Reality

Here we are on a Saturday afternoon, one day after the first week of the new treatment for Bob's myeloma.
Honestly, cancer sucks the life out of you.  Maybe that is wrong!!!!, maybe it is the drugs that kill the cancer that sucks the life out of you.  Either way the fight is hard.  It is hard on Bob and it is also hard on me and our family.  The Lord is so gracious to us and so caring so I really do hate to complain but sheeeesh this is tough.
Even as I have written that grumbling, what comes to mind is that all of this has passed through my Father's Hands and He knows and He understands; me, Bob and each of our kids and grandkids.

Have you ever received a book as a gift and didn't really read it just kinda flipped through it?  I received a book a few years back from one of my first friends, here in Calgary, Becky.  The book is by Charles Swindoll, entitled encouragement for life  words of hope and inspiration.   I am trying to stream line my book library and happened upon this small book.  The Lord saved it for such a time as this---when words of hope would be needed for an answer to new worries, new hurts, new anger.  

Bob is sleeping, or maybe reading again.  He tells me he feels so beaten up today.  The side affect that he had yesterday evening was the first like this and was scary.  Bob got really cold--- that is not new, so he wrapped up in blankets as we watched a movie.  Then it became more like chills and then the shaking began.     We did the electric blanket in bed, added another comforter and finally it stopped.  It is on the list of side effects ---- only call if the fever lasts????  A lady from our church who has a brother with this same cancer said to me one day that her brother remarked that "he didn't get a chance to grow old, he just got old".  That thought has haunted me in the back of my mind for months and I fear that it could be true.  As I sit and write this out in my melancholy I am mostly doing it for me so take it as an insight into our life--nothing that can be fixed,--something that has to be worked through---- first in the mind and then in life.

Becky, my friend, has moved away to another city but I have the book and the comfort from the words that Swindoll wrote about my Father:
"When we are suffering, only Christ's perspective can replace our resentment with rejoicing.  I've see it happen in hospital rooms.  I've seen it happen in families.  I've seen it happen in my own life.
Our whole perspective changes when we catch a glimpse of the purpose of Christ in it all.  Take that away, and it's nothing more than a terrible bitter experience...................................only Christ's perspective can replace our resentment with rejoicing.  Jesus is the central piece of suffering's puzzle.  If we fit Him into place, the rest of the puzzle----no matter how complex and enigmatic--begins to make sense."

my grace is sufficient

for you, for power is

perfected in weakness.

2Cor. 12:9