I'll Share This

There will be news tomorrow about the scan from Friday. There was some information today, but I need to get a couple things clarified before I share it with you. I'll get that information tomorrow.

A friend of mine is putting together a Watchnight Service for her church on Saturday. She asked me to write something to be a part of their service. It was to be about waiting. I searched my blog for how many times I used the word "wait" or "waiting." You know the answer. Following is what I wrote. Thought I would share it with you. It follows:


There were several points in time during the whole process when I thought, "This would be the toughest wait."

From the day when I was admitted to the hospital, feeling lousy, but not knowing what was causing me to feel so bad. Then, I waited to find out what the CT scan identified was generating the discomfort in my body. I then waited for a biopsy to yield information to determine what form of cancer had taken root in me. There were countless waiting times after that. All of them were chapters with their own titles. Titles like, "How are we going to treat this?" "When will I start treatment?" " When will it finish?" "How sick will I get?" "Are we buying time with this treatment, or are we buying life?" "What are the odds of this treatment not being successful?" "What did the scans show this time?".

Sometimes, the doctors and nurses had to wait with me. They had to wait for me to show them grace when some of the information they gave me was a bit too overwhelming to process and I reacted adversely, as a result.

With each set of answers, came another set of questions. With those questions, came more waiting.

The waiting that snuck up on me was the waiting to return to normal. I didn't jump up and down in elation when I got the "all clear." Could I trust that information? Right behind the word "remission," in the lexicon of cancer, is the word "relapse."

A friend of mine told me the key is to learn how to wait well. You learn to say, "I was, but today, I am."