MRI WEIGHS IN

My little family is relieved. I had a good report on the brain scans. God is slowly healing my brain. The Glory belongs to Him.

ONLINE GIFT

I love listening to challenging sermons on-line during the week. Most larger churches archive their sermons with summaries so you know what the subject matter is. I am a huge fan of Pastor Les Beauchamp of Lifegate Church in Omaha. I was smitten the first time I listened to him in person while visiting his church....was writing so fast to capture everything he said. He is an amazing teacher. They have other preachers on their staff who are also very good, but Beauchamp is the one whose sermons I seek out. He is a gifted and anointed Spirit-filled preacher.

Dick and I found a series on healing that we just listened to. The American Christian denominational churches of today have failed in teaching their flocks about the biblical truths of divine healing. (Beauchamp's church experiences healings every week) His teaching in this series was brilliantly crafted with the truth from God's Word. We soaked it in!

All of this is not to stand on any kind of soapbox, but to say that this ability to access great teachers by a few mouse clicks is a lifegiving gift from this digital age!

SCAN

I need to have another brain MRI. Having some symptoms. Dick and I had to cancel our spring break trip since we don't know what is on the horizon....we were so looking forward to it. The condo owner was gracious enough to refund our whole deposit.

Ask me how much I hate cancer.

OLD ME AND NEW ME

I miss me.

The me before cancer.

I wish my new since-cancer friends knew that me. I wish my daughter-in-law knew that me. I wish my husband could live with that me.

Except for my relationship with Jesus, which has exponentially increased in richness, the take-aways have been many. Some profound. 

I have been teaching Gerontology for 35 years. So much of what I taught about the normal aging process is applicable to myself. I have the loss of visual acuity from the vitreous detachments, the loss of hearing from radiation, the muscle weakness and balance issues from the steroids, the huge memory loss. What else can this disease steal from me?

I miss the me that was sillier, more free-falling. I miss the me that was confident in walking 2 miles every day, unafraid of falling. I miss the me that did not have to ask my students to repeat themselves 3 times until I hear their answers. I miss looking out at falling snow without being glazed over by the vaseline-effect on my eyes. I want to read without the vitreous making marks all over my pages. My hair came in thin and sparse and around my forehead and top sides, no hair came in so I have alot of facial flesh. Too much. I don't like that I have been forced to become a germophobe to protect myself against any possible respiratory bug.

I feel more isolated, less quick to commit to anything, less quick to volunteer---not knowing how I will feel on any certain day. Maybe a soft shell started to develop around my sensibilities.

My husband loves me just as I am. For that I am so blessed. He also is the one who is most affected by my losses and the only person who intimately knows how they have changed me. His love and his support allow me to keep walking forward. His faith that healing will come and the old me will be redeemed means more than anything.

Perhaps the upside of all of this is that I have already had to adapt to all the aging-like changes that most of you haven't experienced yet. It is doable, y'all.

And God is still good. All the time.