Happy? New Year

Happy New Year, everyone.

Hope you had a good one. I hope 2009 is going to be a great one! 2008 did not quite end the way I had hoped. Despite advancements and treatments and tests and biopsies, I feel that the past year's work....the year we knew was THE YEAR yielded me just that. Another year. Don't get me wrong....every day, week, month, minute is precious to me. God gives me each day and I try my best to honor Him in the way I live it. But the whispers of the enemy are strong. The strain of living in pain is crushing. The lack of direction and feeling of losing ground is depressing.
And the anger I now feel over a failed liver biopsy that did not yield us enough cells for the one most important piece of information that I suffered through the procedure for is clouding my vision with tears and disappointment. New Year's Eve spent on my sofa, sore and sick from a procedure that will have to be repeated. What a way to ring out the old.

You would not know about any of my "feelings" was I not writing about them here. I look great.
I walk around most days upright and positive......blessed and highly favored. But some days....some days like yesterday that left me angry and confused and discouraged and directionless....just another body on a chair amidst the chaos in the back treatment room. Just the woman under her blanket, not hiding from the cold, but hiding from it all and hiding my tears from all of them. Finally feeling utterly alone.

And then I got God-slapped in the face...twice.

I left 216 Asheville Avenue and went to get my right hip x-rayed. Upset about the liver biopsy, upset about another long day of people messing with me. I was on the cell phone at the radiologist's office, when out in the lobby I noticed a woman, well dressed, pushing a wheelchair across the lobby floor and out the door. Expecting to see an old woman in the chair, I was shocked to realize that the woman was pushing a teenage girl. A girl not too much younger than my daughter. A girl, painfully thin, bald and wrapped in a blanket, drinking a ginger ale and leaving from some sort of radiation treatment. There but for the grace of God..........I suddenly was feeling very grateful.

Then, this morning, I got up and read my devotional for today...a new book which had been given to me by my sister-in-law for Christmas. The devotionalist was working from Proverbs 3:6, "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." Her commentary began like this:

Jesus is saying to His people: "You are a chosen one. Walk and talk with me
daily. Tell Me everything--then listen to Me. Let me tell you all things.
I love you....I watch over you....I hear your words. I AM with you
always to help you. I give you my peace."

Oh yeah. In my time of year's end and year's beginning I had forgotten to do that. I had forgotten that I am never alone and my agonies and diatribes and frustrations are always heard by holy ears that never turn away. I had forgotten that my suffering and disappointments and betrayals are miniscule compared to His. I need to remember that every time I want to cover my face in a blanket and weep that He is there with me saying "Tell me everything...I hear your words." What a promise. What a comfort.

So Happy New Year, everyone. This time, I mean it.