Hope

Well I made it through the bad days of round five, and I am ramping up for my last round.  Round six got nothin on me and God!  Don’t mind my trash talking the chemo.  Really, the chemo is my friend, so I should be nicer.  Hee hee.  I had a few more rough days than usual this time, which was expected.  I was fighting a virus before my treatment, and that carried on through my treatment and morphed into the worst sinus infection I have ever had.  It took three different antibiotics, but I am glad to say it is gone now.  No new symptoms this time around, and thank God I didn’t have the throat pain I had last time.  Just the same old stuff I have already fought through before, but just lasted a little longer.  Which is why I am up at midnight blogging.  I can’t sleep.  So I’ll jump right in with some of what’s been on my heart lately.            

I think I can safely say that I’m not scared to die.  When this first started, I was.  I didn’t think I was, but I was.  I have been wanting to watch a movie called Living Proof, which is a movie about the doctor who developed the drug Herceptin, which is one of the drugs that I am taking.  People call it a miracle drug.  I was reading a review about the movie, and it said that the story depicts many of the women in his journey through developing this drug, and how they succumbed to their cancer, and so I questioned whether or not I should watch it.  I was sharing that with my mom, and I told my mom this past Friday that I still get scared sometimes when I hear about people dying of cancer.  But then I told her that my hope is not that I’m not going to die, and that after I realized that, I wasn’t afraid anymore.  And she said to me, “You’re right.  No one gets off this earth alive.”  Profound, yet obvious.  That is a very simple fact, but then why are there so many of us that still live like we are never going to die?  The answer is because we have a real enemy who wants to destroy us.  And he knows that if he can keep us distracted from what really matters in this life, then he can keep us from ever dying to ourselves, and living unto God, so that we never really die.  I love it.  Clear as mud right?  My hope is that my life belongs to God, and that He has a purpose in me being here, and that with Him, in Him, I will fulfill that purpose, and then when I leave this earth, I will hear the words “Well done my warrior daughter,” and I will spend eternity with Him.  That hope can never be taken from me, no matter what happens to me in this life, good bad or ugly.

So, ofcourse, when you take that kind of stand, the enemy is going to try to knock you off your rock.  The other day I was talking to a person at work whose wife had breast cancer several years ago.  As I was talking to him, I didn’t realize that after she beat breast cancer, she died of brain cancer.  As we fumbled through the next few minutes of our conversation, I realized that he was trying to protect me from that fact, but I had asked him a few too many questions that made it impossible for him to hide it.  My heart ached when I put two and two together.  He didn’t have to say it at that point.  His eyes said it all.  My heart didn’t ache for me, but for him.  So tonight I was sitting here rubbing my bald head, and I ran my fingers over these bumps on my scalp.  I have several of them, and I have asked my doctors about them, and they are not concerned.  But tonight I got scared.  I thought, what if I have brain cancer too?  And immediately I was brought back to the conversation I had with my mom.  And I reminded myself of my hope.  And that fear was gone.  And as I sat there thinking about my hope, I got really motivated to do something great.  Something that matters.  I don’t want to waste anymore time.  When your hope is not in the things of this life, but the next, certain things just don’t matter anymore.  And there are a lot of things that used to matter to me before all of this that just don’t anymore.  I’m really thankful for that, and I’m not going to let those things slow me down anymore.  I look forward to each hour, day, year…every moment really, to see what God is doing in and through my life.  I know He’s got great things planned.  I press on toward the goal to win the prize to which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 

I’m going to try to go to sleep now.  Please continue to keep my family in your prayers, and you will be in mine.  I want to say again how thankful I am for all of the prayers and support we have received.  It overwhelms me.  We are so blessed.