My friend Rebecca Hamilton is recovering from cancer surgery and is somehow finding a way to put that experience into words. For anyone who has battled cancer, or who loves someone who has been on the front lines of that fight, this is necessary reading—potent and searing.
From National Catholic Register:
Ironically, the truth of it all is in a Bible verse. It is one of the shortest verses in the book. Cease striving and know that I am God. That’s all you have to do. Given how sick you are and what you are going through, it is often all that you can do. Just love Jesus and let Him love you. Just trust Him and know that, as scripture says, He is able to keep that which you have entrusted to Him against that day. You don’t have to do anything except trust. Just let God love you through this and you will wash up on that shore, battered and ravaged physically but stronger than you have ever been spiritually. No matter what the cancer does to you physically — and there are no easy ways out of cancer — you will thrive spiritually, which means that you will thrive emotionally, and in all the ways that are essentially and forever you. It does not matter if the cancer kills you. You will survive. And you will sink to your knees before the throne of God in awe and love that the language we use in this life has no words to describe. I feel like I’ve been away; as if I’ve been to a dark continent where the sun doesn’t shine and exhaustion grinds you into the ground even while you sleep. That is cancer treatment. It can ravage your soul while it’s ravaging your body. It can put you through the torments of hell as it shoves you face first into the existential reality of your own mortality. Or — and this is the miracle — it can free you so that God lifts you up to heaven, even while you are in this life.
Read the rest and share it with someone you know.
Photo: Pixabay
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