April Loves

There are so many reasons to love April.

One of my so many reasons is that my chemo treatments ended last April and my hair started growing back.

Well, to be honest, I am not completely certain it is "my" hair that has been growing back.

Mine was mostly a mix of brown, auburn and silver. It was also straight.

This hair is mostly white, silver and black.  And it is curly!

It would appear that I have someone else's hair.

I'm not complaining though. I plan to keep it.

I would say I love it, but I learned long ago to save love for people.

But I really really do like my new hair.

On New Beginnings

I always love to see April come around.

Everywhere around you, it seems, you can see new starts, new beginnings.

When we lived in England, there was a field we passed where the lambs would be out, and seriously... bouncing in the fields!  I love April!

It is also the month that I first discovered the great love that Jesus has for me.

I had been taught that Jesus loved me, even as a child.  I heard that when He died on the cross, He died for me. 

I just did not see how it applied to me.

It wasn't that I lived a sinless life.  I still don't.

Maybe you struggle with sin yourself. 

Or maybe you don't. 

I lived each day under the impression that everyone would go to Heaven when they died and that sin was not a really big issue.

That somehow God would ignore the bad and focus on the good.

I thought that my good deeds were like bricks that would be used to build the mansion that would be my home.  I did not begin to think that my mansion would be grand.  I was certain it was going to be roofless and without a few walls. 

I just assumed it would be there, somewhere on the inside of that wonderful place.

The only problem is that the Bible doesn't teach that.

It teaches a much more beautiful truth.

And I learned it on a night in April - only months from high school graduation. 

A friend invited me to go with her to church, and I said yes.

I still remember what the speaker said.

He started by asking how many people there had told a lie.  He actually asked for a show of hands.  I wasn't about to raise my hand – until I saw everyone else raise theirs.

Then he asked for another show of hands, this time for stealing – even if it was an answer on a homework assignment.  Once again, all hands went up.  Mine included.

This visiting preacher turned to the pastor of the church and said, “Pastor, You have a congregation of liars and thieves!”.  

And we all laughed.

When the laughter died down, he looked at us again and said it was really not a laughing matter.  He showed us how the Bible says in Romans 3:23 that ALL have sinned and “come short” of the glory of God. 

That simply means that our goodness will never be good enough.

At that point, I felt utterly hopeless. I had already blown it before I knew it could be blown. There was no chance of Heaven for me.  Not even in a half finished roofless hut.

While he talked of other things, my mind reeled.  Then, he shared  Romans 5:8 which says that God showed His love (that amazing indescribable love) toward us in that WHILE we were YET sinners, Christ died for us.

God had already made other arrangements.    

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. “ 

(John 3:16 – the Message) 

Jesus came to earth and lived the only perfect life so that He could take the punishment for us, and for our sin.

I began to understand the reason for the cross and why He died.  

Why He would die for ME is not something I will ever grasp.  It still overwhelms me.

That night, though, I saw His love differently, and He took my breath away. 

I asked Him to forgive me for the way I was living.  I asked Him to be MY savior. 

To change me. 

To make me His own.

He did all of that and more.  He began a change in my heart that is still ongoing.  He is making me more and more like Him.  How humbling is that?  That one day, this liar and thief will be somehow in some way like Him?

That night was just the beginning of change for me. 

In the next four months I saw my family make the same decisions to follow Christ.  One of my three sisters, the one closest in age to me, asked Jesus to be her Savior at Vacation Bible School.  Two men knelt with my Dad in our living room one night as he invited Christ to make changes in his life and become his Lord.  And one amazing Sunday morning, my mother made the same decision.  Our home life had some major changes take place.  We started going to church together.  My youngest sisters grew up in church.  There were Bibles scattered all around the house.  

And they were read… not just for decoration. 

That one night began making a forever difference for us all. 

Perfection?  Not in this life! 

Just Loved and Forgiven.


                                          _________________________

The Love of God (lyrics to the last verse)
"Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky."

                                         __________________________

Have you been counting on your own goodness?  That you will be able to go to Heaven based on having lived a good life?

It won’t ever be good enough.

If it could be, then there would have been no need for a cross … for THE cross.

He is the way for you to get to God.  He is the only way.  He said so Himself.  What you need to do is start by giving up.  Give up trying to live your life your way, admit that you have sinned, and ask Him to give you a new start, a new life, a new heart.  Put your trust in Him and His way…

He loves you so much!

On Patients and their Docs

An important relationship exists between a patient and their doctor. If you don’t feel you can trust them, you might question the suggestions they have for your care.  Trust is crucial.  It doesn’t happen quickly, but this relationship can grow to become one of the most important in your life. 

I have that kind of relationship with my oncologist, but during our initial appointment, I was not so sure.

Her first comments after introducing herself were, “So, tell my why you are here.”

“My primary doctor sent us here.”

