Some Thoughts

I've had a quiet morning. 67 degrees and a wonderful time to sit on the patio and enjoy a glass of iced tea. I'm a coffee girl, but chemo drugs interrupt my taste buds sometimes. It's like the other treatments. When something sounds good, that's what I try to find to eat/drink. A strange obsession that occurs with cancer patients - I'm in good company on this food obsession!
Reading a short book by Bruce Feiler. He was diagnosed with bone cancer and decided to create of Council of Dads for his two daughters in case he didn't survive this very rare cancer. Wonderfully creative man that Bruce Feiler. He is the same man who walked the Bible. Walking is his life. And it seems he is still doing that today. Very inspiring and uplifting.
A friend passed on a piece by John Piper and David Powlison...both cancer survivors. It's entitled "Don't Waste Your Cancer". JP writes:
"It will not do to say that God only USES our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason.. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments become cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a design. Satan is real and causes many pleasures and pains. But he is not ultimate. So when he strikes Job with boils (Job 2:7), Job attributes it ultimately to God. (2:10) and the inspired writer agrees. "They...comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him" (42:11) If you don't believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it."
DP: "Recognizing his designing hand does not make you stoic or dishonest or artificially buoyant. Instead, the reality of God's design elicits and channels your honest outcry to your one true Savior. God's design invites honest speech, rather than silencing us into resignation. Consider the honesty of the Psalms, of King Hezekiah (Is 38) of Habakkuk 3. These people are bluntly, believingly honest because they know that God is God and set their hopes in him. Ps 28 teaches you passionate, direct prayer to God. He must hear you. He will hear you. He will continue to work in you and your situation. This outcry comes from your sense of need for help (28:1-2). Then name your particular troubles to God (28:3-5). You are free to personalize with your own particulars....having cast your cares on him who cares for you, then voice your joy (28:6-7): the God given peace that is beyond understanding....Illness can sharpen your awareness of how thoroughly God has already and always been at work in every detail of your life." From "Talking in the Dark"...this would fall under the prayer of Jesus "nevertheless, not my will but yours". Those small words (or big words) can be missed. Nevertheless prayers are incredibly challenging...but the pay off is great. Learning as I go, o! please remember. My brain is sometimes a sieve.
My heart is with my family today as they have celebrated Irene's incredible life. No movie star, no rich financial wizard, no magazines covers - an amazing Christian woman, with troubles that were mind boggling to days of sitting in the backyard making a freezer of ice cream as we were playing, yelling and having fun in their backyard on a summer evening. A perfectly "normal" life lived in an extraordinary way - because of her love of God. I believe she truly knew he was faithful to his word: Fully trustworthy.
Health: pretty good. Neuropathy is pretty intense and some nausea, but nothing to create problems. Knowing full well chemo is cumulative in nature, I take today and enjoy it. I like feeling "pretty good". It's a gift.
Wishing you a good day as well.
love kathryn