Grateful

I was relieved when Chuck offered to write a blog posting yesterday. I was sort of flopping on the ground. Several months ago our Sunday School teacher and his wife brought a gift, Cry of the Heart: Psalms of Lament. “You don’t appear to need this now,” Tom said, “but someday you will.” Right! Yesterday I was resonating to Psalms of Lament. To use Chuck’s metaphor from yesterday morning, it was the still darkness beneath the turbulence of Lava Falls. Rather terrible. (Today I'm going to try to scan a slide from that trip--from a more peaceful day. If I'm successful, I'll upload it here tomorrow morning.)

Kemo went fine, and I didn’t feel nearly as whipped as I had last week. Still, I chose to spend the afternoon resting, listening, and reading. In the weekend article in indeed (the devotional provided by our Sunday School class), I read the old story about Satan’s Garage Sale. The most beat-up tool was marked at the highest price. “That’s discouragement,” Satan explained. “It’s more useful to me than all the other tools put together. I use it on almost everyone. And the best part is that they rarely know it’s me!”

Author Chip Ingram went on to debunk two myths. The first is that our situation will always be the way it is now. “Discouragement interprets the past and present as an unbreakable pattern, which leads to more discouragement.” (Has anyone heard me say, “They haven’t found any breakthroughs for ovarian cancer. I’m not even sure they’re working very hard on it”?)

Myth number two is that when we change our behavior, we expect things to start improving almost immediately. “Most of us,” writes Ingram, “feel that if we’ve made the right changes, we ought to see the right consequences happen pretty soon.” (I’ve been in continuous chemo-therapy since a year ago today. I’m taking highly recommended supplements. Above all, so many wonderful friends are praying for my healing. Shouldn’t those tumor marker numbers be coming down?) The actual truth is that I have received thousands of answers to prayer, millions of seconds of high quality of life (in every sense—not necessarily physical), daily gifts of grace, outpouring of love from friends and family. And I’ve been blessed by inclusion in the “fellowship of suffering,” led by Jesus and populated by so many incredibly brave and good people.

I'm working to make a habit of reading/reciting out loud some faith-building Bible verses and prayers each time I take pills, three or four times a day. It's a wonderful idea, and I'm grateful to the friend who sent me that little booklet where I read about it.

As I was lying awake this morning, the thought occurred to me that I'd like to connect with a local support group for ovarian cancer. (There's lots of support for the more common cancers, which have much higher cure rates.) Any ideas?

I want to thank all those who prayed specifically about the kemo yesterday. God answered. I'm feeling much better than last week.

Gratefully,
Carol