“Every show seems like the most important. Every caller matters. And this country remains the best.” — me, on eib, multiple shows this year

“Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God-d.” — me, on eib, almost every day since 1988

“Yes, there is talent, and I have it. There is God, who loaned it to me. And at some point it will be returned, along with the rest of me.” — me, on eib, 1/8/21

Look, a year ago, I didn’t think I would see my 70th birthday; so this year, for the first time in my life, January 12 was a big deal.

As you know, in January of 2020, I received a stage 4, advanced lung cancer, terminal diagnosis. I was shocked. And I was in denial for about a week. I mean, I’m Rush Limbaugh. I’m the Mister Big of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I’m indestructible. I said, “This can’t be right.” But it was.

What I didn’t know at the time but I learned later was that I wasn’t expected to be alive today. I wasn’t expected to make it to October much less the new year — and yet here I am. Today I’ve got some problems, and there are bad days, but there are days when I’m feeling pretty good. God is with me. God knows how important my radio program is to me, and there are days when I’m feeling natural and normal in terms of energy, feeling entirely capable of doing it.

So I’ve had a year to reflect on the things that really matter, a year to think about what’s important. My family is very important to me. You all are very important. I have been blessed. Around the time I received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at last year’s State of the Union address by President Trump in the House Chamber, I remember telling you that I had a little understanding of something that had long perplexed me.

On the day that Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse of the New York Yankees, announced that he had the disease that was forcing him to retire from Major League Baseball, he told the sold-out Yankee Stadium, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” I didn’t understand. Here’s a guy who’d just been diagnosed with the most terminal of terminal diseases. How in the world, if you’re being honest, can you feel lucky?

Well, when I got my diagnosis, I began to receive an outpouring of love and affection, from so many of you, and from my family — who have supported me my entire career, even when it would have been understandable for them to say, “Rush who?” But that never happened. I have been defended. I’ve been made to look better than I am. My lovely wife, Kathryn, has done so much in that regard. So many people have put me first in all of this, and I understand now what Lou Gehrig meant, because I certainly feel extremely fortunate.

And because I have outlived the diagnosis, I’ve been able to receive and hear and process some of the most wonderful, nice things said about me — which I might not have ever heard had I not gotten sick. How many people who pass away never hear the eulogies, never hear the thank-yous? I’ve been very lucky, folks, in so many ways. Including being given an expiration date. Most people are never given one, so they don’t face life this way. This is not a complaint.

My point is gratitude. I’m sharing this to thank you and to tell you how much I love you from the bottom of my sizable and growing and still-beating heart. And there’s room for much more love — because during this I have learned what love really is.

There’s good in everything that happens. It may not reveal itself immediately, but even in the most dire circumstances, if you just wait, if you just remain open, the good in it will reveal itself. And that has happened to me in countless ways. So many people this year have done things for me, it’s overwhelming. It has helped me to see so much about the goodness of people and their decency.

Yes, because God is with me, along with deep gratitude I cannot help but feel optimism. Contrast that with Joe Biden’s holiday message: “Our darkest days are ahead of us.” Folks, I have to tell you, if I were going to be President, that is the last thing I would say, even if I believed it. But I don’t believe it! Biden said, “The worst is yet to come in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.” The virus is what it is, but we adapt. We don’t just resign ourselves to living in the “darkest days”; we come up with ways to overcome — because we still have the greatest degree of freedom of any people on earth.

Yes, it’s under assault and under attack; we all know that. But God is with us, and strengthens us to fight back!

A caller recently asked me, “How do you maintain the unbelievable amount of optimism you have for the future,” given that the left is winning via evil? I don’t deny it’s frustrating, but I’m telling you there’s more opposition to them than there has ever been since I’ve been doing this show for 30-plus years. I’m not trying to be optimistic for the sake of spin. I am optimistic because we live in America. This is not a socialist country. It’s not a communist country. It’s not even close. We’ve got 75 million people who are not satisfied with this election outcome. They’re not going away. As Donald Trump said in his Farewell Address on 1/19/21:

I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning. There’s never been anything like it. The belief that a nation must serve its citizens will not dwindle but instead only grow stronger by the day. As long as the American people hold in their hearts deep and devoted love of country, then there is nothing that this nation cannot achieve. I go from this majestic place with a loyal and joyful heart and optimistic spirit and a supreme confidence that for our country, and for our children, the best is yet to come. Thank you, and farewell. God bless you, God bless the United States of America.

Bottom line: I’m not ready to give up. In all aspects of life, I have found — including having it confirmed again personally — there’s just no purpose in pessimism. None. I have never been convinced that pessimism is a virtue. Some people insist you have to prepare for inevitable reality. But I’m still of the mind that “inevitable reality” isn’t inevitable, that it is subject to change by virtue of going to war against it.

And the most powerful weapon in that war is prayer. So many of you tell me you are praying for me and my family over my medical circumstances. It’s incredible to me. I am so grateful.