Hope and Advice

Sorry to have taken a break from writing. I have not retreated so much as been absorbed getting my family transitioned to America. I am going to try to get you caught up on us without writing a novel of what has happened between then and now.

So the beginning of the week of mammogram/ biopsy, a sweet friend had said that a girls' night out on Friday would be a time to celebrate that the results would be negative. When they came back positive, the outlook for a celebratory dinner was set aside. I was at least going to enjoy being with my friends and try to forget about the elephant in the room. However, I got a call shortly after I arrived at my friend's house. It was my specialist calling to say that the results came back from one of the tests that had been done the day before.  It came back negative! Woohoo! The doctor had tried to keep her concern restrained, but this negative was a big deal. If this had been positive, it would have been really, really bad. So the fact that this came back negative was cause for celebration! We were back to having a celebratory dinner!

My doctor also informed me in that phone call that another result had come back. She said that test gave hope that we might be able to skip chemotherapy. My doctor knew my hope was to get this done and return to our field of service as soon as possible. Skipping chemo put us at a possible window of returning in three to four months. I was so excited about this possibility. I love our lives there. "Africa is where I belong."

When one is entering this type of journey, one gets lots of advice. Some good. Some not. The job is distinguishing the difference.  I had been doing really well with everything, even surprising myself. God had given me scriptures to encourage me and get me through, specifically the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I even began to wonder if I was crazy because I was not a basket case, as others indicated they expected me to be. I was praising him in the storm! Then I got the best advice from a sweet friend at church. "This is your journey, no one else's. When I was at the point you are at, I could not have been at church worshipping. Let it be yours and don't try to make it like someone else's." That is good advice for life, not just cancer!

More advice I got was to go ahead with putting my children in school. At first I resisted for lots of reasons, but most of all because William would be in middle school. That was not something I was prepared for at all. He and Mariama are both young for their grades, which was fine in homeschool. Besides if it was just going to be a few months, we could just wait until we returned to our field to begin the school year. However, the idea that they would get a chance to see how the other half lives and have distraction while I committed my full effort to recovery won out.

I had a week off from doctor appointments to get ready for my family to arrive and get them settled. A bonus was that my brother and his family were also coming into town. My mother would have all of her children and almost all of her grandchildren in town at the same time. (I was especially excited about the timing of this grand reunion because it was also the 22nd anniversary of my oldest brother's final battle with cancer and home going.) I was able to spend this week helping my family prepare for my brother's family. With less than two weeks before school starting, it also meant we had to get the ball rolling for getting the kids enrolled in school. It was not as relaxing as I had hoped, but it was nice to be together.