A trustworthy God

It has been a couple days since I have written. I had a good day and a bad day in that time. It amazes me how my emotions can be so up and down. I don't believe they are very reliable. I don't believe I can trust them much. Who wants to put their trust in something that is joyful and peaceful one moment and fearful and sorrowful the next. I don't enjoy roller coaster emotions. They leave me tired and confused.

God showed me this..

If you don't feel hopeful, don't act hopeful. BUT, know you have hope. If you don't feel joyful, don't act joyful. BUT, know you have joy.

Hebrews 3:6
But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are His house,if we hold to our courage and the hope of whom we boast.

Hebrews 3:14
We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.

Hebrews 4:16
Let us approach the throne of grace with CONFIDENCE, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

We can approach God because of Jesus death on the cross with confidence in that God loves us and offers us mercy because of out faith in Jesus Christ.

I think the bible is more trustworthy then my roller coaster emotions. I am thankful I have somewhere to go to lay my fears and anxieties. What a gift God gives us.

Blessings

The Body of Christ, amazing!

Today has been a whirlwind. I think I have hugged about everyone I know today...well maybe not everyone. I feel loved and overwhelmed. I am not one to enjoy the spotlight, I sorta like to blend in or be a behind the scenes kinda gal. I am really into the background work. So as you can imagine this has been rather humbling for me. I am so grateful for all the love and prayers I can not come up with a way of expressing it. So I decided to just be grateful and thankful. I really don't know what else to do. I suppose this is what the body of Christ is suppose to look like, we are called to be different, a light in the dark world. When i looked around today with the humbled eyes God has allowed me to see through today I was amazed. Here I am going through a difficult time, all around me I see smiles, joy, love. WoW! I feel like smiling, being joyful, loving. What a wonderful God we have that can turn a not fun situation and pull together of group of believers to love on one another and create joy and peacefulness out of it all.

I love my God. He is awesome. I am humbled and thankful and even joyful because He has allowed me into His presence and He has allowed me to see what the body of Christ truly is.

Romans 12

Blessings

Philippians 4:7...and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

So thankful for God's promises in the bible. We have experienced this peace. It is amazing! I think I might be addicted to it. Thank you once again to all of you who have prayed and prayed for me and my family.

The doctor was a very nice man. He seemed very knowlegable and we liked him a lot. He would like us to begin radiation and chemotherapy after we undergo a PET scan which should be within the next few days.

I know we have prayed God's will in this situation and I believe this is the best path for my recovery and for my family. I am thankful we are now on a path, have some direction.

My treatment will consist of chemo once a week for 5-6 weeks and radiation 5 times a week for 5 weeks. I believe there will be another round of radiation after that....it is hard to remember all the details....

I am assuming it will take us a few times around to see how this all works, but then we will all fall into a routine. I am thankful to my mom that has gone before me in this one so that all the talk of chemo and radiation wasn't as scarey and foreign to me. And she went through it with Gods grace displayed so well for my entire family I have a beautiful example to follow.

Please continue to pray for God to go before us as He has all along. The journey is so much less scarey and treacherous when you know your God has gone ahead of you to prepare the path, and that He walks beside you on the journey. What an awesome God!

Blessings

Belief, not understanding

I love Streams in the desert devotional. I give it to everyone I can who is going through a difficult season in their lives. I read this today and it really touched me so I thought I would share it.

Belief, Not Understanding

"Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" (John 11:40).

Mary and Martha could not understand what their Lord was doing. Both of them said to Him, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Back of it all, we seem to read their thought: "Lord, we do not understand why you have stayed away so long. We do not understand how you could let death come to the man whom you loved. We do not understand how you could let sorrow and suffering ravage our lives when your presence might have stayed it all. Why did you not come? It is too late now, for already he has been dead four days!"

And to it all Jesus had but one great truth: "You may not understand; but I tell you if you believe, you will see."

Abraham could not understand why God should ask the sacrifice of the boy; but he trusted. And he saw the glory of God in his restoration to his love. Moses could not understand why God should keep him forty years in the wilderness, but he trusted; and he saw when God called him to lead forth Israel from bondage.

Joseph could not understand the cruelty of his brethren, the false witness of a perfidious woman, and the long years of an unjust imprisonment; but he trusted, and he saw at last the glory of God in it all.

Jacob could not understand the strange providence which permitted the same Joseph to be torn from his father's love, but he saw the glory of God when he looked into the face of that same Joseph as the viceroy of a great king, and the preserver of his own life and the lives of a great nation.

And so, perhaps in your life. You say, "I do not understand why God let my dear one be taken. I do not understand why affliction has been permitted to smite me. I do not understand the devious paths by which the Lord is leading me. I do not understand why plans and purposes that seemed good to my eyes should be baffled. I do not understand why blessings I so much need are so long delayed.

Friend, you do not have to understand all God's ways with you. God does not expect you to understand them. You do not expect your child to understand, only believe. Some day you will see the glory of God in the things which you do not understand.
--J. H. McC

"If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within, and all God's working see,
We might interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.

"But not today. Then be content, poor heart;
God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold.
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart--
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.

"And if, through patient toil, we reach the land
Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, may rest,
When we shall clearly know and understand,
I think that we shall say, 'God knew best."'

Thank You

Tomorrow we visit a new doctor....please pray for God to go before us, to prepare our way. I am also praying for good news...

I am so thankful for all of you and all your prayers and encouraging words for me and my family. You have encouraged us over and over and showed us how the family of God works. You have uttered your love for us over and over and offered yourselves for whatever we might need. All this has been a humbling experience for someone like me who would rather do for others. I love all of you and I want you to know how you have stretched and challenged my prayer life, it will never be the same.

