miracles, faith, grace, and bears! oh my!

my mom is a wonderful person and my best friend, but i talked about that enough on her birthday, you can read it all here: http://courtneyrob.blogspot.com/2011/02/lets-dance-in-glow-of-those-51-birthday.html

today i'd like to talk about miracles. and grace. and faith.

my mom has been cancer free for a year exactly TODAY. miracle!

my mom has been told she has cancer, had great insurance and medical provision and skilled doctors to perform surgery, and 365 days later, no longer has cancer. grace!

my mom does not deserve to be on earth more than our friend jay chenoweth, or wesley gentry, or others i could name who did not beat cancer. it's confusing and mindboggling and maddening and yet... peace washes over me like a river. faith.

there is a god more powerful and more righteous and more loving than i can fathom. there is a god. i know this through nightmares like cancer and death, and through wonders like traveling to yellowstone with my parents.

we saw bears in the wildnerness and my mom didn't hug them as if they were a golden retriever. nor were we eaten. miracle! i have parents who are great friends of mine, and the financial ability to drive to wyoming last summer to hang out in yellowstone, and then spent a week in montana solo. grace! plans that are made and come smashing down, or plans like that vacation that are even better than expected - i don't know why sometimes it's one way and sometimes it's another, but i trust in something wiser and bigger than myself. faith.

it's been a crazy year, full of emotions and doctors and wonderful, wonderful friends. denise williams built a website, for goodness sake! people lined up to drop off food for my bro and my dad, as if they would starve if my mom was in bed for several weeks. they would have been fine eating captain crunch with berries.

i'm not sure i have ever felt more scared when it was just me and my mom in the staging area after surgery - my dad came out and said my mom wanted to see me. better swallow that fear, i guess. i followed signs to the back, through several hallways and around a curtain. mom!

she looked horrible, it smelled awful, and i was frightened. what would the docs would tell us? how bad were things in there? mom was in and out of consciousness, yet so glad to see me, and i honestly wasn't sure she at that moment whether she was going to make it, she looked so horrible. why did they think i was old enough or mature enough to be back there alone? i began to panic.

and then mary chenoweth came around the corner, grabbed my hand, and talked with me and my mom before we got in trouble for having two people with a patient. (strictly one only please!) mary chenoweth is my miracle, that she knows my family and willing is friends with us. (a normal person would run. also, the thorntons and the martins and many, many, many others who know us and still stick around, they are our miracles too.)

my mom is my saving grace, that she is on this earth and that i am so immensely blessed to have her as a friend and mom.

faith, well, that is what has grown in me like a wildflower since this all began. i clung to my faith as mom had this huge, intense, multi-hour surgery, then radiation, millions of doctors, lots of fatigue, some hotflashes, crazy hair moments.

i had faith that my dad would be okay, even though sometimes i felt like if i pushed him too hard with just my finger, he might just crumble. faith that my grandparents would make it as they watched this daughter deal with the dreaded, life threatening word cancer.

faith. to have faith means i coudn't worry too much, and i did not. i felt oddly at peace with everything during our six weeks of treatment. what could our family have done? worry? no. pray? yes. and love. and hope. and dance and laugh and laugh and cry and love. i've learned through the trials of this dark, awful word cancer, that it is not our will, but His. Not my will, O lord, but thine.

My mom beat cancer, a miracle I can't explain. But, I can chalk it up to grace and faith. I've learned that questions are sometimes good, and sometimes silly. Who am I to question things I cannot change? We can continue to lead a life of prayer and not of fear or worry. We can hug each other and love each other and dance with each other, and at the end of the day, give thanks to the one who made it all possible.

I'm so thankful my mom's surgery and stress of radiation is over. I know it wasn't easy on her. This past year has flown by, and my mom, my dad, my grandparents, and all of our terrific friends held us up with such grace and faith.

My world was kind of cracked this time last year, as if a hammer had smashed my sidewalk and broken it into pieces. But my mom has stepped over those cracks, and grace and faith have grown up around the mess to make something gross and scary, actually quite beautiful.

philippians 4:6-8

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

** it must be said that on the very top of my mom's bucket list was to see a bear in the wild - not the zoo or a habitat. we saw 8 bears this summer during our time in yellowstone and crossed that right off the list. yahoo! **