The Sender: A Story About When Right Words Make All The Difference

by Kevin Elko

“Remember you’re being pruned, honey. Get better, not bitter.”

“Get better, not bitter.”

These merge into a simple idea: be better, not bitter. You are getting pruned. You are being tested for endurance. You should be doing back flips. Be happy for endurance. Be happy for long-suffering. You should throw a party. It teaches you patience.

To get close to God, get into the things that He’s into. He’s into the poor, He’s into the suffering, He’s into the lonely, and He’s into the sick. That’s what God is into.

Even in the middle of whatever he’s going through, he took time out to be kind and through the awful pruning, he got closer to God.

Lessons get learned, then lessons get tested.

You’ll be tested. You are going to come out of here and you are going to be more drawn to people and more drawn to helping people and being kinder than you’ve ever been. That’s your test. The tree will be pruned and where it’s pruned, it will bear fruit. You were selected to be pruned. A...

Go into this thing, Charlie, just send a message—send everything a message—send cancer this message with everything you are doing, “I ain’t quittin’. I’m not stopping. You bring whatever you’ve got. I’m punching you back.” And then sooner or later, like in a ball game, they get the message. He ain’t quitting.

You go into this thing cold-blooded. “I’m here to get the job done. You bring whatever you’ve got to bring, but I’m not quitting. For my wife, I’m not quitting. For my daughters, I’m not quitting. You bring whatever you’ve got to bring, I really don’t care.”

You tell all your assistant coaches of the cancer team that you are not quitting. You tell the Mike Tyson of the cancer team, “Bite my ear, I’m going to keep boxing.” Protect your ears, Dog. Your hair’s gone. That’s a bad look. You just send a message to everybody—“I’m not going to quit. No ears, I’m not quittin’. The spirit will not surrender here.”

if you really want something to stick in your mind, share it out loud twice in one day, consciously, purposefully, intentionally.

“I’m strong if you’re strong, Charlie.

I’m here to talk about life. Your life. Cancer has a way of prioritizing the clutter in your mind and focusing you on what’s important. Imagine if tomorrow you went to the doctor and they told you to forget all your dreams. You’ve got cancer now and your life is in eminent danger. Forget whatever job or career you have or hope you’re going to have. Forget your big dreams of being free and maybe going on to college or the military or just working. Forget it all. None of them are going to happen. You just have one job, stay alive, and there are no guarantees. Trust me, that news would change you instantly.”

I learned a very cold truth: cancer don’t care.”

“Cancer doesn’t care what my dreams or aspirations are. It doesn’t care if I beat it or not. It doesn’t care if I live or die. It just doesn’t care. So let me give you some advice: you better care. I’m not speaking to you as a coach, a teacher, your dad, an elder, or a wise guy . . . just as a friend. Your friend. Get after your dreams now. Don’t wait. Don’t blame your circumstances. Don’t doubt yourself. Don’t talk yourself out of it. No, take action now . . . because cancer doesn’t care. Get going and live your life no matter what you may be up against. Approach it with grit, because quitting ain’t allowed, and cancer don’t care. You gotta care with all your heart. Commit to something good and don’t quit on it. Do something good. Please do yourself a favor and do something good.”

“I’ve spent the last few weeks lying in a bed fighting an enemy I can’t even see. There have been some victories and some setbacks. I would never want you guys to see how I acted or what I said to myself most of the time, because I have to admit many of those days I was losing the game. But the good news is that I’m here, I’m happy to be here, and now I’m winning this fight.”

“What I learned from cancer is that as long as you keep fighting, the game will let you stick around. What happens with cancer, the way it beats you is it pushes you to the point where you don’t feel like fighting anymore. You get so tired and you just don’t want to stick around. You get whipped and you walk away. It’s how cancer beats you. You just don’t feel like fighting anymore.

When you have cancer and know that people love you, you think, Cancer, come on, come on. Bring it on. When I recall the way my wife and my family love me, I think, Cancer, come on. I’m sticking around. C’mon! When I watched video today of the way you guys have played while I’ve been gone, I think, Cancer, come on, come on. You bring it.

“It’s the love of others. That what’s makes you stick around. That’s what it comes down to. That’s how you take on cancer. You stick around. That’s how you win state football championships. You stick around. I’m asking you to go play today because you love each other. Because if loving your fellow players like you loved me makes them stick around like it did for me, no one has a chance against you guys. Nobody! Not these guys we’re playing tonight, not anybody! Cancer, come on! Keep sticking around, boys. All night. Every play. I love you guys. Thanks for everything you’ve done for me. I’ll never forget it.”

“Max taught me that when you don’t feel good or you’re worried, eat a Popsicle. It makes your throat feel better, then you get better.”

You just have to make sure you show up when the play shows up. That’s different than forcing it. There’s a difference between letting it happen and making it happen.

Hey, Charlie, you never know when health is going to show up, so you always gotta be in position. You have to be there when it does. You never know when a blessing is going to show up. You have to be there when it does. I’ve always thought financially, economically, you never know when it’s going to show up. It can come in so many differently disguised ways.

So a lot of winning is about positioning. A lot of health is about positioning too.

Forget about your condition: it’s about position.

