Monday, May 13, 2013

Hope and despair


Yes it is late. I should be sleeping. But I have a feeling of despair deep inside of me. I can’t say it is a hopeless feeling, just a little bit of sadness really.  I have another friend that has recently been diagnosed. I have yet another friend that is putting forth every effort to stabilize her stage 4 cancer. Then I have so many wonderful friends I met online some done with treatment, some just beginning, and many just trying to stabilize their cancer too. Stabilize cancer. What an oxymoron it seems. Cure cancer. What a pipe dream that seems.

But it will come. Just has diseases in generations gone are now just a vaccine, cancer will be a faded memory. People in the future will stick out their arm, get their shot, and wonder why it took so long to get there. The iron lung is a museum piece and the chemo chair will join it one day too. Yet so many more people will die from cancer before then…..

See. Despair. I just don’t understand the science behind cancer, the biology, the genetics. I can’t grasp did I do something wrong? Did she, or her, or them? What is it that makes us all the same, vulnerable to cells that decide to not die and slowly weaken or kill the host? I am confused by who gets healed, who’s doesn't come back, who’s never really was gone, who’s spreads? Certainly, with all the millions of us graced by cancer, certainly there is a common denominator? Random. That must be the common ground.

Tonight as I tell myself there is no room for despair in my soul or heart, I remember Sunday, Mother’s Day.  In my parents’ back yard was a tiny little creature born just that day calling to its mother as if to say, “I can do this, stay by me.” And the mother deer stayed by her side until late that night when after so many failed attempts to stand, the little fawn managed to steady itself and slowly wander away with its mom.  So many times I called out ‘I can do this, stay by me.” And so many stood right beside me. Despair has no place where hope is present. Hope. Let that be the common ground.


In all the cancer, in the little fawn and its mother, hope’s ribbon dances through treatments, illness, and even new life. We are not promised to be healed on earth, I understand that. We are not promised life without despair even. But we are promised hope.  (Job 12:10) “In His hand is the soul of every living thing and the life breath of all mortal flesh.”  And that, is a good place to be.

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