Sliding into Summer

This is getting embarrassing.  It’s been 19 months since my stage 4 cancer diagnosis and I’m still here, feeling relatively good most days.  The occasional nausea has stepped up a notch in intensity and duration, but otherwise I’m able to sleep well at night and I continue to find joy in each day the Lord gives.  I haven’t spent a penny on anything medical since early December.  I’m eating carb-loaded foods and gaining weight – the kind of cancer treatment I like.

This past month I read and studied “The Body Keeps the Score” by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, which explains the latest research and therapies related to healing the mind and body from the devastating effects of traumatic experiences.  While I have been spared from major trauma, many people I know have not, and it’s encouraging to see the many effective therapies now available to help deliver the emotionally oppressed from crippling memories of abuse, rejection, and tragedies.

I continue to listen to sermons, read articles, and study resources from my current favorite website: www.DesiringGod.org.  I also continue to spend quality time with family, counsel friends, correspond with some dear Filipino brothers and sisters, keep my apartment clean, do my cooking and laundry, and talk to my very best friend, the Lord, Jesus Christ.  I still stand amazed at the power of His grace to give me such peace and joy despite my present circumstances. 

On the family front, some good news for Martha and her husband, Philip.  After working part-time for our International Mission Board for the past couple of years, a full-time job opened up for Philip in their graphics and training department as a ‘Production Design Associate’.  Martha has applied to a part-time nursing job with the IMB working at their missionary learning center.  Philip and Martha leave tomorrow, June 2, for Richmond, VA.

Martha’s expertise in nutrition and food preparation has helped Sara lose more than 70 pounds since September and Jonathan more than 15 pounds in the past couple of months.  Sara will be joining the youth from our church later this month as a ‘counselor’ during their summer retreat.  While Sara and Jonathan decrease in weight, Hannah continues to increase due to the God-designed child within her womb.  A recent scan suggests that it might be a boy.

It’s been said that Christians who did most in the present world were those who thought most of the next.  When we know that our most ordinary moments on God’s “New Earth” will be far greater than our most perfect moments here, then we can gladly endure the hurts and hardships that this world throws at us, knowing that in eternity they will be but a whiff of distant memory as we bask in the ever-increasing joy of the riches of God’s Kingdom.  That’s a lot to get excited about!