izzie

I admit to being a bit of a TV junkie.  Not a couch potato.  I don’t just sit and randomly flip, watching whatever mundane nonsense happens to land on my screen.  (As an aside, I have noticed from occasional commercials that I do happen to see that there seems to be a trend toward stranger and meaner reality shows.  I can’t for the life of me understand who would want to watch an exterminator work.  Or a guy who shoots wild hogs.  Or a nasty lady who “teaches” dance by abusing little girls and yelling at their moms.  And don’t get me started on toddlers and tiaras… I have a soapbox and I’m not afraid to use it.)  But I have my shows that I love, and thanks to my DVR, I can watch what I like, when I like.  I often miss a show when it’s popular and catch it much later in syndication.  Part of the reason is I am not all that patient.  I can’t watch for an hour, wait a week, watch another hour, and let it take months to develop character and story lines that interest me.  Occasionally a show is good enough to grab me and I will actually wait for each week, but I much prefer to be able to DVR multiple episodes at once and binge.

 

My current guilty pleasure is Grey’s Anatomy.  (Like I said, I’m behind everybody else.)  SPOILER ALERT – If you haven’t watched the show and intend to sometime, stop reading.  I am going to discuss important plot stuff.

Izzie Stevens is a main character.  She’s young and beautiful (of course, it’s TV.)  She’s a surgeon (of course, it’s a doctor show.)  And she just found out she has stage IV cancer.

I lost it.  I totally lost it.  I reacted worse than when I found out I had cancer.  I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s safer to cry at movies and TV and books?  I just sobbed.  Later I said to Sam, “She’s young and strong and she’s a doctor and all her friends are doctors, and if she dies…”

I’m crying just writing this.  Isn’t that stupid?  I’m well.  I don’t have cancer anymore.  But I don’t know if the fear ever completely leaves.

I trust in God.  I know my life is in his hands, and I could live to be 90, or I could fall overboard from a cruise ship tomorrow.  (Ok, that would take some doing.)  I know it will be whatever he wishes, for his glory.  But I’m still human, and I’m still afraid of having cancer again.  I guess every so often something reminds me how afraid.

I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand and say to you, ‘Don’t be afraid; I will help you.’  Isaiah 41:13

grace

Grace is one of my favorite words.  It’s my mother’s name.  It’s my daughter’s middle name (by no coincidence).  When talking about a person, grace implies gentleness and beauty and class and ease.  It’s also a word that means to be given something very important for no reason except the desire (the grace) of the giver.  It has to be unearned.

The last few days have been ones of struggle for me.  I haven’t been the person I want to be.  I’ve fallen short, sometimes very short, of how I would like to honor and represent Jesus.  Honestly, I haven’t been too happy with myself  recently.  I also have been having a hard time with fear over various issues of the present and future.  With all that I have been through and learned, I still find myself worrying, getting caught up in “what ifs”, in worse possible scenarios.  I am a creative person with an imagination, and too much time alone to think.  The down side of this is that the imagination has no trouble going down the dark road of the next bad thing, and the one after that, and the one after that, until suddenly I am in a desperate, hopeless situation with no escape – one that hasn’t happened yet and probably never will.  I tend to spiral downward.

And then there’s grace.  Into my heart comes a whisper telling me that I can stay in this darkness of fear, worry, self-recrimination, guilt, and whatever other misery I can cook up for myself, or I can come talk to Jesus about it and be free again.  Freedom is pretty amazing.  Grace is even more so.  Knowing that I can be free of all the junk and garbage without having to do anything but ask and believe is so wonderful, it makes me want even more to make God happy.  Not to earn his favor, or to make him love me, (I know he loves me and won’t ever stop no matter what I do) – just to make him happy.

Are all the situations suddenly changed and resolved?  Not at all.  What is changed is inside of me.  That’s what grace does.

Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making.  Ephesians 1:7-9 

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  Romans 3:23,24

For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ.  Romans 5:15

 

 

not my best day

Since I got the phone call right before Christmas telling me that I needed to see an oncologist, I’ve been sure that all of this has been for the glory of God.  I’ve concentrated on trusting, on turning it over to him as many times a day as I need to, on learning everything I can from this experience.  I know that God has been holding me and helping me, because the peace that I have had has been way beyond anything that could have come from within me.

But, I’m human.  And for whatever reason, today, I cracked.  I just lost sight of how blessed I am, that I have a very curable cancer, that I am relatively healthy without severe symptoms, and that God is so good to me.   I just started crying and saying that I didn’t want to have cancer anymore.  I didn’t want to hurt anymore.  I didn’t want to feel so exhausted and wiped out anymore.

In addition, I got scared.  Yesterday, my oncologist started talking about radiation for the first time.  I don’t know why it scared me so much.  Maybe just because it was new, and I had gotten very comfortable with the idea of four rounds of chemo, then scans, then two more rounds of chemo, and I’m done.

Scans – that’s another thing.  I had round four of chemo and now my scans are scheduled for next Monday.  All along I have been just assuming that they will be clean.  The doctor has been saying that she expects them to be clean.  But now today I started thinking “What if they aren’t?”  They might not be.  During Friday’s visit she was talking about future treatment using words like “unless” and “except”, as in “unless the scan shows something”.  I just hadn’t been thinking in those directions.

So – since the purpose of this blog is transparency – today I didn’t do so well.  But I’m going to get back to the basics of what I know and believe, put my trust in Jesus and remember that he is holding my hand.  I’m going to work on not being anxious for anything but praying about everything.  But I’ll also remember that I am human, my body is under a lot of stress and so are my emotions, and I won’t beat myself up if I struggle from time to time.  I’m pretty sure God understands that too.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:4)

Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (Psalm 34:10b)

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. (Psalm 34:17)

 

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. (Psalm 42: 5,8)