Almost Three Weeks After Surgery

Tomorrow will make the 3 week mark after surgery. The doctors said it would be 2-3 weeks recouperation time. I knew my body well enough to know I would be in the 3 week group but you can't help but want it to be less! I have been extremely pampered by my family. They have shown me Jesus.

I am grateful for summertime, sunshine, my flowers outside, for good meals, all my cards and the pretty flowers I received.
I am grateful for pain medication and sleep, for my dear sweet little girls who have managed to keep house very well.
I have a grateful heart for cell phones, cordless phones and answering machines!
I am grateful for a recliner to rest in during a restless night and for my husband to sleep next to (expecially when having a nightmare one night!)
I am grateful for being able to pray for others and getting my eyes off myself, for laptops and access to university medical journals to research my next step. I am grateful for all the dear friends who have sent us things about nutrionals, and for God's Holy Word that help keep all the researching in balance.
I am grateful for all my family and friends and all they have done for me. If I were to write all the many things they have done, I would be afraid my brain would forget something because there has been so much!!

I am learning not to waste my tests! My God is in control of all. I can trust Him with my life. I can hardly believe it was 30 years ago in June that God changed my life around. I had been on a search for truth and looked for all different things to fill the emptiness that was in my soul. I didn't understand what I was looking for. I started reading the Bible and as a Christian artist of long ago sang, "I Met Joy By Surprise". Even reading the Bible came about in a strange way. Some friends (Coleen and Jane) and I rented a house from a Jewish woman. Coleen and her boyfriend Bob and I used to have lots of conversations about God and what was truth. I don't think we knew what we were talking about! Somewhere along the way another friend started asking me some questions and directed me to read John 3. I'm not sure how I found a Bible in that Jewish woman's house but I did. I read John 3 and wondered along with Nicodemus how a person could be born a second time? I told the Lord that night, I wasn't sure what that was and something to the effect of wanting whatever it was. I really don't remember exactly because I didn't look at this as a pivotal part of my life. But God knew my heart better than I did and He started to reveal Himself to me as I read the Bible. The verse I call my life verse is from Philippians 1:6 "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." I remember that verse often, but it has come back to me now with a special fondness. God is in control of my life and always has been. So now, thirty years after finding that verse, I find God placed it in my heart for a special reason. He is telling me even now that He will continue the good work He began. I am amazed as I think of how He knows the tests that we will walk through and prepares us for them. I don't want to waste this test; this trial that has come to me. I wonder if those of you who read this blog have placed your faith in Christ? Perhaps my trial can become a springboard for you to ask yourself some questions. Do you wonder as I did about God? It's not just when you hear the word "Cancer" that you should stop and consider what this life is all about. We will not live forever but we often live as though we will. It has made me stop and think. May each of you know the love of God which is found only in Jesus Christ our Savior.

My prayers this week are that I will know the direction I am to take. I do not meet with the oncologist until August 11th. I have an idea already of what he will say. My sister who is a nurse and has given all my reports to the breast center at her hospital says they recommend 5 years of Tamoxifen and borderline for chemo. I have been researching Tamoxifen through medical journals and talking to women who have had breast cancer. I am researching nutritionals and how that fits into this picture. I am asking God to direct my path and committing it all to Him. God is my Creator and He knows what makes my body function. As I research I pray that God would reveal to me what I need to know and to help me understand what are His "secret things" that I may learn what He wants to show me and trust in the shadow of his wings for what belongs only to Him.

"The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29