In just a few short weeks, millions of folks across the U.S. will travel over-the-river-and-through-the-woods to gather with family and friends during one of the nation’s most beloved holidays - Thanksgiving!

My family is no different. We love Thanksgiving! I can see it now:

On Thanksgiving morning, through the magic of television, we will be whisked away to The Big Apple to clap along with rousing marching bands, to ‘oooo’ over the helium-filled superhero balloons, and to ‘ahhh’ over the masterfully decorated motorized floats of the this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The younger children will cling to the promise that Santa Claus may well make an appearance at the end of the parade. After all, Dad, Christmas is only a month away!

Meanwhile, well-practiced culinarians, led by my wife, Karen, will prepare a delectable, calorie-laden Thanksgiving feast just in time to match our gang’s hearty, well-practiced Thanksgiving appetites. I will offer my self-proclaimed gourmet help, but will be shooed away from the kitchen. Perhaps it was because I put too much pepper in the green bean casserole – four years ago!

After the noontime meal, my fellow ‘armchair quarterbacks’ and I, stuffed to the gills with turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, will do our best to wave off the siren call of the afternoon nap. Our focus is placed squarely on modern day gladiators as they vie for ultimate supremacy on the football field. And then we’ll do it again, maybe this time with a nap.

The evening calls for hands of rummy, a variety of board games, and a raucously competitive match or two of Pictionary or some such contest of brains, creativity, and ingenuity.

At some point, the signal will be sent for all interested parties to reacquaint themselves with the leftovers. Warning: They’d better be swift and agile if they want to beat me to Karen’s delicious cornbake! Like Santa, cornbake only makes one appearance at our house each year and I jealously guard my relationship with it. It is one of my favorite recipes, though it could use a bit more pepper.

While the above illustrates just some of the traditions of our typical Thanksgiving Day celebration, we do try to be mindful that in its most noble purpose, Thanksgiving is the perfect time for us to express to one another those things for which we are grateful.

As our group gathers, we tend to give thanks for simple things: the freedom to practice our faith, gratitude that our needs have been met for yet another year, the gift of having wonderful friends and family, thankfulness for challenging, but rewarding work, and, of course, that we have the blessings of good health.

During Thanksgiving week three years ago, however, our holiday spirit, and our faith, were resoundingly put to the test.

On the Monday morning before Thanksgiving 2008, I began undergoing tests at the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy (MIRT) at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The goal was to discover whether I had multiple myeloma, as my hometown physicians had suspected, and, if so, to determine a course of action.

What had started a couple of weeks before as a routine backache had turned into the most excruciating pain I’d ever experienced. I could barely stand, couldn’t sleep in a bed, and had trouble getting in and out of a chair. Not a great way of life for someone 49 years old. Heck, it wasn’t so hot for someone 89.

The table-top imaging tests (MRI, CT and PET Scans, bone densitometry) were almost unbearable because I had to lie still on my back. And when I had to position myself on my stomach for my inaugural bone biopsy and bone marrow aspiration, the pain just about did me in.

To make matters even more compelling, the MRI findings indicated that a collapsed vertebrae was impinging on my spinal cord and a large tumor was impacting my right shoulder, No wonder aspirin and an ice pack hadn’t helped with the pain!

The doctors decided to admit me to the hospital for fear that a simple fall or accident could possibly cause permanent paralysis. Myeloma specialists, surgeons, nurses, and lab technicians traipsed into my room for the next three days and nights. I was parked in an easy chair that they had found for me to sleep and rest in.

At various times I was asked to stand and walk and bend and answer ‘Does that hurt?’ or ‘Can you feel this?’. I understood that they were trying to determine whether I needed immediate surgery to repair my back or whether I should begin chemotherapy to lessen the tumor burden found in my body. It sounded like we were looking for the lesser of two evils. And for once, I didn’t have an opinion, because I didn’t know which was the right way to go.

On my fourth day in the hospital, I assured my doctors that I would be extremely grateful if they would allow my wife to drive me the four hours home to be with my family for Thanksgiving. They reluctantly consented and I agreed to return the following Monday to resume testing and to decide what steps we would follow next.

I was admonished to be exceedingly careful and was given explicit instructions that if something were to happen to me back at home and I ended up at the local emergency room, that I should give the ER docs my MIRT contact information. Oh, and to not let the ER staff treat me unless it was absolutely necessary. To top it off, I was told to take a life flight helicopter from my local hospital to UAMS in the event of a problem. Yikes, this was serious business!

Karen and I made our way back home by late afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, no worse for the wear. Our family and friends held dinner until we could get there and I had a very tender, unforgettable reunion with my children.

The joy that we normally felt at Thanksgiving was tempered by the sobering reality that I was diagnosed with a life threatening cancer. On the outside, I was trying to be brave for the kids, but on the inside I was asking a million seemingly unanswerable questions.

Was I going to die? Would I see Katie and Lizzie grow up? They were both adopted from Chinese orphanages after having been abandoned by their birth parents. Was I going to abandon them, too? Could we afford the treatments? Would I ever work again? And so on. You myeloma patients know the drill.

And to top it all off – it was Thanksgiving. How could I possibly find it in my heart to be grateful for having multiple myeloma thrust into my life?

It is hard for some people to relate to this, but it was during this early time that I made the conscious decision that I would practice my faith and trust that I wouldn’t be given anything that I couldn’t handle. I believed that God would not abandon me, that He would not abandon us.

This didn’t mean that I would be cured, or survive long, or be spared continuing pain, but it gave me the courage to stand and fight with dignity and to not wither away because of fear. It was one thing to remain strong for Sean Murray, but I realized I would do just about anything to keep Katie and Lizzie’s daddy and Karen’s husband around and a part of their lives.

Before going back to MIRT, I was reading the well-known 23rd Psalm, you know, the one with ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death’. Although it seemed a highly appropriate and applicable verse to ponder in the pickle I found myself in, what caught my eye and imagination was the 5th verse that reads:

‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies’ (Psalm 23:5)

I instantly thought about our Thanksgiving table. I was surrounded by my loved ones, the most important thing in my life. Even in the presence of my ferocious enemy, multiple myeloma, there was joy and laughter and hope. I’d always thought that my enemy might be a person, but it made perfect sense to cast my cancer in that role. And here was God reminding me that even as I faced a terrible foe, He was near.

I ended up going back to MIRT the following Monday to finish testing. After looking at options, I enrolled in the Total Therapy IV Phase 3 clinical trial in early December. I spent the next several months in Little Rock where I received several rounds of high-dose chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants, treatments for blood clots, and a pulmonary embolism, and three kyphoplasties to reduce some of the back pain I had experienced.

Fast forward three years from my diagnosis, and I have now completed two years of my three-year maintenance phase of Total Therapy IV, have been in complete response to treatment for nearly two and a half years, and am doing well. It's been tough, but it hasn't been more than I could handle.

Am I grateful that I have multiple myeloma? Nope. But joy, peace, and gratitude have never left me – even in the darkest times. Thanksgiving will always remind that we were faced with great adversity and we chose to lean on our faith in God to push forward.

Again this Thanksgiving, we will remember the tireless efforts of the doctors, researchers, nurses, technicians, and support staff who have made my last three years possible. We will remember those myeloma patients who have gone before us and my many friends who are battling myeloma now. We will pray for the world-wide community of medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, patient support organizations, and anyone else who has enlisted in the fight to save ordinary people like me.

Happy Thanksgiving! Trust that I won’t just be thinking about turkeys and touchdowns. I will be thinking about and praying for all of you out in Myelomaville!