God has been speaking to me, new things I haven’t heard. It’s a great feeling —I feel as if I am entering into a new level with Him. I pray this is so!
Each morning when I wake up these days, and say what I always say: “Good morning Lord”, He replies with “Good morning, Little One.”
He hasn’t called me that since… gosh… I think 2003.
It’s good to be going through this with my God. When my friends ask me how I feel, I tell them “I feel Jesus all around me.” I know He is with me through this. I know this is not in vain. I know there is a very good purpose for which this is happening.
Which is not to say I accept my cancer. I do not. I curse it and reject it, in Jesus’ name.
But it is the journey that counts, not the pit stops.
Jesus warned in the Bible that in the world there will be tribulations, but He has overcome the world.
Why does cancer happen?
Well, because we aren’t living in heaven yet. Only in heaven is there no disease or weeping or sadness.
Can God heal me? Of course!
Will He? I believe so.
I don’t mean to sound like a martyr but I’ve been through this before when my mom got sick with cancer. I was not yet a Christian, but I believed that I could appropriate the promises of God because Jesus healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter and she wasn’t a Jew. My Christian friends taught me to declare my mother’s complete healing and I confessed it daily till she finally told me, “I want to go home to Jesus. Can you please let me go?”
My mother’s cancer brought God back into my life. When she first got cancer at the age of 49, I was 22, and I was devastated. But my father pulled the family together and we prayed. We were a Catholic family by religion, but only my mom was a true believer. The rest of us were default Catholics.
I experienced God’s faithfulness that first round. I watched my mother go through a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and recovery. I knew the prayers did something right, even if I didn’t know the God who answered them.
When I was pregnant with my first child, my mom had a relapse at 59, and a second mastectomy. I remember threatening this God I never knew that He better not take away my mom before she saw her grandchild. Again, He was faithful, and I was clueless.
Finally, at the age of 64, my mother had another relapse, despite the fact she had no more breasts. This is how horrible cancer can be, but you know, God has the trump card. He always does.
My mother moved in with me that final year of her life. By that time, she had two grandchildren to play with. I had left a high-paying job and was home looking after them and her. Every day my mother told me “I pray you get to know Jesus.”
I thought she was nuts. Of COURSE I know Jesus. He’s that guy who went to the Cross and died for our sins, etc etc. What I didn’t know was, JESUS. As in know Him like I knew my mom, or my husband, or my son. Like a person, not a historical character.
My mother would tell me every day how Jesus was going to come for her. She didn’t know her Bible that well, but she would sing praises to the Lord every day. My firstborn – he was 4 then – would sit on her bed and they would sing “How Great Thou Art” together. It always made me cry to hear them croon, pitch perfect, about how Christ, with loud acclamation, would take her home.
But God heard my mother’s prayers. A month before she died, I came to know Jesus as my personal Saviour. On her deathbed, I received the gift of tongues, and was filled with the Holy Spirit.
My mother’s illness and death were what led me to seek and to find this great God. It was what led my father to invite Jesus into his heart. With one death, God saved two people my mother loved. I know I was so stubborn and full of pride, it took my mother’s pain to break me to a point I wholeheartedly turned to God. (My brother, too, shall come to know Him. I believe it with all my heart.)
So when I had a feeling this was cancer, I wasn’t quick to lay hands and beat this cancer out of my body. Again, not that I accept illness — it’s from the devil, I’m not going to lie around and let him kill me, excuse me. But I feel with all my heart I must seek God. What does He want to achieve through this? What is my assignment here? I know I shall have victory — by His stripes I was already healed!
But I want to be still and hear Him. I don’t want to waste this opportunity to go deep, really deep with God. I trust in His goodness and mercy. I can’t wait to see what He has in mind.
A Clean Breast Of It 