Thank you more than I can express for how you have ministered to me and my family. How you have truly shown the love of Christ in our lives.

Blessings

Prepare

Well...the reality has hit me. No, not the cancer...the realization I will very mostly likely be in bed for at least two weeks! Ok, that is crazy! So, now I feel I must prepare. But what exactly do you prepare for? My sweet and completely capable husband keeps reminding me he knows where to find me if he has a question....I guess I won't be going to far ;). Well I can think of a million things that I have meant to do for a while now....clean out the kids rooms, clean the cupboards, organize the closets, make some cookies....
I suppose we all have a never ending to do list. But I was thinking, where do we put God on our to do list? Is he on the top where He should be or is He somewhere in the middle...maybe towards the bottom? I think God has been in all those places at different times in my life. Life gets so busy...there is so much to do. I really want God to be at the top of my to do list. He deserves it. He allows me breath everyday...He has given me peace in my storm, given me friends and family to pray for me and my family when I just can't.
God is so good to us. He desires a relationship with us, it is really all He wants from us. If we would just take the time to read and study His word we would grow to know Him more and more everyday. Our trust in Him would grow and we would walk joyfully in His presence.
I want to grow in my knowledge of Christ. I want to do it in my good times not just my struggles. I want to have Him on the top of my to do list everyday.

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, by fools despise wisdom and instruction.

2 Peter 3:17-18

Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

Blessings

Normalness

For someone who didn't go to the doctor for way to long...I am now a huge fan of regular doctor appointments :). But I am so excited that I have already encouraged a friend to go to the doctor and she is glad she did because she has some medical issues. And she is encouraging people to go now too. Finding praises in my storm already.

We told the kids today that Mommy would be seeing the doctors frequently and that I would be having surgery. They were fairly unimpressed and promptly asked if they could resume the video game they were playing....so much for that fear!

I suppose this week will be interesting as more and more people hear about my cancer. My mom wrote a cool poem while she was going through Chemotherapy. It talks about how cancer patients are sometimes looked at differently when they are just regular people going through a struggle. I will hunt it down and put it on here.

Side note....we were out tonight at a school function and when we arrived home we found a dead bird that the dog had brought in while we were gone! Such a bad dog!

Life does continue on in its normalness.....and God always seems to have a sense of humor.

Blessings

Gynecologic Oncology

Made the appointment for our next step. We will be going to a specialized oncology gynecology next Wednesday, March 28th. We would appreciate your continued prayers as that appointment approaches. We will be discussing our options. Please pray we will be able to communicate well with the doctor and that we will be able to take everything in as I know these appointments can be a bit overwhelming.

Thank each and everyone of you for your continued prayers.

Love you all.

Blessings

The beginning

Somehow, although it seems impossible, I believe I had assumed those words could never be uttered to me. You have cancer. I really don't know why. I am not the type of person who doesn't think unpleasant things can occur in my life. I think I just felt that we had dealt with this enough. I mean my mom is a breast cancer survivor and my mother in law has passed away from cancer, my father in law even had a journey into the world of cancer. I suppose I just assumed our time had been done in this area.

Well, we had our suspicions for a while....I will spare you all the details. I had been extremely delayed in going to a doctor of any sort. I was busy, having babies, raising toddlers, dealing with fathers who had dymensia, mothers with breast cancer, in laws with cancer. Then school started...well that can keep you pretty busy too.

So finally the time had come to make the appointment. I was nervous, they might scold me, I had been bad, right? Well it went well no one even scolded me, they were nice it was easy and I thought, "well this was painless, why did I wait so long.." Everything came back ok...except....well "the bleeding didn't seem normal and I have some concerns, we can't really get an accurate pap smear." So off to another doctor I go.

There was several appointments, I think God was just allowing us time to settle in to these thoughts, and finally the diagnosis was made. Cervical cancer.

Of course in my heart I already knew. I had been dealing with this with God for a little while now. I was peaceful. I had shared it with a few people and I knew I was being prayed for constantly. But really even before that, God was working on my heart.

I can be a bit of a control freak, those of you who know me well are not surprised by that statement. Especially when it involves my children. I found myself struggling with the big C word and wondering how it would effect them. I told God, my biggest desire is to just be able to raise them, to grow old with my husband, to see the amazing man my son becomes, to help my daughter raise her 20 children..... I suppose everyone who is told they have cancer struggles with this for some reason. We want to have some guarantee of our life span. If I can only do this God....

Well God swiftly started working on this in me.

Psalm 139:13-16

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Wow! God was telling me that whether I have cancer or not a spec of disease in my body He knows the days that I will be on this earth and this sudden news, which was no surprise to him, had not changed that. That was such an Ah Ha moment for me.

So here we are...

In between the diagnosis and what comes next.

God has already worked in me so much in this short amount of time. I feel He has shown me so much mercy and love. He has allowed my to walk in His peace, a peace that can even bring joy in our trials. It amazes me that God can feel so close to us in our trials. It is almost like He just wraps His HUGE, LOVING arms around us and says.."walk in me and experience my peace while we travel this road together"

Hebrews 13:5

..."never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

Now that is a promise I can count on.

So we go from here. On to more doctors (I am still praying no one will scold me :)

I know some days might be hard, But I know that cancer isn't to big for my BIG God so that puts it all into perspective for me. I will continue to praise and trust Him because I know He will continue to hold me and to guide me on this journey.

Blessings.