“No, I mean what is the reason that you have been sent here, and are sitting in my office?”

“I have some kind of  'metastatic malignancy’.” (at least that was the terminology used on my biopsy report)

“That doesn’t tell me anything!”

And that was all within the first two minutes of shaking hands.

While I wondered what in the world more she wanted from me, she started talking. Really fast!

About tests already done and tests still to be ordered. 

About the possible sources of my cancer, a Cancer of Unknown Primary.

After she examined me our conversation continued, mostly about me and Bud. How did we meet? How long had we been married? I told her how we had met in church, and how our church honors 50^th anniversaries and above by placing the couple’s pictures up on large screens.  I shared how I counted anniversaries backwards; a sort of countdown for how many years we had left until we could get our pictures shown in church. She went on.  Did we have children? Grandchildren?  What about work, what did I do? We talked about our family and our life in general. After setting up the next appointment time and some imaging tests, we left. 

As we were walking out of her office she said, “So we are shooting for 50, right?” 

I’m sorry, but I was already past 50. What was she thinking?

“No!”

Bud however, completely understood where she was going with that question and said, “We want 70”

And then I realized she was talking about our anniversaries.

I walked away from there not knowing any more about this cancer that was threatening our future together, but I knew I loved this doctor.  She got it.  She understood the things that were most important.  Not years lived here on the earth, but years lived together.

For about 18 months, this doctor walked with us through the tests and questions.  She guided us through each treatment and surgical decision and through it all she became more like a friend.  She once said that her goal for us was that we would one day sit on our front porch and wonder where she had retired.

In a few days I will go back for my first 3-month post treatment follow-up appointment, but she will not be there. 

I will see someone else, and it makes me a little nervous. 

Actually it makes me a lot nervous.

Some things there will be so familiar. The friendly faces of the receptionists who check me in, always so kind and sweet. The patient people in the lab who have learned how to get blood from my uncooperative arm, the only option available as the good arm is now out of commission. As usual, the waiting room will have different people, but the hopes and dreams there never change.

And then, we will wait in the most familiar room of all, the room where we will meet with our doctor. The last time I was in that office she told me that I had no signs of cancer.  That I was cancer free.  She said not to even think about cancer unless I was in her office.

I might cry.  I most likely will.

It is a first world problem, I know.  I hope this does not come across as complaining.  Changing a doctor is not a life and death situation.  People do this all the time.

Though it may be trivial, the truth is that I could easily feel that my care might suffer because of the loss of this doctor.  I have grown to put my trust in her, but what I have to remind myself is that my future does not depend on her.  It does not depend on any one person or group of people for that matter.

I know that my wonderful, amazingly brilliant and beautiful oncologist was a gift of overflowing grace from the hands of my loving God.  I also know that the results we have seen were from someone much more powerful than any treatment,

So while I will miss her, I won’t worry (well, I will try not to). 

My care will continue, and the future looks great.

To borrow a truth learned from someone I admire, I know that the amazing ability of an incredibly smart oncologist was never my good. 

The nearness of God is my good.

It always has been.

______

How do you apply the truth of God’s nearness in your own life?  Have you learned to lean on His goodness, to trust Him to meet your needs?  Or do you depend on something or someone else? 

As I learned from reading the writings of Kara Tippetts, it centers on a simple truth in Scripture. Just fill in the blank with anything that you may long for:

“_________________ is not my good…the nearness of God is my good”

In Psalm 73:28 (NAS), the Psalmist said, “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;  I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.”

A Mingled Yarn

I found out at work. 

It was just before closing on a Friday afternoon, my husband was outside to pick me up  and my primary doctor called with the test results.

He apologized over and over for calling just before the weekend, but he said he did not think I would want to spend the weekend not knowing.

I was glad he called.

It does not matter what issues you are facing in your life-
the time where you find yourself waiting is the hardest.

While I would rather not have known that weekend that I did indeed have cancer, it wouldn't have changed anything.  What I would have done was spend the weekend wondering.

I would have done what I had done all week.

I would tell myself it can’t be cancer.
Then I would tell myself that it had to be cancer.
I would say to myself , “Self, you are going to be just fine”.
Then I would say,, “What if you’re not ?”.

While he talked, I fidgeted – on paper.  I did the only thing I know to do when I am trying to remember what someone is saying.  I wrote notes to myself.  I had to do something or I would have lost my slight resemblance to composure.  So I wrote. I wrote words. I wrote numbers.  I scribbled.

He read the written words from the report, and those words unfeelingly sent my world spinning, All I could think of was getting outside to my husband. I kept wondering what we were going to do.

The report said they did not know the location of the primary tumor.  While that is something I can understand today, at the time the words seemed like a foreign language.  He explained to me that the cancer cells that formed this tumor did not start in my lymph node where the cancer was found.  It had come from somewhere else, and they did not know where the somewhere else was.

