God Help Me!

If you are close to me, you are all too familiar with the sight and sounds of my tears from this week.  I hate chemo! I am literally horrified that I have seven more treatments to go. I cried my way to the hospital Tuesday and have sustained bouts of those salty waterworks every day since.

What a contrast from Monday, I was whizzing down a zip line, screaming at the top of my lungs as the thrill of the ride sent me worlds away from everything else I know.  There I was flying through the Pennsylvania sky, high above the beauty of the earth, securely cradled in a harness, I couldn’t have asked for more.  However, it was like slamming into a brick wall the next morning when we returned from our mini vacation and I was expected at Johns Hopkins bright and early for my biweekly dose of poison.

The biggest issue for me is I am not convinced I need all this chemo. I had one lymph node involved but I’m being treated the same as if I had 25 lymph nodes involved. There is nothing taken into account that I am changing my lifestyle, eliminating stress, incorporating the healing art of yoga, going to frequent mass, taking an intense immune booster Immunical (see link at the top on my site), and veering towards veggies and away from sugar and meat.  I don’t think my cancer will come back as I am not the woman I was 6 months ago; yet I am having to submit to the fact that I am not the woman I will be three and a half months from now if it is God’s plan that I continue the full protocol, regardless of what I think.

It’s not the time, I can do almost anything for three and a half months, but to feel healthy as a horse one day and to feel like death the next makes it all really hard.  People want to know what I hate about it, I swear if I had a hairless head, no one have the nerve to ask such a thing. It is poison, it is killing the good and if there is bad, well that too.  It feels like a gnarly hard liquor hangover that lasts about a week, it sucks out my joy, my energy, and my drive.  It makes me throw up, and feel icky.  It comes with warning labels like ‘stay away from crowds’, ‘don’t cut your skin’, ‘be prepared to hate the taste of food’ (which I am fully spared of), and ‘flush the toilet two times because what is coming out of you is detrimental to society’.  It’s a nightmare, not to mention the bag that hangs on the front of my body and requires emptying day and night.  The radiation stole my fertility and while I thought I was too old to have another son, it seems so many of my peers are still dipping into that blessed wonderment, even in their early forties.

But this is the path the Lord has blessed me with. I am full of complaints yet in no way fearful.  Satan reminds me of the young man I met at chemo who also had rectal cancer, his prognosis and treatment were identical to mine, but three months after his chemo ended he was diagnosed with stage four cancer.  Don’t you know Satan laughs at that and warns me daily that the chemo made him worse, but I have a full armor and come hell or high water, my God will provide for me!

Even if the cancer did come back my God will provide, I will not do chemo again, I will willingly go Home if this happens in the near future. This steals too much from me, and there is a place waiting for me at a banquet table and all whom I would leave behind that acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, who was sent to save us from our sins, will one day be present there. After seeing God’s provision for my loved ones through my darkest days, death has truly lost it’s sting.  I anticipate living, but I have no fear of death.

I’m reading a book written by some God loving/trusting women who have blessed my heart over the years and have developed a ministry called Girlfriends in God.  They have recently published a book which I didn’t know I needed until I started it. Trusting God by Sharon Jaynes, Gwen Smith & Mary Southerland has been a powerful reminder that no matter what my circumstances are, no matter how realistic and close to home Satan’s lies are, I can take the biggest leap of faith and know that just as any good parent will provide for their child, so much more will my God provide for me.

I hope if you are facing a season in life right now, like mine that is riddle with pins and needles and the outcome is so far from comfortable or even imaginable, I hope you’ll join me in Trusting God.  No matter what we are facing the one thing we can be certain of are the promises from a God who never changes.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Jeremiah 29:11

Peace and Joy 

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  Romans 5 1-9

I love you and pray that my journey draws you nearer to the heart of a God who treasures you with the same  force that He treasures me.  Do you trust him?

A Favorite Song How He Loves Me- David Crowder Band  

Listen and be blessed