How Dare I?

In our line of work, we say lots of hellos and unfortunately lots of goodbyes. The hellos are so sweet. They start when we first interview with the company.  We make lifelong friends who we connect with in spirit though we may never again see one another in person because of being spread across the world and varying lengths of service. 

After God finally got Rich and I on the same page, both feeling lead to serve overseas and in West Africa, we went to one of these interview times in January 2003. We met two wonderful couples that our hearts connected with at once.  We were told to wait about nine months and then get medical clearance again to go.  One couple was going to Central Asia, and the other was going to Germany to teach at an international school. 

The couple going to Germany left the summer of that year. Unfortunately within six months, the husband was diagnosed with cancer.  This young couple after serving less than a year was back in the states. I like many others asked why this would be? They are being faithful and the term was only two years long. Why now? After a year long battle, he gained his eternal reward. This young wife was left a widow. Why? They were serving the Lord. 

Since being diagnosed myself last year, this sweet couple has not been far from my thoughts. Despite my friend's loss, God has continued to use her to tell the Good News.  Though this young widow has since served in the company office, served overseas twice, and gotten married again in the last few years, she still remembers the day her husband died, which was ten years ago this week.  She has been such an encouragement to us throughout this time.  God used this couple's story to convict me the other day about some feelings I have had off and on lately. 

Any time our time line gets pushed back and is farther from us returning to our home overseas, I get put out.  I want to be back in the place that God sent us to make our home and doing the work He called us to do.  We have been there only a few years, and there is so much work left to be done. We have not made a dent, barely a drop in the bucket to what needs to be done.  Doesn't He know there are lost people there who need to hear the Good News?  That sounds almost blasphemous to say, and I obviously did not say it like that but maybe that is what I felt. As if my concern for the lost is greater than the Lord's. Ha! Not even close! 

Then there is the matter of the actual time involved. This whole process is likely to take just over a year, and there should be no reason for us not to be able to return overseas.  One year! Seriously?  How dare I complain about a year?  What is one year in the whole scheme of things? What is one year compared to the permanent displacement that our friends experienced, after being in their location only a few months? What is a year in God's timing? God's Word says that He is "not slow as some count slowness, but rather patient willing that none should perish."  So what is the purpose of this timing? What is God doing there that He wants to show is not about me, that I should take credit for it?  Who am I to be sharing with here?  How dare I complain about the timing?

Not to us, O Lord, not to us. All for His glory!

Cancer is Not Easy!

As I believe I have confessed before, we workers overseas are often comparing the difficulty of the languages we learn. It is almost a badge of honor to have the most difficult language. This game ranks up there with the contest for who lives in the most difficult setting. Over the years, I have come to decide that whatever language you are learning now is the hardest, especially as I get older and it gets harder to learn something new.

A few months ago, I was walking with a young friend. She hated to even mention her struggles in light of my family dealing with cancer. I told her, "Struggles are struggles. Just because yours is not like mine does not mean that it is not a struggle for you." We went on with our walk, and I tried to encourage her. 

With each stage of this breast cancer treatment, I think the worst part is behind me as I complete each stage. I think the next part will be easier, but I am becoming less certain of that. I hear of others who did not have to go through some phase that I have and somehow think how lucky they must be. When at the cancer center one day, I met up with a lady a little younger than me who I knew while growing up. She said how long her treatment was. I assumed it was the same type of cancer and was jealous briefly of her four months of treatment compared to the year I am doing, only to find out how intense those four months were for a different cancer.  I had to sheepishly apologize. 

I knew that chemotherapy and surgery were going to be hard. I thought this month of recovery from surgery before radiation was going to be easy. It hasn't been. I had others who told me about it, but it is like so many other things, you just do not understand until you are in it.  I just start to get my strength up and increase my mobility, and then it is time for another trip to the plastic surgeon for further expansion. The "balloons" that were placed in the chest after surgery get fluid added to them each week to stretch the skin to be prepared for the implant at a later date. So I have kind of felt like I did during chemotherapy, just when I am feeling good again, it is time to go back. Thankfully my last expansion was today and was the least amount of fluid thus far, because I had been able to do so much already.  It is not easy. 

