Good morning…
I love hanging up Christmas cards from people we have made memories with over the years. One of my favorites from this season is the smiling faces of the DeShelter family, a close-knit family who has recently endured two rounds of Audrey’s risky radioactive cancer treatment at Children’s Healthcare of Philadelphia. Thriving through it all, don’t they look amazing?
A small group of us, the Fab Five friends, have walked closely beside her mom since Audrey was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at age five and a half. Now a senior in high school, Audrey has beaten the odds again and again. Together we have talked and texted through relapse after relapse, hospital stay after hospital stay, circling up and celebrating cherished reports of No Evidence of Disease (NED). Yesterday, we circled up and celebrated again, a wonderful highpoint of this holiday season.
To the four of us who gathered, I gave the gift of a four inch hour glass. We touched on all of the emotions which have trickled through us over the years. How important it is to feel them all. The fear. The hope. The anger. The uncertainty. The gratitude. We each feel all of them at different times and in different ways, but it is essential to allow all of these emotions to sift through us like specks of sand in an hour glass. Caught up in the gravity of God, feeling all of our feelings is both time-consuming and healing. We empty out and come to rest, trusting God with every ounce.
I hope this small symbol of prayer will encourage each one of us to take time with God, to take time with friends, to fully feel and to gradually heal. The fear. The hope. The anger. The uncertainty. The gratitude. All of these emotions slowly trickle through…offering us peace…coming to rest…bonding us deeply…until the happenings of life turn us upside down again. Again and again.
Emotions.
Trickle.
Peace.
Rest.
Bond deeply.
Again. Again. Again.
Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet…—healed inside and out (James 5:13-15, MSG).
Together we process life…healing as we feel…one prayer at a time…season after season.
…Sue…
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