Being Transparent...

Sometimes it's hard being transparent...especially in such a public forum as the world wide web.  I do feel safer here...in this space...then say, Facebook, but it still isn't always easy.  I had to take a break from cancer talk because I received new news, and I wasn't quite ready to talk about it just yet.  There was even a point that I thought I just wasn't going to talk about this at all anymore.  However, it's hard to explain....but I feel like God wants me to be transparent about my life right now.  And He wants me to write about what's happening and share what He is doing.  

There have been so many periods of my life that I questioned God.  I always knew He existed because I've seen Him work in the lives of people around me, but I've never felt his presence personally.  I tried really hard to find the perfect combination of what I'm supposed to do to feel his presence.  I tried reading certain books, reading the Bible every day, prayer at night, prayer in the morning, only listening to worship songs, but I love rap too much so that didn't work very well.  

But there is no perfect combination.  You don't have to read the whole new testament to find God.  All you have to do is "be still and know that I am God."  Being still is the hard part especially for a control freak like me.  I need to know how things are going to play out...how the story is going to end...maybe that's the writer in me.  But for this particular story...the story of my life...I'm not the author and the finisher ....God is.  Looking back, I never fully relinquished my control until now.  I mean, I'm hard-headed and I'm only now giving it up because my back is to the wall.  Cancer is bigger than me....It kills...It's unpredictable...there's no way I can control this.  So, now that I've finally stopped wriggling around fighting for control..I feel like I have a certain calm and peace and knowing about things...and that is God.  I see Him in the people who have been taking care of me...and in circumstances/situations....and I am finally able to feel His presence, and I know all He expects from me is trust.  He doesn't need me to sit in a corner and pray and read scripture for hours....He knows my heart, my needs, my fears.  I have a sense of peace about what's happening to me, and that is God....and I know that He wants me to share this experience with people in this format and this way....

All that being said, I feel like I've taken some time to deal with my new news and now I feel ready to share.  My Endoscopy with Ultrasound revealed spreading around a few lymph nodes near my stomach.  I no longer have esophageal cancer...it's stomach cancer.  The tumor is at the very top of my stomach....pushing into my esophagus.  The new diagnosis has to be treated more aggressively.  So now, the mad dash to get to MD Anderson has been put on hold for a bit.  I have to have 3-21 day-rounds of chemo here in OKC, and then surgery at MDA,  and then 3 more rounds of chemo and possibly radiation.  The treatment plan change threw me for a loop and it was a lot for me to wrap my head around.  But after talking about it a lot and crying about it...I'm now ready to move on and deal with it.  Chemo starts next week....

Prayer Request...That God continues to keep me emotionally and physically strong to keep fighting my way through.