Give Me Hope
"Tell me somethin', give me hope for the night We don't know how we feel
We're just prayin' that we're doin' this right
Though that's not the way it seems"
Winter Song by the Head and the Heart
Give me hope for the night.
That's my prayer right now.
Every time we get bad news about my husbands cancer I realize anew how much of my hope is still tied up in circumstances and outcomes.
I don't hope in God, in his goodness, in his love. I hope for a clean PET scan. I hope for my husband's healing.
And when those things don't happen... When the PET scan results come back only to show that my husband's whole body is riddled with tumors, that there's more than there were in July, that some of the old one's have grown... well, my hope wavers.
And I need reminding.
I need to remind myself that its ok to not hope perfectly yet. For it is only through suffering that we can even begin to learn to hope.
"Romans 5:3-5 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
Suffering produces hope. It builds hope in us. So while my hope may waver and at times be weak, it is growing. And the result of this season of suffering will be to learn to put my hope in the Lord and nothing else.
In the mean time I have to remind myself that my hope, my ultimate hope, is in Christ Jesus.
We don't know how we feel.
It has been hard to stay aware of and in touch with my feelings the past few days. And even harder to enter into Bryan's feelings with him.
The first time we looked at the PET scan my parents were with us and kept asking me if I was ok. And you know what, I really was.
...until I had a panic attack the next day and then the day after that ended up crying for an hour with a dear friend.
But it is not all fear and tears. There is normalcy in our day-to-day. There is joy in a shared smile, a gentle touch, and time together with each other and our children.
Now I'm not sure how to answer the question "are you ok?" or the question "how are you?" except to say, we don't know how we feel...and...
We're just prayin' that we're doin' this right
We are stumbling forward. At the moment the most appealing next option for us is gene therapy treatments. We will meet with an oncologist who specializes in that next week and see what they have to offer.
This PET scan has knocked our hope in Bryan's recovery down a peg, but it has not destroyed it.
We are grateful that we had one of our best friends here with us in the midst of this. We are grateful for the ways in which she reminded us of God's love, of his unending goodness, of the already's and the not yet's of his kingdom.
Lamentations 3:21-32 But this I call to mind,and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,“therefore I will hope in him.”
Psalm 62:5-7 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation,my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.
Rejoicing in the journey,
Bethany Stedman