DALLAS — I’ve told a lot of stories over these past 38 years about the kids who have died too young, the kids who found themselves in a fight with cancer (which is never a fair fight) and lost.
It's happened too many times, but this isn't that story tonight.
This is a story about a young man who has had roadblocks and hurdles put in his path so many times, and yet has managed to clear every one of them.
Andrew Jones is playing basketball at Texas again. He missed most of the last two years after being diagnosed with leukemia, a cancer of the blood usually found in people over 55, but also one of the most common cancers for people under 20. But also, a cancer that, if caught early and treated properly, is cured in more than 90 percent of the young people affected.
It wasn't always that way. My wife had a sister she never knew, because her sister died of leukemia at the age of 3. And it was leukemia that killed my mom at 84.
But Andrew Jones is teaching us all that we don't have problems — we only think we do. His dad was paralyzed in a car accident when Andrew was only 7. He was in that car that night. He didn't get hurt, but his dad was paralyzed from the chest down, and that little boy had to become a man in a hurry.
He took care of his dad all the way through high school at Irving MacArthur. He fixed the dinners at night, because his mom worked all day. And he still became a McDonald’s All-American, trying to escape the shadow of an older sister who was an All-Big 12 player at Baylor.
And now, Andrew Jones is escaping the shadows of the disease that has followed him the last two years.
There's an old saying that God won't give you more than you can handle. I don't believe that. I don't think that's true. I've seen the pain and grief of too many.
But apparently you cannot give Andrew Jones more than he can handle, because he's teaching us all that we don't have problems — we only think we do.
Thank God for kids.