LIFE Today will feature Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton and his new book, Finish First, on Tuesday, March 6. The Stream’s Nancy Flory sat down with Scott before the start of the Winter Olympics to talk about miracles, faith and staying positive through the ups and downs of life.

You have had cancer, you’ve had tumors, you’ve had ups and downs in your life. What has been the most challenging time in your life and how did you get through it?

Success. Success is worse than cancer. I really feel strongly that God gives us this incredible ability to be more alive in our challenge and our suffering than when we’re dealing with good fortune. I won the Olympics and that was great. I had a big professional career. I loved the work. It was just all the other stuff around it — I felt it was kind of pulling me away from who I really was supposed to be. If you look at people that have come across great success or good fortune, it throws them off the rails, where if you see them when they are struggling or suffering they’re more alive somehow.

How is your health now in terms of the brain tumor? Is it still shrinking?

I’m still here. Yeah, it’s been wild, it’s been miraculous. You know the whole journey has been beyond description. With the first one we got broadsided. It was like, ‘What? I had cancer and I get a pass and now I’m married with a brand new family and I have a brain tumor?’ The first [tumor] really ignited my faith and we got through it.

The second one was like getting kicked in the stomach. It just knocked the wind out of me and (wife) Tracie. We just felt this impending sense of doom. And that surgery didn’t go well and we had a whole summer of trying to repair an artery in my brain which went into an aneurysm and we had to stop it before it burst. 

So, the third one came and it was like, ‘hmmm.’ And I just felt in my heart, ‘Just get strong. Get strong, get strong.’ So I just tried to get strong. We just decided to keep an eye on it. The surgery would be complicated. It’s not like I’m being lazy or I’m putting myself in denial, I just really, honestly felt like ‘STOP.’ Don’t knee-jerk or try to panic right now, just get strong.

So I’ve just spent a lot of time getting strong. Then I did this interview for People.com and it blew up. So I really felt like the Lord’s doing some thing right now. I don’t know what He’s doing. He’s using me somehow. If that many people are listening, then the Holy Spirit’s at work and he’s doing something with me right now.

And then it turned into this little docuseries they wanted me to do. The culmination of that series was going in to get it scanned. And that’s when I found out the first time that the tumor shrank. I asked everybody that I could, ‘Have you ever had a craniopharyngioma shrink without treatment?’ and they said, ‘No, they don’t shrink.’

And so, I was kind of knocked to my knees, really understanding that something’s going on here that I need to really pay attention to. I just knew it was a miracle. I called my endocrinologist. I said, ‘You’ve been doing this a long time, right? ’ and she said ‘Yeah.’ And I asked her ‘You ever heard of a cranio shrinking without treatment?’ She said, ‘No.’ and I go, ‘Ta-da!’

It was the same when I was on Dr. Oz. I said, ‘You know what a craniopharyngioma is?’ and he said, ‘Of course.’ I asked, ‘Have you ever heard of one shrinking without treatment?’ and he said, ‘Never.’ And then they [scanned the tumor] again recently, and it’s smaller than it was the last time. So, all the doctor can say is, ‘Whatever you’re doing keep doing it.’

Okay, I don’t know what that is, but I’ll keep praying. The first surgeon who would be taking it out came in and looked at the scans and said, ‘This is remarkable.’ I asked, ‘Can you explain it?’ and he said, ‘God.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that’s good enough for me.’

So, I’ll do whatever He wants me to do.

What’s your secret to staying positive and happy?

You know, you can’t take yourself too seriously and you can’t be too hard on yourself, either. You’ve got to stay in your lane. And if you can find your lane and just be content, I think you can get to that point where you realize that you wouldn’t trade with anyone. For all the tea in China you wouldn’t trade with anyone. Because you know that everyone has their struggles, everyone has their problems, everyone has their own list of issues. So, I’d just as soon stick with mine. None of us are in this alone. If we can learn to [have] more grounding gratitude than anything else, I think we’re going to be very much satisfied with who we are and be able to look at things with somewhat of a sense of humor.

Last Memorial Day weekend, Scott had what he called a “knock down” that nobody could figure out. He felt sick and then couldn’t wake up. He lost a day and a half and ended up in the ICU at Vanderbilt Medical Center. He was told it could have been a metabolic collapse.

How has God used these events in your life?

Each time we get knocked down, each time we face something, I think we can look at it as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to truly understand how beautiful and precious life is. When I woke up on Tuesday morning after Memorial Day, I was 100 percent convinced that I was going to die. And I was 100 percent at peace.

I wasn’t sad or desperate — nothing. I was just like, ‘Wow, this is powerful, this is beautiful.’ I felt like my body just was just letting go of me. I called my wife over and I told her what I wanted her to do with the kids. It was kind of my last words. And then we prayed together. We must’ve said the Lord’s Prayer probably four times in a row and then I went back to sleep. And I woke up about two or three hours later and she was still standing next to my bed and I felt a lot better. I thought ‘I feel a lot better, this is really weird!’

Then coming out of it, I thought ‘So that’s what it feels like to kind of come to the end.’ I feel like I know what that feels like now. And I’m okay. That’s fine. Whenever the Lord wants to take me I’m good to go. Of course there’s a million things I want to do here. I want to suck every molecule of oxygen I can. But at the same time, you know, our journey is our days. We live our days and we make the most of each one and we try to do it positively, by being obedient and [having an] understanding that we’re here by His grace and mercy.