Living in your vision and not living in your circumstances. That’s the position.

Gretzky’s office is prayer, pausing your thinking, staying on the vision, your daughters’ weddings, the state championship trophy, time with your wife and family, and things like that.

Use that, Charlie: stay on the field where the money is. This spot. Where the money is here is prayer, pause of thought and vision.

Here goes: you gotta separate the who from the do. When something happens to you, that’s the do, not the who. Right now you are going through an illness but that’s not who you are. If I’m sick, that doesn’t mean that’s who I am. If I am broke, if my marriage fails, I’m not a failure. Separate the who from the do.

Separate the who from the do.

You are not a human being having a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being having a human experience.

came home. My dad was drinking. We sat down together for dinner. My dad was in no mood for a serious discussion, so we started to eat. My two sisters were out on dates. My mom was working. I said, “Dad, I know what I’m going to do with my life.” He said, “What?” I said, “I’m going to be a sports psychologist for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dallas Cowboys, and the United States Olympic Committee.” My dad never graduated from high school. He said, “What’s that? What’s a sports psychologist do?” I said, “I don’t know.” He just looked at me, and I can still see his eyes, and he says, “Just eat.”

There’s just something about seeing something and then having it happen.

I want you to spend time each day visualizing. I want you to have four different scripts. Write them out thoroughly. Like a dream. Coaching on the sideline. Healthy as can be. Running up and down the sideline. Hugging your ball players. Screaming at a ref because he made a bad call. Thrilled with what’s going on. High-fiving guys. Squeaking out the victory.

I want you to write out another script. You and Eve in Florence, Italy. No kids. You and Eve in Naples. Drinking good wine. Healthy as can be. Just having a blast.

Let’s do a third script. I want you to see yourself walking down the aisle with your daughter. She’s in a beautiful gown getting married. Emotional. Eve waiting down there for you. “Who gives this young lady?” Feel that emoti...

Let’s do this last dereflection. I want you to see yourself winning the state high school championship. Getting that trophy. Hoisting it. Just screaming out to the crowd and the television cameras. Maybe yelling my name: “...

Charlie, there’s something to this. There’s been a lot of cancer research that says this visualization, dereflection stuff isn’t the whole ball of wax. But there’s something to it. And I want you to dereflect everyday. You’ve got time on your hands. The uncomfortableness you have right there inside you, go somewhere else. Use your eyes; see yourself as healt...

“I’m not looking for blessings to come into my life. I’m looking to be a blessing in someone’s life.”

Now I go by people every day and never see that kind of need. Why? Because I focus on me, that’s why. How come I never saw her before? Because I sit and focus on what’s wrong, and I sit and complain and all I see are things to complain about.

We need to redirect our minds to see the things we want to see. So when I walk about saying, “Can I be a blessing, can I be a blessing?” I begin seeing a chance to be a blessing.

Lessons get tested.

So let’s go over this again. You have to win on three dimensions or levels: Dimension #1: Spiritual. You have to win the spiritual plane. The lifting of the arms is the lifting of the spirit. Through prayer. Through pause of thought. Through focusing on what you want to achieve and believing. Dimension #2: Physical. You have to win on the physical plane. The fighting down in the valley with the sword is doing the process. Doing the right things. Doing the work. Focusing not on the battle, but on doing the work of winning the battle. Dimension #3: Relational. You have to win the relational plane. The lifting of the arms of one another is what to do when you get tired. We need people around us to lift us. I hope and pray that was one of the things I’ve done for you in your life. Lifting your arms when you couldn’t lift them yourself.

I’m going to suggest that you need to win on all three different dimensions at once. You are lifting the spirit when you say, “I will beat this.” You are doing the physical when you are getting treated and you are getting the chemo. You said you were down and lifting weights. Good luck with that. But you are doing the physical. That’s what the doctors were trying to teach you when one day they said, “Charlie, you can’t let this thing beat you psychologically.” And you beat it on the third level when you let people love you and lift you up when you can’t do it yourself.

But if there is a reason why these things happen: it’s a setup so that we can walk in and hold up one another’s arms.

Fight this thing on three levels. Keep doing the treatment. Keep doing the diet. Keep doing the exercise. Keep doing the prayer. Keep doing the pause for affirmations. Keep going to bed and saying, “God has a plan for me.” And I want you today to tell someone, “Come on in here and lift up my arms.” Give them an opportunity to love you. Winning on three fronts. And after you beat this, we are going to go win the state championship on three dimensions.

people don’t understand that good always wins. Not initially, but eventually.

Keep this in mind when people criticize you. They’ve never erected a statue to a critic.

She overcame her condition by her position, by her attitude, what she chose to believe in.

You have to keep on telling yourself something over and over until you finally believe it. You have to keep believing in spite of the evidence, then watch the evidence change. I like to say fake it until you make it. Your condition is you’ve got cancer. Your position is you are going to dance at your kids’ weddings. Your condition is what the doctors told you it is. That doesn’t even mean anything. Your position is they can’t do life without you. Your position is this is what will happen.

Every single person who ever beat cancer in their life was not shocked that they beat it. They knew they were going to beat it. They lived in this mome...