Let Love Guide

  Working to let go of . . . anxiety, expectation, fear. I haven't prepared (AT ALL) to not receive chemo tomorrow. Too fearful to hope - to expect. Instead, focused on how God is in each of our moments. He knows the plans and they are best. My prayer is only to be held as His plan unfolds. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. For now, I retreat into the boat, to sail close to God's heart. He is big enough and loves enough to hold our fears. So grateful Jesus modeled retreating to the Father. I feel Him near in my cries and tears - a participation in the life of Christ so holy and precious. If I have strength, it's from the Lord. If I have joy, it's from the Lord. All I am is because of God and God alone. Just as God sustained His beloved, He will sustain us. Darkness won't have the last word. Even in the grief, we work to bring justice to the world, to bring help in crisis, but we also work for beauty, laughter, and levity for sheer pleasure. We write,

I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don't you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open flowing streams in the desert. Isaiah 43:19 God morning! My white and red blood cells and neutrophils were too low for me to receive chemo today so chemo #4 has been rescheduled for Friday, March 19. I've been preparing for a bump in the road and am at peace. As much as I want to motor through chemo and end on planned date of April 23, I recognize God has a plan and His timing is best Thank you for continuing to support and love me and my family. I am humbled and honored by your faithful outpouring. I love you each of you SO MUCH! God is speaking and moving - always. Even yesterday, before my appointment and the news of this setback, He prepared me through this devotion. All glory to God! Y our difficulties have shaped you, but they will not define you. By creation and by redemption, you are mine! I have set my seal

Grieve. Recover. Rejoice. Hope. This is my present rhythm. Who I am at this moment feels familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously. I'm very aware of my physical body, with all its limitations - in a wheelchair, weakened from chemo, constant heartburn, prone to days of fatigue and grief. And yet, God is revealing who I am from His heavenly perspective - beloved, joy-filled, without limitations, full of His strength and Holy Spirit, eternal. Jesus was a man acquainted with sorrow (Isaiah 53:3). Just as God did not take away the vulnerability of His beloved Son, He does not take away our vulnerability. He enters into it. I'm so grateful for a Savior who left a place with no night to enter our present darkness. God is doing good and necessary work and I am grateful. I do not grieve as one without hope. Rather I'm grateful for the revealing, the transforming. The revelation and dawn of God is allowing me to see how He sees me. As I journey, I feel nearer to God and His heart and

  The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair; and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Life near the veil. As I journey through cancer and chemo, I feel more near to heaven than earth. The ache for home began a few months ago, but has increased so greatly in the last few days it's been hard for me to live out my daily human duties - tidy the house, send emails, work Zoom call, check on Elijah's school progress. The liturgy of the ordinary has always been something I've loved. Through the lens of these ordinary tasks - loving, tending to, and serving my family, friends, and coworkers - I serve God. In these offerings and practices we collectively mend an unraveling world. Tish Warren, an Anglican priest, and author of my new favorite book, Prayer in the Night, says, "Unless we make space for grief, we cannot know the depth