FAITH COMES . . .

Don’t ever say things can’t possibly get any worse. Of course they can.

About a year and a half ago my daughter was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. After months of chemotherapy and radiation, scans showed it was all gone.

But another scan some months later showed it had returned – outside the lungs. There was one small spot in a lymph node near her right collar bone. More radiation and chemo. And plans for even more chemo after a break of three weeks for the radiation area to heal.

Last Sunday, a week before treatment was to resume, my pastor preached on the steps we can take to make us able to withstand fear. It was a good sermon, full of truth and challenge.

Afterward a friend asked me if I now felt ready to handle a disaster. I told her that, actually, I did – but not just because of the sermon.

Faith does come by hearing. But it ripens and strengthens as we take what we heard into our lives and act upon it.

It was years spent as part of a group of women, studying Scripture and praying together, becoming vulnerable with each other and holding each other accountable, in love, for our actions.

It was walking through other mine fields of life and finding the Lord always there with me.

All of this made the sermon not news, but a good refresher of what I already know. A refresher I was quickly to need to put into practice.

Sunday afternoon my son-in-law called and asked me to come by. He thought something was wrong. He was right.

There was a gap – a pause between a comment or question and her response. A slight thing. Not a big thing, but more than disconcerting, a bit terrifying.

Doctor’s visits, scans and MRIs later, she is in the hospital, being made ready for surgery in the morning.

The surgeon is very positive. We soak that up like dry sponges.

I spent yesterday thanking God for my daughter. First for the wonderful, joyful relationship we have now, a relationship I thought we would never have.

Then I thanked Him for the really bad times, when we were at odds, alienated from one another. Those times drove me closer to Him.

Now it is the evening and the morning of our next day.