WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Deuteronomy 31:6 (NIV)

6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2 Peter 3:8-9 (NIV)

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (Emphasis added.)

A few weeks ago, the Holy Spirit provided me with a rather disturbing epiphany concerning my image of God. Whenever I am in the middle of a difficult situation or things are not going “my way”, my default view of God is of a playground bully who taunts me with ridicules like “Nanny nanny boo boo” or “I know something, you don’t know. Ha ha ha ha ha.” With this warped portrayal, I can often react to hardships in one of two ways. I can withdraw and respond with a “Nanny nanny BOO HOO”, leading me to bouts of severe depression or I can lash out in anger, thinking that I “deserve” something better. Neither of these behaviors are what my Lord has planned for me, so this automatic inaccurate image of God has GOT TO GO!

Over the past few months, I have been listening to a podcast called “Thread: Finding Your Place in God’s Story” by Dr. David Pocta and Hannah DeSouza. Meditating on this podcast has helped to expose my erroneous picture of God. It has also opened my eyes in understanding God’s intent for me to participate in the beautiful ending of his creation story. Genesis 1 and 2 starts with God’s “Once Upon a Time” account of how he places mankind in his garden in the very beginning. Later, man and God separate because of Adam’s disobedience to his one command. God then ends his story in Revelation 21 and 22 with man once again being in the garden with God. This time, both God and The Chosen are there together bound in perfect love and unity. The Chosen are those of us who CHOOSE to be with God as we learn obedience to him through what we have suffered. I can now see the value of the junk in between the beginning and the end of our stories, our lives here on earth. Yes, God is no longer that bully! He truly is my Dad, holding my hand, lifting me up, and helping me to get through life here on earth – my messy middle.  This is an account of what has been my junky mess of late:

The last update I provided about my health was in April when I had four more weeks of taking the 80 mg of Tagrisso, my targeted therapy medication. I have had tremendous amounts of overwhelming emotions that at times, I could not wrap my heart and head around all that had happened. Though I continue to see God’s powerful work in my life as he is always there showing me how much he loves me, this will be my sixth time beginning this post in attempts to help me process and share all that had occurred.

What can I say. I wanted so desperately for my “miracle” drug to keep working so that I could have a few more years on this earth. I even invested in this new website, having dreams of sharing how God had pulled me through the various struggles of everyday life in dealing with my cancer. I wanted so much to get the opportunity to one day join one of the REVIVEE teams, which I had mentioned in my blog titled: In Pursuit of God—Karen’s Baptism. God, however, has a different plan.

On May 15th, my CT scans showed that the tumor had grown to almost 1 cm on all sides, which indicated that the cancer had mutated so that the Tagrisso was no longer effective in controlling its growth. Despite the increase in the size of the tumor, the satellite sites were still dormant and there was no evidence of metastases in the other scanned parts of my body.

Because of my warped image of God, it was difficult for me to fully process the disappointment and anger so it became very easy for me to believe that God was against me. “What’s up with this Lord? You changed my attitude about praying for that physical miracle? Now this! I’m going to die. I’m going to suffer painfully and slowly as the cancer takes over my lungs and my body. Oh man, I am not ready yet Lord!”

Every morning for 6 days, I woke up to these “Nanny nanny BOO HOO” thoughts. For the first 5 mornings, I could get out of my worldly sorrow mindset and grab hold of God’s plan. Of course, it helped that I had different scheduled events to provide a bit of distraction and structure. I had even thought that if I only had a few months to live that it should not be wasted on me feeling sorry for myself.

But the 6th day came, and all the suppressed and unprocessed feelings of deep sorrow and confusion came out. After talking with a couple of good sister friends, I grabbed hold of the truths that God never leaves me and always loves me. I was encouraged to continue to talk with God about all that I felt and that my feelings are always valid.

As I further meditated on what I had said about not wasting time on feeling sorry for myself, I realized that there is a point in time where my genuine valid sorrow turns into this “Nanny nanny BOO HOO” response. It is fine for me to feel sad, upset, disappointed, or even hopeless, about what has happened, but if I continue to hang onto those emotions and not truly give them over to God to help me with processing them, then I start to believe that God is holding out on me. And this same type of attitude was what started man’s introduction to sin from the beginning.

Genesis 3:4-6 (NIV)

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Emphasis added.)

Eve thought that God was holding out on her. She wanted to be like God, so she disobeyed him and suffered the consequences of no longer having that intimate relationship with him. “Lord God, I know that you are never holding out on me, but my default image pops up so easily in my mind. Please Jesus, help me to process my feelings and not go down this path of temptation. Help me to repent from having this faulty view of you. Lord, this playground bully image has GOT TO GO!”

After this first week of my boo hoo’s, I began experiencing my “lashing out in anger” response. Though I believed that I was “over” my “oh woe is me” attitude toward the news of the scans, I had the general feeling of “blah” but could not really pinpoint my actual feelings or thoughts around it. I began demanding from God to know what was going on in my heart and mind. “What’s up with this Lord? You told me to talk with you about how I feel and what I think. I don’t even know what is going on! You have got to be kidding! What is this? Some sick sense of humor. How the heck can I process my feelings when I have no clue? This isn’t fair.”

