Not Healed, But Healing | Tim Timmons on Living in the Between, Surrender & the Gift of Cancer

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Tim Timmons and I go back about thirty years. He played at my wedding. He worked alongside my dad, Stan, for years, and somewhere in all of that he became one of those friends who changes how you look at your own life. Twenty-five years ago he was told he had five years to live. Stage four, incurable, tumors that are still on his liver today. He is still here, he is still writing, and he will tell you plainly that he is not celebrating cancer. He is celebrating the perspective it handed him.

What we ended up talking about is the space in between. Tim has a rule for it. He is trying to use more words that end in I-N-G than words that end in E-D. Not “I learned this,” but “I am learning.” Not “I figured it out,” but “I am figuring.” Not healed, but healing. That one small change is the whole posture of his life, and you can see it in the biggest calls he has made. Walking away from a church job he held for fifteen years. Funding a record on Kickstarter with no safety net. And then deciding he would never open a door for himself again. No schmoozing. No pushing his way into rooms. He has kept that for fifteen years, and in that time he has signed record deals, co-written a Grammy nominated song, and watched Milo Ventimiglia play him in a movie.

He also talks about the failure, and he does not soften it. A church called The Following that he and a friend built and then talked themselves right out of, until forty people were meeting in an Orange County motel alongside the people who lived there. It fell apart. He calls it the greatest failure of his life and the three years he grew the most. His new song Between is out now, and he says it is the most personal one he has written. If you are sitting in your own in between right now, waiting on an outcome you cannot control, this hour is for you.

In this episode:

The grammar rule he lives by: more words ending in I-N-G than E-D
Quitting a fifteen-year church job, and why he says working for God sucked the life out of him
The Kickstarter that no label wanted, until every label wanted it
Five years to live, twenty-five years ago, and what that does to how you spend a Tuesday
The experiment he has run for fifteen years: never open a door for yourself again
Surrendering the outcome, and why he had to stop being the CEO of everything
The Following: the church that failed, and the three years he grew the most
Why the biblical word for hope has almost nothing to do with outcomes
Watching Milo Ventimiglia play his hardest moments, and finding compassion for himself
Why we are so good at moving past grief and so bad at actually grieving
The X he writes on the underside of his wrist every single morning
Cancer is the dumbest. The perspective is the gift.

Key takeaways

Timmons was given five years to live 25 years ago and still has tumors on his liver that are wearing out his heart, which he describes as the ongoing "gift" of perspective rather than something resolved.
After leaving a 15-year church job, he funded a record through Kickstarter and only got label interest once he stopped trying to be impressive.
He made a rule 15 years ago to never open a door for himself again — no schmoozing, no nudging — and the record deals, awards and film happened without it.
He prefers verbs ending in -ing over -ed: not healed but healing, not figured out but figuring, which reframes faith, parenting and work as ongoing rather than settled.
He argues the biblical word for hope has almost nothing to do with outcome, which is why he can surrender results instead of managing them.
Seeing his hardest moments dramatized on set produced compassion for his past self and taught him that most people practice moving past grief instead of grieving well.

In this episode

2:25Who Tim is and where he started
6:14Quitting working for God
8:16Five years to live, 25 years ago
12:33Not healed, but healing
16:27The rule against opening doors
20:26The Following and a miserable failure
26:08Hope that isn't about outcome
31:17Watching himself grieve on set
36:18The X written on his wrist

Read the full transcript50,789 words

Key takeaways

In this episode

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