scarlet threads of blood & grace

I don't have much use for sugar-coating things, so I'll be really honest with y'all. 

I don't know how to write about my life and how cancer is effecting it any more than the next gal does. If you ask me how I'm doing, I don't know how to answer you. I mean, most likely I'm doing my routine and my day is going fairly well. 

Under all of that, I also don't know at the moment what's going on in the parts of my soul, right where the always-present weight of my mom's cancer sits. I don't know if today I'll spend a lot of time obsessively worrying about her, or if I'll fall to pieces tonight in my room. I don't know if someone's harsh tone will make me tear up, or if a to-do list will make it hard for me to breathe.

I don't know if I'll only think about cancer a little bit today, and if I'll take mean words with a grain of salt. I may get a lot done in a short amount of time just because I want to, and sappy moments on TV shows could make me laugh just because they're so darn sappy.

Are you confused yet?

Welcome.

In the midst of this mental chaos and heart-churning confusion, there is one place that the noise of condolences, social media, and mundane routines is silenced: when I just look up.

When I look up and see all that he is and all that he wants for me, suddenly a diagnosis and sickness from treatments don't weigh so heavy on my whole body. I am alive because this is not all that life is; he has more for me, and most importantly, he is for me.

This Jesus, powerful and blessed, is not against me. He has every reason to hate me, this hot-tempered girl with a heart quick to writhe in bitterness, but he loves me. He is for me; never against me. In the shadows lurking around every bend in this road, the same Jesus that hung on a cross and rubbed his fingers on a blind man's eyes walks before me and behind me. His scarred hands hold mine, and when my legs are tired and my heart is worn and I fall on the path and cry until I think I can't cry anymore, he sits with me there, too.

I think these may be some of the hardest days of my life. This continual grieving, the lapping waves of sadness, the perpetual adjusting to my new normal--it makes every day hard, and some are even harder than others for no reason identifiable. 

I think these may be some of the sweetest days of my life. This resting in Jesus' lap, being invited into a throne room of glory and being asked to just sit and be with him--it makes every day a pill possible to swallow; it reminds me that this journey is impossible to walk in darkness if I am abiding in Light himself.

How sweet, and vast, and refreshing is the love of Christ, that he would walk with me in gritty suffering and mundane days. How great the grace of Jesus that he would desire to know me here, and to pull me closer still. How sustaining his promise that cancer is powerless before him, and in him, even death is LIFE.