So while we knew it was cancer, we did not know what kind of cancer it was.

When I hung up the phone, I was immediately surrounded and hugged by coworkers, and as soon as I could get the words out of my mouth, they started praying.

When I did get outside, I saw my grandchildren in the back seat of the car.  I tried to hold back tears, but my husband knew anyway.  I said, "What are we going to do?".  He said, "We are going to trust God."

God had arranged even the smallest details of the way I found out I had cancer long before the start of this whole chapter in my life.so that  I knew I was enveloped in His care right from the start.

I like using the word chapter to describe an event in my life.  It is a story after all.  And that helps me keep things in perspective. The things happening to us are not just random things, but our lives and the details of our lives have an author.

What is most comforting about the author of our lives, is that the author is not me.

The author is God.  And He is good.  He is good, good, good, good!  Not just some trite phrase, "God is good", kind of good.  But deep in the trenches of fighting the battles that happen in our lives kind of good.

I have learned a lot from the stories of those who have been in those trenches.  People who knew great pain and hardships, and did not keep silent about it, but shared their stories. People like Corrie Ten Boom, Joni Eareckson Tada and Elizabeth Elliot.  People who knew their lives were not just a story in itself, but part of a much larger story of what God was doing in the lives of people.  Things that could not be illustrated with rainbows and butterflies.

We are all the main characters in our own story, hoping for a good end.  Hoping for our own "happily ever after". But in any story, the finale that brings the greatest applause to the author is not always the story that seems kindest to the characters.

Too many times, I have wrestled with the Author for control of the pen. I want to write my own story, one with a safe journey.  If I am honest, I want to remove the hard parts and paint a pretty picture that pleases me. One that could be illustrated with rainbows and butterflies.

Through the years, I am learning that too much is lost when we are the ones controlling the pen.

And having walked some hard paths with the Author, I have come to know Him well.  His love for us is undeniable.  There is no hardship we could ever face that could come between His love for us and our frail weak and selfish beings.

So I trust Him with the pen, and with the end.

And every chapter in between.

_________


"The web of our life is of a single yarn, good and ill together"
William Shakespeare

"Christianity offers the attractions, neither of optimism nor of pessimism. It represents the life of the universe as being very like the mortal life of men on this planet, 'of a mingled yarn, good and ill together'."
C.S. Lewis

Romans 8:38,39
"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love.  Neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow-not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love.  No power in the sky above nor in the earth below-indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed
in Christ Jesus our Lord"

Doing What I Enjoy

I started this Blog partly because I love to write.

When you love to write, you look for any opportunity to put words down.
And you use any flat surface that will accept the writing of a pen.
I  used a lot of different things to write down my thoughts.  I have my written words in spiral notebooks, journals, bits and pieces of paper and in word documents on my computer.

Some of those thoughts have been lost.  That kind of thing can happen when you write on receipts, take-out menus, that sort of thing.  What I really wanted was a place where my thoughts could be found.

Finding those thoughts has become more important to me with each passing day, since most of these days, I forget I ever had those thoughts!!

When I put this blog on hold, I never dreamed it would be this long before I would get back to it.

But I am here now, for what it is worth... and I am writing.

For my enjoyment.

For my fading memories.

Because I love to write!

Special Plan

(written a long time ago, but added to my blog today)

We hear it a lot... that God has a special plan for our life.

It is obvious to me that the plans God has are special. He is special, so it only makes sense that His plans would be as well.

But really.

Special?

How can such an overused word not fall short in explaining and describing the plans that God has put in place for His creation!

From before He began His marvelous work of creation, His plans included me.  Those plans included the fact that I would sin, and that He would provide the cost, the payment, of that sin.

Special just does not do justice to provisions like that, to plans like that.

But what word would you use?  I can't think of any.

None, not a one, zero, zilch.

And, isn't that what you would expect from a God who is Himself indescribable?

So I will just rest in the knowledge that He loves me and cares for me...
in ways that are indescribably special.

Random Thoughts on Writing

Writing is something that I do.

I do it for many different reasons.

I write because I like using a pen.

I know what you are thinking. I mean, who doesn't like a pen?

In my defense, it is kind of a hobby passion; the collecting of pens.

I have some that I like because they are unique, like the Venetian glass pen or the African Porcupine Quill pen.  Some have special memories attached to them, like the one from the hotel in Disney World, or the one my husband gave me when I was about to start taking notes in church one Christmas morning.  But it is more than my love for a pen that spurs this love of writing.

I like the mechanics of writing, forming letters.

I love the way curves and lines form words.

And I love words!

I love silly words, big words, short words and I love combining these words to form thoughts.

And I really like to think.

I think about all sorts of things.  I think about big things, small things.  I think about temporal things and eternal things; about people and places I love and about the One who loves me more than I deserve.

But my thoughts can get lost sometimes.

So I write...

When you want to get your thoughts together, what do you do?