It's a Roller Coaster

Tomorrow brings me to another round of scans. I think this is the first time I haven't hoped and prayed that I'd get good results. Of course I want to hear that my cancer hasn't spread, but it's been eleven months on chemo now and it's just SO. HARD. Good scan results will mean that I continue on this current treatment and that barely seems doable. Chemo days are the hardest - full of smells and tastes and sensations that make me sick. But many of the other days of the week are hard, too. The smell of my own body warmth brings on nausea, as does even a sip of cold water. The smell of the patch that I wear to treat nausea causes nausea. The port just under my skin is a constant visual and tactile reminder of chemo. The fatigue is debilitating some days, and it feels like my world has shrunk to simply alternating between cancer appointments and counseling appointments. 

The never-ending nature of this treatment is one of the hardest parts. It is hell to go through chemo for early-stage cancer. But there is always an end date for those treatments. If you just hold on long enough, you will come through on the other side. That's not my situation. If I just hold on long enough, I'll get to do even more treatment. And then more treatment. And some more treatment after that, if I'm lucky. It wears on you. Hope becomes elusive. 

Easter reminded me that I am so thankful to have a Savior who suffered. He was a man of sorrows. Acquainted with grief. He sweat blood while asking His Father to spare Him the torture and death of the cross. One of the songs we sang on Easter said, "For even in Your suffering, You saw to the other side. Knowing this was our salvation, Jesus for our sake You died." In the midst of my own suffering, I feel the weight of what Jesus did for us so deeply. The love He has for us that compelled Him to go through with it, to die on our behalf to reconcile us to Himself, so that we may have life forever. And He is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, our great high priest who experienced everything we experience and empathizes with us. Who then calls us to approach His throne with boldness, because we will find mercy and grace to help in time of need.

How I need Him! How I want this cup to pass from me. How I wish there was another way. I feel at my very weakest right now. May God give me eyes like Jesus had, to see to the other side, where I know that it is all worth it. Where I see that it has wrought in me an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs everything I am experiencing.

Will you pray for me?