Remembering Where You Were

I’ll never forget where I was. And I’m sure you haven’t either – when you were told about your diagnosis, when your loved one passed away, when you found out your job was ending. We often remember the most trivial of details, and yet at the moment, one single moment, everything changed.

I’ll never forget too; details I hope to be put in a book someday! I think sometimes God has us remember those details so that we can look back on those situations with even more love for our God. It’s after some time has passed, that I often see the little blessings of the where’s and when’s of when I was told of a diagnosis or circumstance. My leukemia diagnosis has been no different. As much as I still don’t like it, I do see blessings in it too.

You see, God factored cancer into his plan for me. Not in the sense that he created cancer for me because cancer is a part of this fallen world, but in the sense that He ALLOWED it because He is always in the business of creating beauty out of brokenness. He is always redeemING (a constant process). Am I eager to see what God will do through this situation? I try to be, but I’m not always. Sometimes I feel life would be a whole lot easier without this diagnosis and it might’ve been. But I would fail to experience the blessings and fail to experience more of Him if I didn’t have this.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 says…

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Temporary. Heart failure doesn’t seem temporary because there is no cure. Cancer doesn’t seem temporary because it seems like it’ll be forever til we can try and achieve a cure. But these diagnoses alone are temporary; compared to the eternal life that we will spend with our Savior. They are TEMPORARY.

I’m sure you are thinking of a situation and where you were when you were told about it. In looking back, can you see small blessings woven within? Maybe it was who you were with. Maybe it was the gracious voice on the other end, telling you the news. Maybe it was where you were standing. Whatever it may be, nothing ever is wasted in God’s eyes. Even circumstances we don’t understand.

Tomorrow I head back to Ann Arbor for blood work, a meeting with my new outpatient oncologist, and a bone marrow biopsy. It’ll be a full day, but Michigan is great about trying to get your appointments bundled into one day. I am eager to meet with my new doctor because I have so many questions about this whole process. I just don’t know leukemia like I know heart failure and the unknowns are hard. But hopefully tomorrow we will walk away with our next steps. We won’t find out the results of the biopsy for a few days, so that’ll be a hard waiting period, but we just keep praying that the chemo is working and that the treatments after will wipe my body clean of leukemia. It is looking like I’ll be readmitted next week or the week after for more treatments and I’ll be staying there just shy of a week again. It’s hard to mentally prepare myself to be gone again for that length of time, but it’s all perspective, right? At least it’s not 3 weeks!

Thank you for continuing to pray and support us. We are feeling the love! I am feeling pretty good too and we are just so thankful that I am HOME. I’ll admit, I don’t look like your typical heart failure with leukemia patient (whatever that person may look like), but I am able to function around the house pretty normally, just at a slower pace. We truly have so much to be thankful for!