I am a child of God – Sidewalk Ghosts, Season 3, Episode 3

Host of Ward Radio, Cardon Ellis shares more than a sense of humor and a researching mind, but rather, a set of ideas that can touch the hearts of us all. 

Cardon

A willingness and a propensity to go out of your way to better the lives of others, without expecting something in return. To me, that’s love.

Cardon

Human society. I’m relatively hopeful for North American society. I think we’re coming out of a 30 year slump. I think the transition from the analog to the digital era was a rough one. The world coming to grips with what the internet did was very difficult. And there was for a long time, some definite winners and some definite losers.

But we’ve been humbled as of late. So I think we’re turning back to God, turning back to family, turning back to basics. And the basics are good. So I’m hopeful for North American society as a Californian, woke is broke, which I believe is an improvement upon all of our previous cultural exports. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were some of the biggest prophets of the 20th century, or the 21st century, when they wrote the song Californication.

They were very clairvoyant, and now I think we’re going back to culturally exporting unifying things instead of divisive things.

Richard
Cardon leans on a word I asked many to define… love. Not the shallow kind that depends on approval or return, but the deeper kind that asks for nothing back. The kind that is long suffering and patient. A view not at himself, but rather a forward looking reflection that asks us all to pause. To think, for just a moment, as to what could be occurring in the life of another. To look past what he labels “Divisive Things…” and as we do, to turn toward the “Unifying Things.” Yet as he speaks, you can sense a man who has walked into the winds of pain and the light of miracles… someone who has learned to hold to purpose… even when trials fall upon him. He shares a vulnerability…

Cardon

I got leukemia. I take a daily chemo pill every day, and it kind of turns you into a little bit of a pothead. It affects your short term memory, bro. Anybody that’s gone through chemotherapy knows chemo brain or cognition, as they call it.

But yeah, you think I talk a lot. Now, you should have seen me before. Chemotherapy, bro. So when did you find out you had leukemia? February 2nd, 2019. My daughter was diagnosed with her cancer February 2nd, 2017. How did that affect you emotionally? Spiritually? You know, what’s kind of strange is the very first thing I said when I was diagnosed, the doctor was a really good friend of mine, guy that I go to church with and played basketball with.

Really great guy. I had what I thought was a hernia in my stomach poking through my ribs, but it didn’t hurt and no doctor could explain what it was and I didn’t feel right with them. Just say, dude, you’re fine. So I went to him and he looked at me and said, yeah, this is weird. Doesn’t seem right.

Scanned me up. Think it was called an MRI or a Cat scan. I can’t remember what he did, but he came back a couple hours later and he was kind of teary eyed and he said, dude, I’ve tried to rule everything out, but you have all the symptoms of a body that’s been fighting leukemia for a really long time.

And it was actually my spleen, and my liver had gone so large from fighting the bad blood cells that it was starting to poke through my ribs, and it was taking up. My entire abdominal cavity was crazy.