Well-known Information Technology Specialist, Clifton James, is grateful today after surviving an ordeal with cancer. His gratitude was openly expressed at a special thanksgiving service which he initiated at St Mary’s Anglican Church on Saturday evening, January 25. He held the following brief conversation with The Anguillian before entering the Sanctuary to speak further on the matter:
Q. It is a very sobering moment for you. What are your thoughts?
A. Most definitely. It is ten years since my major surgery and I am celebrating ten years as a cancer survivor, having met all the odds.
Q. You are obviously open about this personal matter – what more do you wish to say?
A. I suffered from head and neck cancer and I have been cancer-free for the past eight years. My surgery was done in Miami, South Florida, in January 2004 at an astronomical figure.
Q. What motivated you to have this thanksgiving service?
A. I have been visiting the Anglican Church for the past three years. I have children that were baptised as Anglicans so I have always been between the Anglican Church and the Methodist Church. I made a pledge that if I survive for ten years I will have a service of thanksgiving to give God thanks, and that is what I am here doing this evening.
Mr James was joined at the service by a number of other cancer survivors and friends. He was welcomed by the Rt Rev. Errol Brooks who commended him for returning to give God thanks for his recovery. The homily was delivered by Methodist Supernumerary Minister, Rev Cecil Weekes, and Rev Samuel Knight, Assistant Anglican Priest, played the organ.
Rev Weekes also commended Mr James for his expression of gratitude to God. He reflected on a number of Scripture-based revelations as to what was the essence of thanksgiving. One of his reflections was about the ten lepers who were cleansed, nine of whom “simply put on their old garment of ingratitude and thanklessness towards God and went their way. But one turned back and prostrated himself before the Lord, with grateful praise and thanksgiving for his healing.”
Rev Weekes likened Mr James to that grateful person. “Thanks be to God – our brother, Clifton, is not like one of the nine,” he stressed. “We rejoice with you in your expressed gratitude to God for His healing of your body.”
During the service, Mr James said his father was also a survivor of prostate cancer for ten years – but eventually died from diabetic complications. He saw cancer as a heredity disease but did not know that in his case it would have affected his head and neck.
He was grateful to Dental Surgeon, Dr Cullen Mussington, Dr Lowell Hughes and the then visiting Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon, Dr Pascal, for assisting him in the early detection of the health condition and arranging for the required tests to be done. He spoke about one of his meetings with the consulting surgeon in Miami who told him that the surgery was a life and death matter with a 50/50 chance. “I put my faith in God,” Mr James said. “I prayed about it and asked Him for guidance and He told me to go through with it.”
Mr James recalled that the doctor said to him: “What you are facing will certainly take 4-5 hours [of surgery]. If I come out before that time, it means it is not good. I will sew you up and send you back to Anguilla to enjoy the rest of the days you have left. If I am still with you, that means I am working and there is hope.” Mr James also recalled telling his family: “I don’t know how I am going to look when I come back. But whatever changes God deems necessary, I am prepared to accept them – no matter how I look, I will accept me; too bad for others. I was positive and never doubted.”
His surgery took 10 and a half hours. “I am here as a testimony of what God can do, and that faith works in no uncertain terms. You must have faith in God,” James declared. “As I said, I made a promise to myself and my God, that if I survived ten years I would have a service of thanksgiving – and that is why I am here this evening.
“There are many cancer survivors here and those of us who have been there know what it is like. We know what the challengers, doubts and depressions are like. But it is all about having a positive attitude and faith in God – we can overcome.”
