In the summer of 2005, chef Hans Rueffert, of the Woodbridge Inn in Jasper, Ga., had reason to be optimistic about his future in the culinary world.
He'd just finished participating in the first season of The Next Food Network Star, and things were going well at the Woodbridge Inn, the hotel and restaurant his parents had bought when he was four years old. His father had taught him to cook there at age 18, when he wanted to impress his then-future wife Amy with his chops in the kitchen; since then, he'd taken over the kitchen as head chef. He was gregarious and telegenic, so more TV appearances were by no means out of the question. But then, out of the blue, disaster struck. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
When Rueffert heard the awful news, he immediately thought of his two small children. His sister had died of breast cancer not long before his own diagnosis.
"When I was diagnosed, I thought back to how my wife Amy and I had explained cancer to our kids; we had painted it as this awful boogeyman," he explained to the Huffington Post. "Now I had to tell them, 'Daddy's going to be OK,' when I wasn't even completely sure I was."
Doctors told Rueffert he had a 2% chance of survival.
"When they told me that, what I thought about was the fact that, if you look at a wall with a door, most of the area is occupied by the wall, and only a tiny little sliver is a door," Rueffert told the Huffington Post. "I thought, if I concentrate on the wall, I'm going to hit the wall -- so I have to go through the door. I'm aiming for that 2%."
You know... God doesn't even need a "door"... He can make a door where there's never ever been one. And yet, when there is a "door" people so often miss it. In their concentrated focus on the wall, they miss the sliver of the opening that's been given to them.
May we never forget that there is light hidden behind the darkest darkness!
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