While I was in Colorado, the one year anniversary of my arrival to Bundibugyo came and went. I’m pretty sure if you had told me on September 29, 2010 what the following year would hold, I would have been far from convinced.
I wouldn’t have believed that I would be sick most of the 6 months I spent in Uganda. I wouldn’t have believed that after exhausting the medical resources there, I would return to the U.S. for a (1 month) medical leave. I wouldn’t have believed that 2 months later, I’d be diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I wouldn’t have believed that by September 29, 2011, I’d have had two surgeries and a radioactive iodine treatment and spent a total of 6 months in the U.S.
Despite my bent towards desiring to know and attempting to control the future, I think God clearly knows best and it is a good thing I didn’t know what this past year would hold. His grace is present, even in the not-knowing.
I still have a lot of questions about the last 12 months. I certainly don’t understand a lot about it and the big “Why?” questions will probably only be answered in Glory. My life has returned to some level of stasis but the moments of grief and loneliness occasionally resurface. God is already showing me ways that he is redeeming my suffering and I have hope that those will only continue to abound as the years pass by.
I’m learning to plan my life in chunks of weeks (and maybe months) but certainly not a year at a time. Cancer does that. I don’t know if my scan a year from now will be clear or not. But, I’m finding the freedom that comes from living in the now and hoping that my receptivity to the Holy Spirit will follow from it as well.
A passage that I shared with my home church when reflecting on the past year is Lamentations 3:13, 19-22. It says:
“He shot his arrows deep into my heart. The thought of my suffering and hopelessness is bitter beyond words. I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: the unfailing love of the Lord never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction.”
“Daring to hope” has become a new phrase of meaning for me. Sometimes hoping seems crazier than despairing. But when I remember the neverending love of my Lord, He gives me the strength required to dare to hope.
Lamentations 3:22 and 23 are such comforting verses. I especially like the King James rendering:
ReplyDelete"It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."
When in great trials, another verse that may help is Job 23:10
"But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold."
Speaking of our not knowing the future or having our plans for the future be subject to Providence, I think some of the best counsel that John Newton offered in his letters was this: "It is indeed natural to us to wish and to plan, and it is merciful in the Lord to disappoint our plans and to cross our wishes. For we cannot be safe, much less happy, but in proportion as we are weaned from our own wills, and made simply desirous of being directed by his guidance....I can hardly recollect a single plan of mine, of which I have not since seen reason to be satisfied, that had it taken place in season and circumstance just as I proposed, it would, humanly speaking, have proved my ruin; or, at least, it would have deprived me of the greater good the Lord had designed for me."
May God be with you in both the dark and the light.