ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT WHAT YOU ASKED GOD FOR?

This past Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, I went to see my doctor and he told me that the growths that have recently appeared on my forehead and on my neck, are cancer. Either basal cell or squamous. He told me that I need to have them removed in the hospital. My surgery is scheduled for December 6.

My feelings felt very hurt. Why would God allow me to get cancer, again? I had a deadly type of uterine cancer when I was 26, which the pathology report said had most likely already spread to my endocrine system. But after much prayer and only a minimal surgery, and no other treatment, I was cancer free. That was 39 years ago. I was even able to have another child a year and a half later, after the surgeon had said that would never be possible.

When I was in my early thirties, I had a large painful tumor in my gallbladder. The doctor said it was almost certainly cancer and that it needed to come out right away. He scheduled me for surgery as soon as he could get me in. Not wanting to have another surgery, I told the surgeon, an atheist, that I was going to pray to God to take the tumor away. The surgeon literally laughed in my face. “You can pray,” he said, “But I will see you in the hospital this Wednesday.”

Wednesday came and I checked myself into the hospital as instructed, even though the intense pain had gone and only a mild achey soreness remained. The pre-op nurse said that the surgeon wanted another ultrasound done, to see if the tumor had changed or grown since my previous ultrasound, which had been done just five days before. I got up on the table, she ran the wand over my belly and as she did, she looked puzzled. “This machine doesn’t seem to be working right,” she said. “Let’s try this other ultrasound machine.” So I walked across the room and climbed up on another table. After passing the second wand over my belly and taking several photographs, she printed out the pictures and said, “I will be right back.”

Moments later, I was summoned to the surgeon’s office. I found him sitting behind his desk, staring at two pictures that he held, one in each hand. “Look!” he said. ” Do you see how big your gallbladder was, five days ago? And you see this large single mass completely filling uo your gallbladder? Now look at today’s picture. Not only is the mass completely gone — your gallbladder is now many times smaller than it was five days ago — it’s thin and elongated, back to a normal shape and size. ”

Then this atheist surgeon looked at me in amazement. “Maybe God really did heal you!” he exclaimed.

When I was in my late forties, I suddenly had all the yucky symptoms of colon cancer, which is one of several cancers that run in my family. Surgery removed a large precancerous polyp, which the pathology report said was adenomous benign. Many colonoscopies later, I remain free of colon polyps and colon cancer.

But…. now I have skin cancer. Now I am scheduled for surgery in less than two weeks, my fourth surgical procedure under general anesthesia since May 2017. And I hate going under general anesthesia, because I have almost died from an anaphylactic shock reaction to anesthesia, twice in the past. But even more than hating to go under anesthesia, I hate the word Cancer.

Why, God?

As I was driving home from seeing the surgeon last Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, right after being told that my suspicion was correct, that these new growths are cancer, I prayed and asked God WHY? Then these words from a song that we sang in church last Sunday, came to my mind:

Your mercies are new
Over and over
Your mercies are new
Over and over
As surely as the morning comes
You’re faithful!

Yes, Lord. Amen. Your will be done. My life belongs to You. Thank You, God, that I have an excellent surgeon that I trust, in a good hospital, with a great surgical team that has always taken the best care of me. Thank You for the excellent health insurance that I have. Thank You for my loving husband and my caring and dependable stepdaughter, for I know they will see me through as I heal from this surgery, as they have done before. And I thank You that my Google search revealed that basal cell and squamous cell skin cancers almost never metastasize and kill a person. And thank You for healing me of various kinds of cancer before! Most of all, God, I thank You for Your great love and mercy, and for Your amazing grace that has saved my soul, through the cross of Jesus Christ, my Savior and my Lord.

Your mercies are new
Over and over…..

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