Happy Thanksgiving to all who have followed my cancer journey this year!  Something I am very thankful for is how you all have walked with me through the intense challenges of cancer.  Even this week, I received another card from someone who I have never met, but they have been praying for me.  I can't describe how humbled I am by the love I've received this year.  My eyes have tears in them as I type about the love of others.

I love Thanksgiving because it encourages us to pause and reflect on the past year and the many blessings for which we are thankful.  This is the year I was healed of cancer.  I remember last February, "diagnosis month" as I think of it, thinking "I wonder if I'll be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas."  Well, I am here, and I'm so thankful to be able to celebrate with my husband and children all that God has done for us.  The road hasn't been easy, but its been rich.  I'm sorry I didn't actually post when I received the "your cancer free" voice mail.  It was during the height of my post-surgery pain and it was actually really lost in the suffering.  Only in the last few weeks have I begun to absorb and believe that news.

It is interesting too, because I look back on February as a month of healing as well.  That is the month I was healed of me.  I remember right after the phone call with the radiologist who told me the biopsy confirmed it was cancer.  I immediately got on my knees and just said "whatever you want to do Lord."  Its funny - I was finally able to acknowledge my lack of control and his complete control over my life.  I wanted to give it all over to him.  In that moment I truly didn't care what the outcome was, just that he received the glory.  

I recently heard on a podcast a woman say that she trusted God more with her son's cancer then her own infertility.  I could totally relate to that statement.  Its as though there are times in our life when we know the situation is completely out of our control that we can surrender it to him.  But the places in life we feel like we should be able to control are the ones that we wrestle over.  I spent 2019 wrestling intensely with God over my job; fighting, questioning, begging, and finally surrendering.  Only from the place of surrender did amazing blessing come.  

The same is true for cancer, only this time I immediately surrendered.  There has been much suffering and when I look back on this year I find myself shuddering at the thought of chemo, and post-surgery recovery.  I find myself begging God to protect my husband and children and other loved ones from those experiences.  Recently, I've woken up in the middle of the night a few times out of a dead sleep and found myself with tears streaming down my face crying in my sleep over the loss.  Yet, I have learned about the consistent love of my Savior.

The truth is though, next year I will need to be healed of me as well.  That's just the way it is this side of heaven. A verse I am currently memorizing is Luke 11:36,  36If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.” 

There will be another dark corner next year to be exposed, wrestled out of me.  Maybe I will resist and the wrestling will be long as the night.  Maybe I will surrender quickly.  Either way He will be with me, in the wrestling or the surrender.  But the more dark corners he cleans the more His light will shine.  For this I am thankful.

I always come on here to say thank you for all the prayers and support and provide a medical update, and yet this journey can't be talked about without going to what Jesus is doing.   

As far as my health - I have really started recovering.  I have much more energy and much less pain.  I would say mid to late October is when I really started feeling better.  I still have reconstruction surgery, and my hysterectomy (that didn't get done in September due to the length of time I was under anesthesia).  That will probably be in Jan/Feb, if "elective" surgeries are allowed at that time.  I do look forward to being put back together again.  I feel very impatient.  But, again God provides.

The first time I looked at myself after the implant removal I did a you tube search for "courage" and found a song by an artist I liked.  I had never heard the song but I needed something to play for courage.  I cried my eyes out the whole time.  I played that song many times in the first few weeks when I had to shower.  There is line in the song that says "He's in the waiting".  At the time the line stuck out to me as not important to what I was going through.  But now, that's all I'm doing, waiting to be put back together, and I'm impatient.  But that line has really encouraged me - He is here in the waiting - teaching me what I need to know.  So, I wait.  I've attached the song here.  Take courage, He is in the waiting.

I pray you have a blessed Thanksgiving and that after a hard 2020 (as it was hard for all of us given Covid-19) that you can celebrate the true cause for Thanksgiving- that our Savior came as a baby, lived and died as a perfect man, rose as a Savior to give us eternal life.  The darkness of this world, of cancer and Covid, will one day fade away and if we choose to follow Him, we will live in his light.  May that truth rest in your hearts this holiday season.   Thank you again for all your love this year!