In 1975, I was spending weekends at my uncle Andy's house. He built and flew remote control airplanes, and let me help. One Sunday afternoon while I was standing and watching him fly our latest creation, I began to see two of every plane in the air. Everyone thought my eyes were just strained, or I must be going through puberty. But the next day at school the same thing was happening. By this time, my parents were getting a little worried and took me to the doctor.

After many appointments with many different doctors, I was diagnosed as having a brain tumor. This tumor couldn't be removed, as it was in the very core of my brain. There was a good chance that it couldn't even be stopped from growing because God made us so that the brain is very well protected by the surrounding bone structure.

The doctor came into my hospital room and told me to make a fist. "That's the size of what you've got growing in your head," he told me. I found out in later years that he had also had a talk with my parents and told them I had six months to live. He told them I might live five years if the tumor could be stopped.

I went through a series of radiation treatments, then went home. There were times when my mother burst into tears on a regular basis. The three other kids in the family didn't know what was going on, but knew something was wrong as tension filled the air.

Not being one to sit around, I did what I could to be a "normal" kid - - motorcycles, public high school, the works. Yet, in the back of my mind I still remembered that the doctor had told me I was going to die. I would either shy away from people, or take unnecessary chances in the things I did.

When I was twenty years old, God let me know the tumor wouldn't be the cause of my death. I had a dream one night, and didn't tell anyone. I wasn't sure God spoke through dreams anymore. But when different friends I hadn't talked to in a while, and therefore didn't know about my dream, approached me and told me basically what I had dreamed, I finally accepted it. I now know the Author of that dream in a much deeper way.

In 1993, when I was thirty-one, the doctor that had been keeping up with the tumor retired. The new doctor ordered a brain scan. In his office, with the scan on the screen, I asked, "What does the tumor look like now?"

"Well, right here is where it was," Dr. Kendrick replied.

©1995 David L. Hudson