May is the month that "all of this" started. May 15th, 2007 is the last day I experienced life without having experienced chemo.
I never would have imagined four years ago that I would be where I am today, especially via the path that has gotten me here. I really feel like this year is going to be, and has been, especially a challenge, probably even to rival my first year of chemo.
I sit here today and I think of the things God has done in my life, and I have no idea what the future looks like at all. I don't know if this day, week, month, year will be my last, or if I will be looking back on this blog post twenty to fifty years from now, with some new kind of trial and will smile at the journey God has brought me through.
In many ways May is my New Years. It's a line that I can look at and say, "This is where things changed."
I have a lot of hope, for as heavy as all this is a lot of my heroes have been here and are on the other side doing a lot of the same things I want to be doing.
- Jon and Naomi Musgrave essentially run a BnB in Russia as a retreat for Russian pastors. Jon had some pretty serious leukemia.
- Bob and Lynn Rasmussen were missionaries in Ethiopia when Lynn got leukemia as well and they now minister to church plants in the Seattle area.
- Ted and Claudia Limpic are currently based in Spain, but spent years in Brazil and now travel around meeting with Brazilian missionaries in the area. Ted's had cancer twice and Claudia has recently been battling it as well.
That is where I am today. Staring down the barrel of a PET scan tube and looking back at the past four years, and hopefully looking to the future as my friends and heroes have also done.
~B.
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Praying for your results.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year Ben! I love you brother! It's been encouraging to watch your faith through the struggle with cancer. If I were to make a list of my heroes you would definitely be one of them.
ReplyDeleteYou are truly living out Hebrews 12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Hebrews 12 isn't my prayer for you. It's what I see as evidence in your life.