The first week of March, my Granddad went to be with Jesus. Three weeks later (this weekend) my Grandpa went home to be with Jesus too. The floodgates of emotion have overwhelmed me as I remember back to my childhood and the wonderful times spent with my grandparents. I will miss my seeing my Granddad and Grandpa when I go for visits, but I also rejoice that they are home with their heavenly Father and no longer sick.
At the same time this month, I have been quietly fighting the possibility that my cancer has returned and been almost emotionally paralized at the thought that just as I finish my 2 year cancer journey, it could be beginning again. After finding a lump (in the same place where my previous one was), and after an ultrasound and initial spot biopsy, the results have come back negative for cancer! I have been praising the Lord all the while, but now I have been able to exhale and breath a little more freely. We are still uncertain as to what the lump is exactly, so Monday I am having it removed. Maybe after a full biopsy, I will have my definitive answer and know for sure that there is nothing else going on.
I think that this year, Easter will be an especially powerful reminder to me that God has conqueered death and the grave! I have thought about something my Dad used to say as a pastor who has done hundreds of funerals, "We all have a terminal illness. It's called being human. Some of us just get to say goodbye."
"So, we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens!"
2 Corinthians 4:16-5:1
