Happy Pentecost!!

Today is the day that the church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit on the very first followers of Jesus. It is the birthday of the church! I am so grateful for the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. The Spirit is the one who gives me peace, strength and hope in the day to day.

A lot has happened since our last post. The last 3 weeks have been quite a whirlwind. I started working a few days a week but had to stop because of increasing pain and a decreased ability to eat. After a new CT scan and an upper GI endoscopy it was determined that the cancer has spread into my abdomen (carcinomatosis), the tumor has enlarged in size causing a complete obstruction of my upper small intestine, and free fluid was starting to accumulate in my abdomen. They were able to use the endoscope to place a stent from the stomach to small intestine bypassing the upper GI blockage. They also did a procedure to deaden the nerves that innervate the pancreas. The GI bypass brought some immediate relief and the nerve procedure seems to have helped with decreased pain episodes. Due to these new findings our care team at UNC has referred me to Hospice so we will be meeting with them in the next week or two.

We knew that it was very likely that the cancer would spread, but we had hoped that it would come further down the road. We continue to trust in Jesus and cling to him. We have been granted a deep peace. We have found great solace starting and ending our days praying the Lectio365, praying the Psalms (our favorites are Psalms 8,16,19,23,27,46,91,103,121,139), and reading scripture aloud to each other. We also continue to be greatly encouraged by the love and support of our family and friends. God continues to be so good to us. Each day is very different but even in the midst of hard days we have experienced days of goodness with family and friends. We even got to take a boat ride for a visit to Ocracoke Island this week (I posted a few pics).

One of our favorite questions is “How can I pray for you?”. Here are some of our prayers:

• Psalm 103. The Lord heals all our diseases. We pray that I will be healed. That my pain would be taken away. 
• Philippians 1:20. That I will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. (Some of you may remember this from one of my first posts.)
• That even in the midst of these struggles we would continue to be sensitive to the work of the Spirit and that we would not let the deep sadness rob us of the joy given us in these present moments.
• We pray the last line of the evening compline prayer used in our North Street prayer guide: Lord, grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.

In the hope of the Resurrection,
Don.