A Fleeting Gift

It took five years, almost one million milligrams of chemo, and radical liver and lung surgeries to subdue my stage-four cancer. After all of that, my doctors were honest: “We will see this cancer again at some point—and then we’ll deal with it as best we can.”

I knew what a gift I had been given: To come so close to the abyss and then to be pulled back from death made life feel more intense and vivid. I saw everything through new eyes. Every day felt like a bonus day, every moment precious.

I didn’t want to waste even a minute. For years I had seen mission bells dotting the roadside near my home in San Diego, California. The bells marked the California portion of El Camino Real, the mission trail that extended 1,600-miles from Loreto, Mexico, to north of San Francisco, California.

I became focused on a dream: to follow the mission bells and light candles at the 21 California missions along the way. It would be my pilgrimage walk of thanksgiving and gratitude for the extended life God had given me.

It seemed like a crazy undertaking. I was still weak from cancer treatment and drastic lung surgery. But, with the help of God, I did it. The 800-mile walk took 55 days, averaging 15 miles a day.

After completing that trek, I yearned to finish the walk, from Loreto, Mexico, north to the California border. Two years later, after cancer attacked my remaining left lung and then was successfully treated, I knew I had to finish my mission walk by hiking the southern portion of El Camino Real. I didn’t know how long this reprieve from cancer would last. I knew that when I was walking, I felt most alive. Walking connected me with God and made me feel whole.

If I’ve learned anything from facing death, it is that life is not meant to be simply survived. Life is the greatest adventure there is. Why stop your adventuring when you know the end is near?

Edie Littlefield Sundby is the author of The Mission Walker. Despite less than one percent odds of survival when she was diagnosed with stage-four gallbladder cancer in 2007, she went on to walk the 1,600-mile California Mission Trail from Loreto, Mexico, to Sonoma, California.