This week I go see the radiologist to make plans for this next phase. I have tried not to think about the next phase before I completed the one I was on that day.  In my mind, I have thought it would be easy, well easier anyway. As I look online at what to expect and make a list of things to get, I begin to be overwhelmed.  It will have side effects. I will have to manage things.  This is not going to be easy. 

I made a new friend back in November. She sat beside me when Painting with a Twist came to the cancer center. She was such an encouragement to me because she was at the end of her treatments. She was going in a couple of weeks to have her final reconstruction done. Wow, that should be easy after everything else. Unfortunately, I found out yesterday that there was a complication in her surgery and she is having some severe side effects. She will be going back to the doctor to find out why. That was supposed to be easy. It wasn't. 

Never the less, as the resident encourager to all the new lady cancer patients, she encouraged me to encourage others.  I told her that I have been trying already to encourage others to get checked out and get mammograms done as well as encouraging those who are waiting for results. She had not even thought of that yet. 

Early on, I was told several times that this is the cancer to have, if you are going to have one. It almost made it sound easy.  However, after a lady in our church passed away from the cancer spreading from her breast to other parts of her body and a friend's mother who twice beat breast cancer finds out it is in her brain, I cannot agree.  The truth is that no cancer is easy.  No treatment is easy.  Nothing about this is easy! 

Nonetheless, I have reason to give thanks. I have a wonderful husband nursing me through this process.  I have children, the four year old most vocally, cheering me through each stage.  I have parents who help anyway they can to make sure the children have what they need. I have a sister who came to celebrate the end of chemotherapy with me and sisters in this battle who keep me pressing on daily.  I have a ton of friends who have brought dinners and sent cards of encouragement. I have a God who knows every day of my life and how many hairs of my head have grown back and who meets me in the secret and quiet place, speaking to my heart, renewing my spirit.  I have an assurance of eternity in heaven with my Savior, in light of which these difficult days will be the blink of an eye. 

It is not easy, but I will yet rejoice in tribulation. 

Overcome with Confidence

As I said in my last post, I have gone in recent years to focusing on one word for the year. Sometimes I focus better than others. I have had trouble figuring out how to focus on that word throughout the year and really bring it into my life.

After the song "Overrcomer" was dedicated to me as it were, I began seeing the word "overcome" throughout scripture. I began to wonder if that was my word for the year. I began looking at verses that I could memorize that would keep that word ever before me. Unfortunately I did not find as many verses as I had hoped with this word in this context, i.e. I was not looking for it in the context of battles necessarily.  

In looking up these verses and in my regular reading, another word began to present itself. The word was "confidence." I began to wonder a few things. 

How is it that they overcame? 

Was it sheer will? 

From where did their strength to overcome originate? 

The first verse I chose to memorize was Numbers 13:30. 

"But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said,

Let us go up at once and occupy it,

For we are well able to overcome it." 

Was Caleb that confident in the Israelites? 

Was Caleb that confident in Moses as a leader? 

No, Caleb's confidence was in the One who had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians and had made a way for them to cross on dry land, not mud, but dry land. 

So how are we to overcome the trials of this life? 

By pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps? 

No. 

Through confidence in the One True God. 

So when my strength is almost gone.  When I start to feel better and more mobile, just before it is time to go back to the doctor for further expansion.  When the things I want to do are put on hold to allow an open schedule for radiation. I will remain confident in the Almighty. 

So officially my word of the year is going to be "confidence," even as I look at how to overcome, thus my verses to memorize will be a mixture of verses containing either of these words. 

Maybe next year's word(s) will be immediately/at once, since I cannot seem to get away from those phrases as well.