This time the bully was taunting me with, “It is for me to know and you to find out. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Yes, when I am emotional, particularly angry, I can come up with some really irrational thoughts and very stupid actions. Think about it. “Can the pot tell the Potter what it is supposed to be or the created tell the Creator what should happen (Isaiah 45:9)?

Or how about: “Do I really want God to be “fair” in how he treats me since all of us truthfully deserve only death because we are nothing but a bunch of sinners?

Romans 3:23 (AMP)

23 since all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God, 

Psalm 103:10 (NLT)

10 He does not punish us for all our sins;    he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.

Romans 6:23 (NLV)

23 You get what is coming to you when you sin. It is death! But God’s free gift is life that lasts forever. It is given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.

I submitted because I understood that God was in control. Since that image was still burning in my heart, the submission was the “Yep. God’s the boss. He’s in control” type of attitude. A couple of days later, I finally surrendered to God and then he gave me his peace.

Then I went to Durham, NC to encourage different sister friends of mine. During my stay, I had a couple of major conversational snafus as I interacted with one of them. “What’s up with this Lord? You put it on my heart to come here to encourage so and so and now I am bumping heads big time with her. I really don’t understand why she is not listening to me. I am just pointing out what your Word says. I hate this feeling of division Why is there so much heartache and division? We are supposed to be loving each other deeply so that others may see you. Father, I am having so much difficulty with being in the same room with her. Father, help me to love her even though right now she is rejecting what your word says.”

Of course, upon my return from North Carolina, I realized that I had to meditate on being still before the Lord and the taming of my tongue. Though I wanted so much to be in control, I could not eliminate the wicked schemes people decide to carry out, and it is not my job to try to convince someone that they are wrong. My uncontrolled emotions and enabling nature can lead to a lot of damage in what and how I communicate to others and put great strains on the relationships.

Psalm 37:7 (NIV)

7 Be still before the Lord

    and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when people succeed in their ways,

    when they carry out their wicked schemes.

James 3:5-6 (NIV)

5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

Note: Both the sister friend and I have repented, and we are back to being best buds again. And prayerfully, I will continue to learn how and when to say something when I am concerned but to leave the rest of the convincing to God, keeping my tongue in check.

As I looked back at my weeks and even looking at past blogs, the same themes kept repeating: God is in control, he is always there for you, and he loves you. I just didn’t seem to get it through my thick skull these statements were solid truths. My unprocessed thoughts and emotions just keep going straight to what I have done all my life: I, like Eve, am such a control freak and my deep-down belief is that God is holding out on me. I also do not want to suffer nor watch others suffer, so I try desperately to do whatever I believe needs to be done to “save” myself or others from what I consider “bad” situations. However, just as Adam and Eve were inadequate with making fig leaves to cover themselves, though I desire to “save”, God had never designed me that way.

Again, this image has just GOT TO GO.

So, the growing tumor has mutated into a form, which currently no medication has been developed to help with controlling its growth. Because the last scan showed that my cancer was just the one tumor without any additional metastases yet, the previous proposal was put back on the table – 6 weeks of radiation along with small amount of combination chemotherapy.

After long discussions and prayers about this proposal, I have consent to the radiation therapy along with chemotherapy without the platinum based therapeutic agent. Though the combination chemotherapy has proven almost twice as effective than the monotherapy approach, I am opposed to using the platinum-based agent. This agent is NOT broken down in the body nor in the environment and it is also a known carcinogen. I do not want to potentially expose my caregiver to any known carcinogen while she is cleaning up after me. Because this agent is not efficiently being removed from our wastewater, I also do not want to be responsible for contributing any amount of this hazardous waste to the environment.

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/9/11/1873#:~:text=Once%20administered%2C%20these%20compounds%20are,(WWTP)%20%5B3%5D.

So on July 1st, I am to go up to Baltimore to determine if the next proposed treatment is still something that can be done. The proposal is dependent upon the size of the tumor and if the satellite site tumors are still dormant.

I believe that the Holy Spirit always makes it clear as to where he is wanting me to go in my next chapter of my journey. Regardless of whatever happens, I know that my story of faith is intricately intertwined with God’s main story, which has the most beautiful ending – perfect and total unity with the most excellent love. I see now as I go through the messy middle of my life, God knows and does exactly what is best for me. He is in total control of all things and is full of patience, grace and so much love. Because he is giving me the freedom to choose him, I can better embrace the difficulties in life knowing that he is there helping me every step of the way. The Holy Spirit has helped me to see that Yahweh is my Daddy in heaven, waiting patiently for me to call out to him to save me.

Please continue to pray for my courage always to do what God is calling me to do during this next stage of my treatment.  Also please continue to pray that I may always surrender to his will and give his name the glory.  To God be the glory! Amen.