8:40 AM - Safe in The Shadow

Groping for the light switch in the radiation prep room, I decided to pull the string. It was a shrieking strobe alarm that blasted into the darkness. Doctors and nurses came running. Week #2 started off with a stir. Tackling cancer diagnosis and treatments sometimes makes you feel like a junior college transfer student heading to an ivy league school.

I met with my radiation oncologist today to discuss the radiation treatments. I trust this guy with my life---I trust my God with my life. My radiation oncologist said to me that not having a 4th surgery was risky and he was going to make up for it by adding additional radiation treatments. He was stuck between the opinions of my other oncologists. "Caught in the middle." "Risky" was not the word I was hoping to hear today. You realize, in the still of the night, that we are all in His Hands.

Every morning, I jog about a mile or two or three around 6:30am and ask God what He is saying to me in all of this. He is "emptying spaces in my heart that I have filled up with myself" and other stuff. Detaching me from dependence on any source of Joy other than Him. Walking into the Radiation Room is a good thing for me to face. Embrace the suffering of cancer. It's not about finding relief from this Providential suffering. It's all about finding God in the midst. He is so showing up for me. Not because I am so strong. Quite the contrary. My body quakes when they put me through the treatment. I walk in to face this machine sobbing and walk out sobbing even harder. Then it's over for the day. Sometimes 8:40AM passes faster than others---not Wednesdays though. They need a new X-ray every Wednesday. I panicked about half way through this morning yet God so helped me push through. That's all I can say. "Be my Shepherd, carry me forever." Psalm 28:9. He is carrying me through this.

Every evening, I ask my beautiful God to give me His Word to face a new day. Not to claim a verse so everything will be okay... but to meet my God there, the Living Word. I don't want to use HIM to give me power and strength and victory and go on my way. I want to fall forward and find a rest, a peace in these circumstances that doesn't come from relief but relationship.

I read 2 Cor 1:9 where Paul talked about how he despaired of his life because of all the circumstances that happened to him. But Paul wrote that his experiences made him rely not on himself and how strong and positive he could be. What happened to him made him depend on a God Who raises the dead. That verse so spoke to me. What does it look like to depend on God's strength and not my own? Does it mean you just keep your mouth shut? Does it mean the absence of temptation? Does it mean I'll walk without fear? Does it mean I will find relief in all my problems? I don't think it means any of that. Not if I am living in the present moment and facing what is really in my heart. "Though the mountains shake and the hills be removed, My Unfailing Love will not be shaken. My Covenant of Peace to you will not be removed," says the God we so love and adore. The God Who has compassion on me and you.

I am finding a peace I know not. A rest I've not entered before. Small seismic shifts. A little more solid while a lot of chaos as traumas of my past enter my heart and overwhelm me in that machine where I am all alone behind massive sealed doors. But no, I'm never alone. I knew there was no one in the waiting room praying for me today, no one waiting for me. My car was broken and I had to be dropped off so my son could get to where he needed to be. God used that expereince to draw me closer. I had set up to listen to Paul Baloche during the treatment, but instead Darlene Zsech came on singing "He Has Made Me Glad." My Shield. My Strength. My Portion. My Deliverer. My Shelter. Strong Tower. A Very Present Help in Time of Need.

8:40AM Monday through Fridays. I am in a machine that I want to welcome as my friend where I face my fears and embrace the Providential suffering that my God is using to wake me up. 6 down and 31 to go and that makes me quiver---how will I make it? But it's a place where I am hidden in that Radiation Room and covered by His Hand. And I don't know how. But He is giving me courage to live my life truthfully and deal with my feelings of failure rising up. "I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of My Hand." Isaiah 51;16.
If you remember around 8:40AM any day of the week, would you say a prayer for me that God keeps me safe in that Shadow. Love to each of you! Bev

Written at: 4:05:06 on 07.08.09