LIVE A LIFE OF NO REGRETS!!: Oh, I'm Healthy Alright :)

Quote from "Stepping Heavenward" by Mrs. E. Prentiss

"She says I shall now have one mouth more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music and drawing.

Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other.

Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which dwells is worthy of all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other dear darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, wondrously blest!"

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Oh, I'm Healthy Alright :)

One of the funniest comments I've received from a couple of different doctors at different times was when I've been told "You are really healthy, you know, except for the cancer." Today was the beginning of week two of chemo and I was told that my iron is still too low but higher than last week. My blood pressure was back to normal 110/60 instead of the higher for me 124/87. It was the weight I couldn't believe. Despite the sickness and lack of eating, I gained FOUR WHOPPING POUNDS! Thanks for the prayers to be healthy guys but trust me my weight doesn't need to get any "healthier", :) happy

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I'm still reading "When God Weeps" when I'm sitting at the oncologist's office. It is a fantastic book on suffering that I didn't think I needed to read but am so glad that I decided to. The following is a great paragraph from the chapter on "Heaven's Dirty Laundry."

"Eden's lost innocence opened sluice gates of sorrow beyond telling. It will take heaven to dry it all up---to provide the total picture that will ease our hearts for ever.

Why do we doubt? At bottom, we're uncomfortable with these truths, because we're sinful. By nature we all wish God were a few notches lower---a diety lofty enough to help in our trials but not so....uncomfortable."

Ouch! This chapter told us how faith is hard and even in the Psalms it tells us how God hides. Proverbs 25:2 says "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter." "He plays his hand close to the vest; he never shows all his cards." This is so true. We want a BIG GOD but sometimes our finite minds want to totally understand an infinite, all-powerful God. We think we know what's best and cannot believe He would allow anything different. We make a God of our own imagination and don't get to know the God of the Bible.

This chapter ended with a quote from one of my favorite books "The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. If you don't know the story, the lion represents Jesus.

"Is---is he a man?" asked Lucy
"Aslan a man! said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is king of the wood and the son of the great Emporer -Beyond-the-Sea.   Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts?   Aslan is the lion---the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ohh!" said Susan.   "I thought he was a man. Is he---quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But He's good. He's the King I tell you."

Don't you just love this picture of Christ!   Of course He's not predictable, safe, or tame.   We won't always understand His ways and know why things happen. But we can trust and know that He's good. Our God is good!