Wow, it has been TOO long since I have updated this site!  Time passes and I am growing stronger in little increments.  I don’t really notice it day by day, but over the process of two weeks I’ll realize that a few weeks ago I wasn’t up to this or that activity.   It feels wonderful to see progress.

I’m sorry for all the times I thought, “Oh I need to run and post something about this!”  or “I need to share that thought with my blog family...”   and then never got it done.   Life is full and I take too many naps to be as efficient as I would like!

One funny moment I just have to share is when I was typing at the computer one day and heard Noah behind me.   “Mommy, is it okay to eat raw honey?”   “Sure, Sweetie.”   “So, it won’t hurt me to eat this honey raw?”   I turned to look at him, a bit curious.   To my amusement, he was standing there holding a flower, orange powdery nectar visible in the center.  Now that is RAW honey! :)

My main focus the last little while has been getting strength back.   Just a few weeks after the radiation ended, my skin finally stopped burning and has begun to heal.   What a relief!   I’m still working to get the strength in my arm to equal the other one, but it’s coming.  

I’m seeing a therapist for my lymph edema, with the hopes we can get the swelling down.   It’s slow work, but we’re having some success! 

I tried to start the Tykerb again after my severe reaction.   Within days the rash began again, on top of severe dizziness and other symptoms.   At this point, I’m not taking it any longer.   The reactions in my body are just too severe, and it’s surely not in line with our goals of building my body back up after these months of attack on it.

I was able to get away just after Nathan left for one night to be quiet and do some journaling.   It was a special time for me to reflect and document some of the process of these last ten months.  I’ve been finding myself very tearful again.   It’s like I went through a dry time where I was just done crying about everything and focused on just trying to stay on top of life. (Not that I exactly succeeded...)

Recently, I find it easy to cry again.  The other night I was marveling again at how I still have pain if I lay on my side because of my mastectomy.   Neither side is comfortable, the radiated side I still can not lay on.   It was perhaps 3 AM as I shifted about uncomfortably, and I was wondering how long it had been anyway.   Five months.   Could it really have been five months that I’ve lived with this?   After  a couple months of NOT crying, I was surprised at the tears that just spilled out. 

On my little overnight retreat, I read a bit from A.W. Tozer, a book I found on my parent’s shelf.   It’s title is Paths to Power, and it intrigued me.  So I am sitting in silence eating my breakfast (that NEVER happens!) when I decided to skip ahead to chapter 4 of this tiny book, “Miracles follow the Plow.”   What I read left me crying again, and hopeful...

He starts by talking about fallow ground, “safe and undisturbed” he calls it.   “Fruit it can never know because it is afraid of the plow and harrow.”

I’ve always loved analogies, and I seem to think in them.   The one that follows was so deeply impacting.

“In direct opposite to this, the cultivated field has yielded itself to the adventure of living.   The protecting fence has opened to admit the plow, and the plow has come as plows always come, practical, cruel, business-like, and in a hurry.   Peace has been shattered by the shouting farmer and the rattle of machinery.   The field has felt the travail of change; it has been upset, turned over, bruised and broken, but its rewards come hard upon its labors...  All over the field the hand of God is at work in the age-old and ever renewed service of creation.   New things are born, to grow, mature, and consummate the grand prophecy latent in the seed when it entered the ground.   Nature’s wonders follow the plow....”

Tozer later stated, “Such a life has put away defense, and has forsaken the safety of death for the peril of life.”   Such profundity!   Oh, I have felt the shattered peace, the being upset, turned over, bruised and even broken.   And yet the hand of God IS at work in this broken life.   I find myself anticipating the life that will spring forth after the plowing.   I don’t really know what to expect, but I remember the promise from Isaiah 28 that He does not plow forever.   I wonder what seeds He has sown?

Someone recently asked me if I’ve just seen all sorts of purpose in my cancer.   “I’ll bet you’re amazed at all of the wonderful things that have come as a result of your cancer.”   I felt at a loss for words, sure there have been blessings along the way though certainly nothing that seems to justify the horrors.  

We have been plowed.  (And I know we’re not the only ones!)    But it is not without purpose and it will not be wasted.   When God permits the plow He plans a harvest.   I find myself with a sense of anticipation, even though I’m still wincing from the plowing.  I can’t wait to see what He is going to do “in the wake of the plow.”