Update #11 - 10/11/23

Kara has now officially finished chemo treatments! She will continue to get immunotherapy medication (via a shot instead of all-day IV’s) until next June. We’re nowhere near the finish line on this journey, but we do feel like we’ve crossed a milestone or checkpoint this week. It’s strange though, because while it seems celebratory to me, it’s really just a consolation to Kara as she descends into the extreme fatigue and nausea that come inevitably and increasingly as the cumulative effect of chemotherapy now reaches its peak.

Next week the pace of appointments picks up. Kara will have a mammogram to give the surgeons a clear picture of what’s going on now that the chemo has done its job. Also next week, we will have appointments with the surgical oncologist and the plastic surgeon to discuss the operation in more detail, and Lord willing we will also schedule the surgery. Please be in prayer that there will be no obstacles that cause delays, like scheduling conflicts or more red tape from the insurance company.

I read in my devotions this morning that “true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalog of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness.” Spurgeon goes on to say, “That is the value of prayer: while it adores God, it lays His creatures where they should be—in the very dust.” I wonder if at times my lack of prayer stems from a reluctance to confront my own inability to satisfy the need of the moment. Could it be sinful pride that causes me to resist the humbling that’s required to approach God and admit that I need Him?

There’s nothing I can do to bring about or even contribute to a remedy for Kara’s cancer, so naturally I’m praying more now than I ever have before. But in doing so, I see in myself a tendency to pray as a last resort, only after having exhausted every avenue by which I might have accomplished what was needed on my own. It is not unlike working hard at something with the wrong tools, only to realize after much wasted time that it cannot be done without the right tools. On top of that, my clumsy efforts have ruined the thing, and I must start again from the beginning once I’ve acquired what I was missing. Yet even this analogy fails to capture the full picture of my own shortcomings in that it assumes I possess the knowledge and lack only the means. In truth, even when I think I know how a situation should be remedied, God’s divine wisdom reveals that His ways and purposes are so much bigger and higher than my ability to understand.

When I look at our current situation with Kara’s cancer, it is so easy to just see a problem God has only to solve or an obstacle He just needs to remove from our path. But God must think, “You have no idea the great and mighty work that I am accomplishing through this!” Truly, we will never fully know His purposes, nor is it our place to know them. We get glimpses though, and those are such a grace to us from God that He allows us just enough of a peek to see what we already believe: our loving Heavenly Father does not waste our pain. His will and His ways are always best, and if we could comprehend them, we would “count it all joy, my brothers, when [we] face trials of many kinds.” Believe this, and pray that you may be useful to Him in accomplishing His purposes for His glory! Not that our Master is lacking in anything that our involvement supplies, but because it is a privilege to serve at the pleasure of the King!