When Grace Fills Each Page

I have breast cancer. 

I'm not worried about it. I'm not afraid. The surgeon assures me we caught it early and that a lumpectomy and a week of radiation will take care of it. 

But even if the doctor is wrong, even if something goes terribly awry, I'm still not afraid. I know how my story ends, and all that really matters is how I turn each day's page. 

I told my students. I told them partly because I wanted them to hear the truth from me rather than get their intelligence from a flawed rumor mill. But I also told them because I want them to see that what defines us is not trouble; it's  how we face the trouble.  

Whereas so many grownups wrung their hands and fretted at the news, pampering me any way they could, the teenagers in my classroom have been quietly supportive, offering prayers and gently encouraging words. But mostly they just kept on doing what they'd been doing: studying and not studying, paying attention and squirreling around, taking notes and losing the notes they had taken, smiling Good Mornings and Thank Yous and Do-we-need-a-pencil? After all, that's what I did -- life as normal:  prepare lessons, teach them, test them, grade them; greet students as they came into the classroom and pray for them each day. It's just a thing. So we keep on living. We keep on working. We keep on laughing. We keep on loving. 

Sure, I've wavered, I've cried, I've fretted, I've lost my temper; but it didn't have anything to do with the tumor. It had to do with my human frailty, my own character flaw. I do so wish that, when the surgeon goes in tomorrow to cut out this offending mass, he could do something about my stubborn heart, too. 

But that's not his job. The Great Physician is working on that. He's teaching me an awful lot about who is really in control -- it's not me, by the way. And He's helping me admit when I've reached my limit -- turns out I'm NOT Wonder Woman after all. And He is teaching me how to accept help -- I am too, too doggedly independent. He's administered some tough medicine already, and I do pray that, in the weeks and months and years to come, my students will see a healthier me, whether the cancer is gone or not. 

I pray that they will know without a doubt that my story will end with God's grace because the pages have been filled with it. I pray that they, too, will let Christ fill their pages with Grace so that they might live in Joy no matter what trouble befalls them. 

Lisa

Afterword:  I don't write this for your sympathy, although prayers for body and spirit are certainly appreciated. I really share this hoping that you, too, will muster the courage to meet whatever challenges are in your path. Meet them with power and with hope; meet them with conviction; meet them so that others will know where your faith lies. Meet them so that God can show His might through you! Meet them so that you will be a blessing to someone else. 

In Him, be blessed.