Three Prayer Requests--No, Four

I need prayer for some practical help.
1. I need to drink more water. I get busy, and I forget.
2. I need to exercise more regularly. I get busy, and I forget, or else it's too cold to walk outdoors. (I belong to the "Y" which is by my office; no excuses!) I just got a wonderful book from the American Cancer Society which says once a cancer patient finishes treatment, she needs to pursue a program of physical fitness. After 14 months of kemo, no "finish" is in sight, so I need to do it anyway.
3. I need to eat less, as I'm gaining weight. That same book says constant hunger is common with my kind of cancer, and it's certainly true of me. Pray for self control.
4. By evening, I'm too tired for housework, and it's showing. I need better time management.

Yesterday was great. First, I enjoyed being with other SIMers and the Bluffton, Ohio, folks at the morning prayer chapel. Then kemo went smoothly, and I realized again how very much I love those nurses! (They get so excited when the bloodwork comes back okay.) Kemo ended in time to get to my surgeon for the regular 3-month check-up, at which Dr. Hall said everything looks good and the current protocol (Taxol) is exactly right at this point. He said I appear to be among the group for whom cancer becomes a chronic rather than acute disease, kept under control by chemo. He’s a Christian believer, and would be among the first to celebrate divine healing, if God chooses to do that. Meanwhile, I’m so grateful for his expertise and encouragement.

Today’s devotional by Joni Eareckson Tada is based on the archaic English of the King James Bible: “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity.” Like her, my computer just automatically corrected “throughly” to “thoroughly,” and I had to go back and insist on the old English. It’s the language of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, and means “through and through.” Oh, yes! That’s the extent of cleansing I need and want. Not just a surface dust-off that makes things bearable for the moment or the day. The same thought occurs in modern English in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I believe God wants me to be paying attention these days to the things He wants to clean up in my life.

We love to speak of “traveling mercies,” and we quote Lamentations 3:23 about “mercies…new every morning.” But mercy isn’t necessarily the same as evading a drunk driver on the highway, or a plane running on time, or a rest area when needed, or bluebirds in the morning, or strength to get out of bed. Mercy is a judicial term--canceling a debt or foregoing punishment. We need mercy when something isn’t right inside us or in our behavior. First I accept the revelation of the problem, then I appreciate God’s ever-flowing mercy and ask Him to “wash me throughly—through and through.”

During the summer, our garden is graced by a couple of turtle sculptures that absorb solar energy in the day and illuminate the night. They spend the winter on our bathroom window sill. Yesterday Chuck solar-charged them, and they brightened my night-time trips to the bathroom. Sweet! I'm up way too early, trying to get sleepy enough for another hour or two of good rest.

Grandson Jeremy returned to the city for a few days, so he put up a new posting on jeremyinafrica.blogspot.com. I believe he's already left this morning for a long weekend in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Wah-guh-doo-goo. Ouagadougou. Don't you love that name?

Blessings,
Carol