached a little Scripture during a butt whooping once or twice. She was still Mom. But mostly it was example, not instruction.

I grew up understanding what the words meant. Letting go of your own plans. Trusting God completely. I knew the definition the way you know a definition — the way you know the capital of a state you’ve never been to.

It took a cancer biopsy for me to actually go there.

I’m the Fixer. Not This Time.

Here’s something about me you may already know if you’ve been reading a while. I fix things. Give me a problem, I’ll find a way over it, around it, or straight through it. I’m the guy who’s always got another move.

I’m the protector too. My instinct my whole life has been to put myself between the people I love and whatever’s coming at them.

Standing outside that biopsy room, none of that applied anymore.

I couldn’t fix what was growing in my tongue. I couldn’t protect Barb from whatever that specimen was about to reveal. I couldn’t out-drive it, out-work it, or negotiate with a pathology report.

For once in my life, finding another way through wasn’t the answer.

Letting go was.

So I whispered it.

Dein Wille geschehe.

No long prayer. No bargaining. No sermon. Just surrender.

The Garden

You remember those WWJD bracelets — What Would Jesus Do? They were everywhere for a while.

Standing there, the answer wasn’t really on a bracelet. It was in a garden.

Gethsemane. Jesus knew exactly what was coming for Him. He asked if there was any way that cup could pass. And then He surrendered anyway:

Not my will, but Yours be done.

I want to be careful here, because I don’t ever want to sound like I’m putting my biopsy anywhere near what Christ carried to that cross. It doesn’t compare. Not remotely.

But His example is what taught me what surrender actually looks like. He didn’t surrender because it was easy. He surrendered knowing exactly how hard it was going to be — and He did it out of love.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

He gave His life for me. So standing there facing something I had zero control over, What would Jesus do stopped being a slogan on a bracelet and became the only real question left.

Trust. Surrender. Thy will be done.

Three Things Happening in That One Prayer

Looking back, I can see three things wrapped up in those four words. At the time I couldn’t have named them. I just said the prayer. It’s only now, writing this, that I can pull it apart and see what I was actually doing.

Trust.

I was giving up control. Not handing it over halfway. Not the version where you say the words but keep one hand on the wheel just in case.

All the way.

That’s not a small thing for me, and if you’ve been reading a while you already know why. I fix things. I’ve built a life out of being the guy who finds another way through — around the obstacle, over it, straight through it if that’s what it takes. Give me a problem and I will not stop working it until I’ve got an answer.

Standing outside that room, there was no other way through. No angle. No move. Just a specimen headed to a lab and a pathology report that was going to say whatever it was going to say whether I fought it or not.

I was finally admitting I couldn’t carry this one on my own.

Say that sentence out loud sometime. For a man who’s spent his whole life fixing things, it’s a lot harder to mean than it is to say.

Love.

John 3:16 gets quoted so much it’s easy to let it slide right past you. I’d heard it a thousand times. Said it myself, probably preached a little of it in a Sunday school class somewhere along the way.

Standing there, it stopped being a verse I knew and turned into something I had to actually reckon with.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.

He gave His life. Not for the version of me that has it together. Not for the version that’s got the answers. For me, standing in a hallway with a hole in my tongue and no idea what was coming.

So what does love back look like, in a moment like that?

For me it came down to this — loving God more than I love my own plans. Not because I’d stopped caring what happened. I cared plenty. I wanted that biopsy clean as bad as I’ve ever wanted anything. But somewhere in there I understood that my relationship with Him was never supposed to run on Him handing me the outcome I was asking for.

That’s not the deal. Never was.

Peace.

Not happiness. I want to be clear about that, because I think people hear “peace” and picture something calmer than what this actually was.

I wasn’t happy. I was scared.

I didn’t walk through that door knowing the biopsy would come back clean. Nobody whispered a promise in my ear that everything was about to be fine. I had no more information standing there than I’d had the night before, lying awake.

What changed was I stopped fighting it.

Every version of the future my mind had been building — the good ones, the bad ones, all of them — I just let them go. Stopped auditioning outcomes. Stopped running the what-ifs.

The fixer stopped fixing.

The protector stopped trying to protect.

And somewhere in that hallway, quiet, under my breath, I said the thing I don’t think I’d ever said out loud before in my life:

God, I cannot do this without You.

For a Couple of Days, I Lived

The biopsy itself turned out to be almost nothing. Dr. McConnell did his part, I woke up loopy, my tongue was sore enough for a couple of Tylenol, and I stayed home from work that night.

Tuesday I went back to work. Wednesday I went again.

I prayed for good results — of course I did. But I wasn’t Googling cancer at two in the morning. I wasn’t sitting across from Barb running through every possible outcome. As far as I knew, I had until June 18 before anybody told me anything.

So for the first time in weeks, I wasn’t trying to fix anything.

For a couple of days, I lived.

Looking back now, I think that might have been the first gift that surrender actually gave me. Not answers. Rest. Rest from carrying tomorrow before tomorrow ever showed up.

Saying Thy will be done didn’t rewrite that pathology report. My surrender wasn’t a transaction where I handed God my fear and He owed me a negative result in return. That’s not what faith has ever meant to me.

What changed wasn’t the outcome.

What changed was me.

For those couple of days, I wasn’t carrying that weight by myself.

Maybe That’s What It Really Means

I spent most of my life understanding Dein Wille geschehe the way you understand something secondhand. Grandma knew it. Mom and Dad knew it. They lived it.

Eventually life walked me up to a door where I had to find out whether I actually believed it myself.

I did.

Not because I knew what was waiting on the other side. I didn’t. Not because I’d been promised an easy road. I hadn’t been.

I said those words because I finally understood something I couldn’t have told you the week before:

Faith isn’t believing God is going to give you the outcome you want.

Faith is trusting Him when you have no idea what the outcome is going to be.

Dein Wille geschehe.

Thy will be done.

Grandma’s words. My parents’ example. Christ’s example in the garden.

And on June 9, 2025, scared as I was, they finally became mine.

Nobody Fights Alone

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13