To say God saw me through that period of life would be a gross understatement. He encircled me with the most fiercely loyal group of friends...friends who still take their job very seriously today. I started dating my future husband! I transferred home to a college that cultivated my love of writing. (Thanks, Professor Schrodt!) And I was able to spend extra time with my parents, brother, and sister. I'm fully aware that moving back home and being around one's family more is quite the opposite of most college students' plans. Coming home typically receives a social demerit! But God used that time to help me celebrate the family he'd given me. There were coffee dates with my mom and blues concerts with my dad. I secretly taught my baby brother to drive and carpooled to classes with my sister, sharing inside jokes and laughter so hysterical it made us cry. There was goodness radiating from my life in the midst of the doctor visits and blood tests. I did not know the length of time my bout with cancer would last, but I also didn't spend much time dwelling on it. I was far too immersed in the gifts my Father continuously dropped in my lap during that period.
After two years, my same grandfatherly surgeon sat before my mother and I in his office. He gave me the news I'd been waiting to hear. My health checked out and I was officially free of the cancer life. I wasted no time. I graduated college, packed up my car, and moved away. I was thankful for my time at home, but ready, again, to be out in the world on my own. There were jobs, apartments, successes and failures. I was engaged, then married, then moving to another town. There were trips, more jobs, babies, another move, and a lot of life in between it all. Not once did I stop to evaluate the twists and turns of my journey or my decisions based on being a cancer survivor. Those words weren't even part of my vocabulary. Cancer was not who I was...it was a mere blip in a long adventure where God was continuing to reveal goodness to me.
Sometime in the last two or three years, however, things have changed. I have privately labeled myself "Cancer Survivor". I find myself obsessing over those dreaded what-if's. I look for symptoms of possible new illnesses and run through worst-case scenarios in the dead of night when fear is the most consuming. Cancer attacks me in a way it hadn't before, mentally and spiritually...fourteen years after the fact. I attribute this change to three few things. First, I became a parent! Even the most seasoned mother or father has experienced the sheer panic that comes from realizing you have no control over your time on earth with your children. To love someone so much and know you can be ripped apart at any time makes me ill and utterly helpless. Second, I've slowly taken over control of my life, instead of relying on Christ to drive. I hold on tightly to the lie that I can will things to happen or not, based on how well I plan and plot. Finally, I stopped focusing on the gifts in my life as God-given. I view them as things I've created or worked for. The pure "Thank you" 's I uttered to God while driving through traffic to make doctor appointments during the cancer years have turned into lip service in my healthy years. I make myself too busy to stop and see that the same goodness that was there fourteen years ago is still surrounding me today, not by my merit.
Last week, in my quest to control and predict, I went to a check-up at the dermatologist. I'd made myself sick for two weeks, worrying about what the doctor might find on my skin (I'm an avid sun-worshiper). The appointment ended up lasting less than thirty minutes and I walked away with a thumbs up from the doctor. I expected to dance back to my car with the weight of the world off my shoulders. What I found, instead, was a black hole where my anxiety about the appointment had been. The hole was sucking away any possible relief or gratefulness and already on the hunt for something new to fret over. I was shocked...and immediately exhausted. The cycle of fear showed no signs of slowing, despite my best efforts.
Discouraged and attempting, desperately, to mask it, I stumbled upon a verse in 1 Samuel:
"But be sure to fear the Lord and faithfully serve Him. Think of all the wonderful things he has done for you." 1 Samuel 12:24 (NLT)
This verse was my homecoming, much like going back to the comfort of my family when I became sick at nineteen. Everything that I lacked and had forgotten was contained in these living words. The only fear the Lord commands in a holy reverence of Him. Human fear is not of God, period. He desires faithful service and a grateful heart. What simple commands and here I had let so much that was not of God into my heart and mind. I could feel myself being brought back to that place of trust I'd lived in as a teenager.
In an effort to continue my transparency, I will admit that my proclivity for fear and worry still serves as my natural train of thought. (Plus it's only been a week since finding the verse!) And this is, precisely, why God gave us his Word, to transform and renew us. I am being transformed daily...hourly as I infuse my thought process with the words from 1 Samuel. I am letting go of the uncertain, the control, and the thankless spirit. God is, today, doing a work in my life far greater than when he released my body from cancer. He is surrounding me with the goodness that I witnessed as a mere kid and He promises to continue. May you, sister, fear the Lord and leave the rest at His feet.
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