And Again I Ask...

We sat at the dinner table. Thaddeus ate his dinner quietly, without the normal battle. It had been a busy day and he was hungry.

“I like this.” He said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Fighting with him over food is my most dreaded nightly activity.

We ate peacefully for a  few moments. Then Bryan spoke. A simple sentence turned into a tightness in my chest and a knot in my throat. “Feel this.”

I knew right away what he meant.

At Bryan’s last scan they had told him that almost all of his tumors had shrunk by 90%, but there were two in his stomach that were stable. Not growing, but not really shrinking either. The doctors weren’t worried. It was simply information.

Bryan had tried to feel the spots in his stomach while in DC and hadn’t been able to find them. About a week after he got home he found one spot. It was tiny and deep in the stomach. He showed me. I had to dig my fingers into his stomach to feel it, but I felt it. We knew we needed to watch it, but we weren’t worried. As long as it wasn’t growing it didn’t matter. He could live for years and years with a stable tumor that didn’t grow, and didn’t shrink, with no consequences. The problems come when things grow.

I sat up a little straighter on the bench, and reached my hand over preparing to dig my fingers into his flesh as before. I didn’t have to. The lump has right on the surface. Easy to feel. We are no experts, but it seemed it had either moved (unlikely) or grown.

I know Bryan thinks it’s premature for me to share this on the blog. We don’t really know anything yet. We haven’t had another scan, we haven’t seen the oncologist. It could, possibly, maybe, be nothing; but I’ve walked this road long enough to know that is unlikely.

I don’t want to wait to know for certain before we ask people to pray. I don’t want to wait before we beg God ourselves. “You don’t have because you don’t ask.” Right? Well, I don’t want that to be the case here.

So I’m asking. I’m asking all of you to pray with us. Pray hard with us, especially over the next two weeks before Bryan’s next scan.

Exactly two weeks from today we will board a plane and head back to DC to have scans done and meet with Bryan’s doctors.

As I’ve thought of this trip I have felt that God has already been preparing a way in love for us. I haven’t been able to go with Bryan for a scan since January. But, this time we will leave the kids and go together.

We are even going a few days early so that we can see some deeply loved friends from Prague who are there visiting family right now. I have written before about these friends - Jane and Martin and their two little girls.

Martin was diagnosed with a very rare, very aggressive, Leukemia just a few months before Bryan got his diagnosis. We have not been with them since about eight months before any of us started walking this road called cancer, but we have followed each others journey’s from afar. We have prayed. We have celebrated the victories and cried over the set backs.

I have so longed to be with them in person. And now we get to do just that.

God in his grace surely knew what we would need in preparation for this next scan.

Even as we prepare for this scan with more trepidation then the previous one’s my heart is still grateful.

We have a good God who prepares a way for us. We have caring friends who walk beside us, and carry us along. We have had eight months more than we should have had - eight months of shrinking tumors, good health, and wonderful quality of life. Bryan and I have walked through all of the previous steps in this journey in agreement with one another - clearly feeling guided to each treatment that we have tried. We have been hemmed in on every side. Provided for in every way.

I remember that today.

“Yet this I call to mind And therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; Therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, To the one who seeks him;” - Lamentations 3:21-25

Would you seek him with us? Would you seek him on our behalf? Would you pray, as Martin once told us he prays, “for the Kingdom of God to break in”?

Thank you!

Rejoicing in the journey, Bethany