Good morning…
I am learning by experience that when I am centered in God’s will for me at any given moment, I feel peace. Time evaporates. Life takes on an effortless quality, a tangible experience of being supernaturally carried.
As I sat beside my friend’s bed following her second chemo treatment, I felt centered in God’s will for me for those precious hours. Enjoying the presence of her three doting dogs and catching my first glimpse of her hairless beauty, I felt deeply connected to her and to our living LORD. Our minds and hearts held hands as we meandered through different topics. The haircut experience. The physical side effects. The challenge of letting go of what was to rest in what is.
My friend is a gifted, articulate professor, and staying away from campus is very difficult. She loves her students, she admires their stellar work, and she adores mentoring them up close, face to face. Her cancer has forced her to stay home more than she expected, giving her an opportunity to love, to admire, and to mentor from a distance. Shepherding from a distance is a huge, hard adjustment.
She was excited to spend her treatment time reading the many books blessing her bedside table. She is an avid, voracious reader, so she welcomed the opportunity to savor wisdom captured by words. Yet, with her body’s nausea and headaches, she cannot focus her eyes up close. Trying to read words on a page, even words she craves deeply, feels like reading in a moving car, increasing her discomfort. Lifting her eyes to focusing further away or closing them for a while to shut out busy stimuli is a huge, hard adjustment.
Wired as a writer, my friend thought she would journal her journey through this cancer experience. Writing, another activity requiring up close focus, is not calling her name as she hoped it would. Words simply do not come. The blog posts I write about our intimate experiences together have provided an opportunity for me to pick up her pen, to chronicle, to celebrate, to capture sacred moments along her cancer journey. Closing her journal and putting down her pen is a huge, hard adjustment.
We all go through huge, hard adjustments. Don’t we? Ending one life phase to begin another. Job loss, financial strains, or an uprooting move. Changing our status from single to married, maybe married to divorced or married to widowed. Carrying an infant into a once settled home. Experiencing the ravages of addiction or infertility, learning diabilities or mental illness. Adjusting to an empty nest or to an adult child returning to our basement. Living on after accidents, tragedies, or unexpected losses. Offering tender care for our aging or ailing loved ones. Receiving a phone call or a dreaded diagnosis, one that separates “before” from “after.” We all go through huge, hard adjustments. Don’t we?
Life is messy, unpredictable, always in flux. When facing any huge, hard adjustment, our best choice is always to grope our way to God, curling up in His presence, resting our soul in the center of God’s will, hour after hour. Time will evaporate, granting us peace, as we are carried in the strong arms of our loving LORD.
“May the Lord bless you
and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you
and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor
and give you his peace.” Numbers 6:24-26 (NLT),
Sue