My thoughts have drifted back to nursing school and I recall a lesson in one of our psych classes that talked about the top ten major stressors in life and amoung those stressors were; death of a loved one, new job, losing a job, illness, family illness, child graduating and leaving home, etc. You get it and we are all familiar with what causes stress in our life. But today it really dawned on me....that in the past 3 years I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that I struggle with on a daily basis, my young mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness and my father and I took care of her while she made her way home, my father remarries (mind you she is just what my mom asked me to make sure she was.....as I write this through many tears....do you have any idea how hard it is to have your mother tell you what she wants in a woman for your father and the reality of knowing that life was really going to go on without mom hits) months later after mom passed I get a phone call from my Grandma (my moms mom) telling me that she woke up yellow as she asks me "what does this mean." Being a nurse I knew exactly what it meant......she too was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I recall that phone call as my sister in love (as she says) had to drive Grandma and I up to that cat scan that day because I was too sick to drive. I sat in the back seat as Kate and Grandma were sitting in the front seat and my cell phone rang and Dr. Fullerton's Springfield Clinic name came up (this too....being a nurse I knew wasn't a good sign). He immediately said I'm sorry but she too has the same cancer and the same fate and the same death as your mother. My mind reeled at how could I do this again, Lord I'm not strong enough!! Then months later I have a spot on my side that I know is not right and I end up seeing a dermatologist she removes it and a week later yet another doctor call saying the spot they have removed is malignant melanoma and then they proceed to tell me that pancreatic cancer and melanoma are often caused by the same gene and the chance that my mother, my grandmother and I would all have related cancers leads them to believe that we fall into a rare 10% of people that have a genetic cancer and I end up meeting with a genetic counselor that tells me that my odds because of my melanoma of developing pancreatic cancer are in the 75% percentile. Processing.......who can process all this. I drove home from that visit and wanted to just keep driving until I ran off the coast of California into the ocean. WHY Lord?? Why? When I've served you, I've dedicated my life to you, I love you with every ounce of being that I have? There is so much more.....we sold our family business, I had to quit the job I loved, my days are still a struggle with the lyme disease. But in all things.....God has been the constant presence in it all.
Thus all this brings me to today. I had ran in to town hoping to run by Walmart but as I drove in to town the vertigo starts again which means no Walmart and just coming back home. But on my drive home God reminds me of Jacob in Genesis 32:30. Jacob had lead a tortured life being the second born twin meant that the family blessing would be upon the first born son..his brother Esau. In Genesis 32 Jacob is trying to run from certain death as he knows his brother wants to kill him, he stops in the wilderness and sends his family ahead and is left alone there, where he falls into a deep sleep. As Jacob sleeps a man appears and begins to wrestle with Jacob and they wrestle all through the night. Little did Jacob know but he was wresting with the very presence of God himself. After God see's that Jacob is not going to surrender to His will He touches the hip socket of Jacob and dislocates his hip and immediately following this God turns around and blessed Jacob. Jacob struggled the rest of his life with the limp that wrestle with God left but through His wrestling with God his life was blessed as He surrendered to God.
God also reminded me of Job and everything that God allowed Satan to steal from Job....all of his children, all of his earthly wealth and even his health. God just told Satan, "you can test Job by doing whatever you want to him.....but you can't have his life." In Job 30 after Satan has taken everything away from Job including now his health Job cries out Job 30:20 "I cry out to you O God, but you do not answer. I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly......" This from the man that God tells Satan is the most righteous man of all. I find myself on so many days crying out to God, begging for his mercy, begging for him to end all of this. I've spent 3 days in bed this week with vertigo and vomiting, unable to eat, unable to do really anything and its on those days that I feel Job's pain, I feel his cries and I too wonder why? Why Lord do you just stand and look at me? But as I once heard a pastor say, lucky for us we know what Job didn't know. We know chapter 42 when God blessed the later part of Job's life more than the first. There is a song by Brian Johnson called "Show Me Your Face" and in it he asks God to give him strength to stand and that he could make it through it all if he could just see God's face. I play that song a lot as it has become my cry to God. I can make it to the end Lord......"show me your face Lord, show me your face...I can make it to the end Lord if I could just see your face".
