I will mention first, because I’m sure that is why most of you are here, that God has once again performed the miraculous!  My tumor has decreased in size and is showing signs of becoming less aggressive in a couple of locations since the last scan in December.  This is only the hand of God!  I am truly humbled by His grace, realizing where I was exactly a year ago right now, wondering what life would be, if any, a year later after the grim news they handed me after my fourth brain surgery.  Yes, Jesus loves me!

But, I have to tell you that this isn’t what has me smiling so much, lately.  It’s been a very turbulent year for me.  I’ve blogged about that a bit.  The area that this tumor has now moved into is responsible for a lot of critical functions, which is why they can’t remove all of it.  One thing that I have really struggled with that is extremely uncharacteristic of me, is my motivation level.  It doesn’t help that I don’t have a job, so I’m not jumping out of bed every morning running off to a structured day.  It hit me not long ago as I was thinking about the person that I’ve become over this past year and how I can change the things that I don’t like about that person, that my Radiation Oncologist and I had a conversation about what kind of side effects I would be dealing with as a result of the very large radiation bed in my brain that he hit for 6 weeks last year.  “Charysse, your ‘get up and go is going to be gone’.”  Wow, he wasn’t kidding.  Before I remembered that, we were thinking that maybe I was having depression issues as a result of being on 4 seizure medications.  I just wasn’t me and I didn’t have the energy or will power to want to change that.

Until one day…

God reminded me that I was trying to find my “wholeness” in all the wrong things.  I know why He’s given me this trial.  So much like Paul, I think He’s given it to me to keep me humble.  If I’m feeling well, I easily get wrapped up in my own plans and in my own dreams and ambitions and suddenly the world around me gets blurry.  But I’m to a place, now, where my health has been impacted so much by this cancer that I’ll probably never get back to the whole person that I once was.  I think I expected to breeze through this last surgery and the ensuing radiation and then get back to the person I was prior to surgery.  C’mon, Charysse.  Four brain surgeries?  Do you see the dropping jaws of the poor MRI techs that see your scans for the first time?

A few days ago, I came across this scripture:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” Ephesians 3:14-21

It was such a good reminder for me that my fullness, wholeness and ultimate contentment will be found only in God alone.  This trial is so hard, but friends, I love this trial.  God is always so faithful to steer me back on the path, which ultimately leads to blessings that seem so undeserved.  He is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think….and He did!  But more importantly, He reminded me that this trial isn’t about me.  It’s about a lot of you, and probably a lot of people I’ll never meet.  There is so much peace and joy in that, and I’m so thankful for his gentle reminder of that.

to God Be the glory!