By now, I reckon everyone knows I’ve been battling insurance companies and cancer this year. Basically, I’m good, now. I rang the bell signalling the last of my radiation treatments a couple of weeks ago. All that’s left is 12 months’ worth of IV treatment to battle the HER 2 protein. Not sure when that starts, but I’m glad it’s not for a month or so.

One day, as I drove home from my radiation treatment with the hubs in the passenger seat, he started slumping to the side, dizzy and feeling awful. We were less than a block from the house when I turned around and drove back to town. Long story short, he wound up in the ER with a tentative diagnosis of heat exhaustion.

Not long after that, I came out of radiation and found him slumped to the side in the waiting room. We went straight to the ER from there.

During this time, a close family friend was going with Mom to her doctor appointments. An X-ray showed a spot on her lung. A CT Scan confirmed there was a spot on her lung, and a PET scan–which makes cancer cells light up–lit up places in both her lung and her throat. Since I was having radiation daily, and since neither my husband nor I felt safe driving that far and back to go with her to her appointments, I learned of everything by phone call. I have no living siblings, so I’m thankful for Mom’s “adopted” daughter–and my adopted sister–Sandy.

Facing Storms

People who don’t understand call faith in God a “crutch.” I’ve got news for them. It’s not a crutch, it’s a wheelchair, one in which I can rest comfortably, knowing He’s got things in hand as He steers me through life’s messes.

When we’re in the midst of problems, God seems far away and faith trembles and threatens to crumble. We pray and deposit our cares on Him, then yank them back because He’s not solving them fast enough—as if we could do it better and faster. In the midst of storms, faith often proves itself effective only in hindsight.

Early in this decade, when we went through another triplicate of crises, God calmed my fears in a way that stays with me even now. The last leg of our threesome of troubles was a severe flare-up of my Crohn’s disease. After running me through a series of tests, my doctors here–who had pulled me out of many scary situations–shook their heads and shipped me off to a larger city in hopes of saving me. The doctors there shook their heads too. The prognosis wasn’t good.

By that time, though, I figured I was in a win-win situation. I’d either get better, or I’d be with Him in my new forever home. But I worried about Mom and my husband. Although he’d miss me, I knew Billy would be all right. He had his kids. But Mom had no one but me, and I began to fret for her.

As if He were sitting right beside me in the car as we drove to yet another appointment, I heard God say, “You are my child. So are they. You trust me for yourself. Trust Me for them.”

So I did.

Soon after that, the IV antibiotics finally began to work, and I started the slow path to health. Took five months.

Frankly, I don’t know how people go through life without an occasional push in the wheelchair. Don’t they get tired of facing everything alone? Dealing with things on their own instead relying on His supernatural strength? It’s a pity, I believe, to not recognize the One who loves us enough to reconcile us to Himself by sacrificing His own Son.

The Almost-Epilogue

After Billy endured a number of tests, a cardiologist discovered that he has a funky heartbeat and his blood pressure can get alarmingly high. But he’s in great shape. So far, he has been able to manage the symptoms with medication. Right now, he’s dealing with a nerve in his leg that is giving him fits, but the physical therapist is teaching him how to cope. Crisis #1 handled, thank you, Lord.

The cells that lit up in Mom’s throat weren’t cancer after all–again, thank you Lord! That was the most worrisome, because of her situation. She’s legally blind and officially handicapped, yet she’s still able to live alone. If she’d lost her voice to cancer, though, that ability would no longer exist. She wouldn’t be able to call for help and couldn’t see to text 911. She wouldn’t be able to handle her own basic business without the ability to talk on the phone.

Today, I’ll drive down to stay with her for a few days. The biopsy on the spot on her lung is scheduled for tomorrow. We won’t know the results until next week, but her faith is considerably stronger than my own. Her peace provides me with peace. Whatever God has in store for her is fine with us.

And for myself, as I said, I’m fine so far. Don’t know how the Herceptin will do me–it has some scary side-effects–but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

Whatever comes, I trust Him.