Hope...

We were standing outside when she tells me that she got the results of her scan and it wasn't good.  Not only had the tumors grown but the cancer had spread to her lungs.

"I'm so sorry."

"That's OK" she said as she tries to put a smile on her face..."We're trying some new things...I'm eating vegan and I'll start chem again today.  We may try chemo along with radiation this time too."

"I'm so sorry.  If there is anything I can do please let me know."

"Thank you, I will.  I've got to get into the car I'm freezing!"

This 30 some year old shell of a women (after rounds and rounds of chemo that has stripped her of her hair but has left the very thing it was sent to kill.

I get back into my car and the tears begin to fall.  I can't imagine.  She has a three year old and a 1 year old and she is fighting for her life...

I begin to think that my response to her results may have been the negative one that is so difficult for her to respond to...did I seem in my response like I was giving her a death sentence?  I whisper prayers for God to meet her and her family and for Him to give me wisdom in my response toward her. 

I text Wes the news because he knows this has been heavy on my heart...his response..."Tragic.  I love you.  We only have today."  It's so true but it only makes the tears flow more freely.

I go home to begin school with Joshua but I keep thinking about her and how she must feel so betrayed by her own body...how she must be so frustrated that after rounds and rounds of chemo and significant changes to her diet the cancer only grew and spread.

I bump into her again a couple of hours later at preschool pickup...she's browsing the "Scholastic Book Fair" for Christmas presents for her kids when I notice a book right in front of her that is titled "God is Good...All the Time" and from somewhere within my soul the doubt and unbelief come to the surface again as I think..."not in this situation."  How badly I want to turn the book over to protect her from having to process the title and what it means to her...

But she has always shown me a quiet strength that presses on in the midst of unimaginable circumstances just like our first meeting in the kitchen center of the boys preschool room.  She was sitting in a chair at the kids table while her son served her food when I walked up to introduce myself.  She explained that after she gave birth to her daughter she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon Cancer.  It had already spread to her liver.  I remember her saying that day...

"I don't focus on the statistics because it would just bring me down.  I've got too much to live for."

To much to live for...yes as Jennifer Worth says

" Health is the greatest of God's gifts, but we take it for granted; yet it hangs on a thread as fine as a spider's web and the smallest thing can make it snap, leaving even the strongest of us helpless in an instant and in that instant HOPE is our protector and LOVE our panacea."

The hope of living another day surrounded by the ones you love...the very thing I should not take for granted.