Last night I found out that a friend of ours here in Houston had a niece die. She had battled cancer for a while and they had done some radical surgery to stem the tide of the cancer. I don't know much but I know she was young, just a kid.
Last night I found myself wondering why I am "deserving" of life more than the thousands of kids that die every day. The answer I came up with is that I am not, in any way, more deserving of anything. God has aided me in this fight against cancer and because of it I've beaten some "long odds" to make it this far, but all of our stories are different and I don't know what is in store for me.
I'm going to be honest, at the start of this year when they kicked me out of the trial, I figured at that point that if I survived through 2011 that it was nothing but the grace of God to get me there. (Isn't that always the case?) The recent "unknown" by my doctor about this whole thing kind of solidifies that thinking even further. Beyond the next few months it's nothing really other than a black hole.
It's hard at almost any age to be faced with death. I keep thinking of all the fun and exciting things that I am passionate about that I feel like could help the missions org I am part of. Or all the skills God has given me when it comes to computers, writing, etc etc. I am also faced with wondering why children die with so much of their lives ahead of them. There are so many whys, so many, "what do you want me to do God", and I am confused. I think the abilities God has given me point to one way I should be doing things, and yet the sickness in my body keeps me from doing those things eighty percent of the time. Yet I am aware that God is in control all the time, so this sickness isn't holding Him back from working in/ with my life.
I've learned overall that there is no one "Why"for anything. I continue to covet your prayers and asking God that this cancer would be healed. Just because I don't understand doesn't mean we should stop asking God for things.
~B.
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Personally, I think all of our problems come down to expectations. We expect to have a long life; I expected that, like my parents before me, I'd have the ability to help my children financially; many of us never even considered that we might lose our houses due to lose of jobs. We have this thought in our mind of how life will be for us...and I'm not sure that is a completely wrong thing to do, it just makes it very difficult when we find out things are different than we expected.
ReplyDeleteThis, of course, is said by a mother who faces losing her child. I have spent the last four years wrestling with expectations. Bottom line: I'm not in control. And the difference between we who believe in Jesus as our Savior and those who don't? Romans 8:38, 39--"For I am convince that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor pricipalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Dad and I continue to pray for you without ceasing.