Heavy

Heavy is how I have felt this week. And not just because of news I received that a biopsy of a mole on my arm came back as melanoma. A coworker had a friend commit suicide and she was the last one to talk with him and the one who found him. Another friend's daughter has been struggling with her own diagnosis. We owe a lot in taxes this year. I was skipped over in payroll this month (it was rectified quickly, but still!). A former student was in my office crying this week after a fall out with her dad. A tenant is suing our insurance for an injury he received on our property. Our friend's child was airlifted to the hospital because he wasn't able to get enough oxygen while fighting the flu. I'm reading a book (The Nightingale) which is about women in France during WWII, and all the things I just mentioned are NOTHING compared to what was suffered by people in that war.

Still... heavy... but not without hope.

I'm also reading a book called It's Not Supposed To Be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst and it's hitting home for me in so many ways. This morning, I read from chapter 7, titled 'When God gives you more than you can handle' where she walks through hearing her own diagnosis of breast cancer. There is no promise in the Bible that God won't give us more than we can handle. Why do we say that to each other in times of trial? This world is filled with people who are given more than they can handle. And so is the Bible. What God's word does say is that He is with us and uses the 'more than we can handle' in our lives to draw us to himself. "When we seek God, we see God. We don't see his physical form, but we see Him at work and can start to see more of what He sees. Trust grows. If our hearts are willing to trust Him, He will entrust to us more and more of His perspective... if we want to see Him in our circumstances and see His perspective, we must see Him, His ways, and His Word. That's where we find His good plans and promises for hope and a future." Also, this... 'we need to remember the difference between news and truth.... news comes at us to tell us what we are dealing with. Truth comes from God and then helps us process all we are dealing with. Instead of saying God won't give me more than I can handle, maybe I can just simply say, 'God's got a handle on all I'm facing.'" He is our hope, He is our salvation, He can handle this, He is good, He can use this for good, He can be trusted. And I have hope...

So, I have made my appointments with the melanoma clinic at Stanford for March 27. Because they are good like this, they also made an appointment at the surgery center for me to have the procedure done on the same day as the doctor sees me, if everything goes as expected at my exam. My prayer is that there will be no depth to this melanoma--initially it was given a stage 1a rating from the biopsy at my local dermatologist, which is easily treatable. I pray for no complications--this is on the same arm from which lymph nodes were removed as part of my mastectomy (8 removed, 3 had evidence of disease), and thus the risk for infection and lymphedema (permanent swelling) is high for any poke or prod of that arm--and here I am doing a whole procedure. I also pray that there is no other spots, or spreading--the BRCA 2 gene mutation makes me susceptible to this type of cancer as well. I will have to be super careful with sun exposure and go in for monitoring every 3-4 months (yea... more doctor visits and lots of long sleeves...not). I appreciate your prayers and encouragement, as we take care of this, while still trying to do normal life and all those good things. 

Thank you, my dear loved ones.