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Week 4: Kindness in Everything

A friend of ours texted and said they were speficially praying Cade would do so well he would end up  fighting with his sisters again, like normal. I am so thankful to report that he and Haven have had a few wrestling matches over this weekend. Cade has been, for the most part, laughing, building puzzles, and chasing balloons around our house. Thank you for praying!

This week Cade finishes radiation- and Chad and I both are feeling momentum. He has finished his radiation to his lungs, and now all that remains is four mornings of finishing abdomen radiation on the side where the tumor is removed. 

I am attributing these victories to God’s kind response to your prayers:
1. Cade has been energy-full and off the couch since Thursday. 
2. Cade has successfully eaten every day and his nausea has been controlled. We’ve only had a few episodes that I think were caused by too-rich foods and gag reflexes over a certain weekend antibiotic he has to take. 
3. Our family has had precious time together, and most of us got to go to church. 
4. The blood transfusion boosted his hemoglobin levels, and his white blood cell count is on the rise as well! Yay God! Yay prayers! Yay modern medicine!

This week’s prayer points:

1. Pray for intestinal health and protection over the areas in his abdomen. Please pray he can continue to use the bathroom normally, eat normally, and not experience a lot of pain. He cannot have rich foods during this time, and the few times we have given in to his requests for certain foods (looking at you, pigs in a blanket), we have had some vomit-ful moments. Praying a bland diet is what he craves anyway right now. Click HERE for the radiation therapy prayer points to continue praying each morning at 7 am EST. (If you pray at another time in the day, it still counts. God is outside of time; and a friend of mine sent me an amazing text: “I saw a picture of Jesus rocking Cade in a rocking chair, and at his feet were all the prayers people were praying for him.” Revelation says our prayers are like incense before His throne, He is literally breathing them in!)

2. This is a chemo-free week! I am praying Cade’s body has fresh momentum and supernatural strength this week. I am already praying in advance the specific name of the chemo he will get for five days, starting December 26th (his 5th birthday). I am not listing the name for two reasons: I can’t spell it first of all, and second, I haven’t googled it and I don’t want my friends to either. Google can be so helpful when I need recipes or verse references, but it is usually not helpful in medical matters for me personally besides helping me get super freaked out. But you can pray with me that right now, his body would be prepared to handle this chemo. Good cells stay protected, bad cells get blasted. I’m continuing to pray Mark 16 “and if they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them” over him for chemo, and then for this treatment I am also praying Isaiah 49:10: “They shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” 

Five years ago today was my due date with Cade. I woke up that morning and read the Psalm of the day, like I’d been doing for years, and it just so happened to be Psalm 18. I talked about it in a previous blog, but the jist of the Psalm is about how God trains our hands for battle, helps us leap over a wall, escape from death, and enables us to stand on the heights. Reading it again this morning while Chad and Cade were at radiation, I realized just how detail-oriented is God’s love and provision. He was giving us promises back then, to stand in today. I know we are not an isolated occurence either. He wants all of his children to be certain of his character, to be prepared, to have hope in the darkest places. Psalm 18 also includes my go-to verse for this season, “It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.” 

A few months ago, I felt challenged to see everything as a kindness. I was getting irritated by little things, bogged down, clogged up, and I knew I was reverting to feeling like a victim of life, rather than a victor. What if I just viewed every detail as a kindness? That thought has found renewed vigor this past month. I’ve changed the exact statement, because cancer is not kidnness; but what if everything has opportunity to be redeemed in kindness? You miss your exit, you spill your coffee and have to get changed, your kids take ten minutes too long, what if all of those little things are actually kindnesses to help you avoid some other more intense catastrophe? 


When I review the events of this past month, I have to make a deliberate choice which lens I’ll view it through. The lens of fear, or the lens of faith. It is so tempting, and so easy, to revert to fear and feel paralyzed and completely victimized by the events. Or, I can see it through the lens of faith. 

Do you know what I see through the faith lens? I see a Father who loves Cade way more than me and Chad, stepping in and deciding, like Psalm 102 says, it was the appointed time to favor Cade. He was ready to heal him. He knew it was JUST THE RIGHT TIME to get the ball moving. Before any more lymph nodes were infected, before the tumor burst, before any more tumors grew on his lungs. When I view it like that, I see perfect timing. I see my own total ignorance, and it leads me to trust Jesus so much. He knew. He directed. He was in the midst of all the details. 

I see Cade and I sharing a hospital bed for a week, falling asleep realizing different worship songs were on my mind, ones with words like “I am no victim, I live with a vision, I’m covered by the force of love, covered in my Savior’s blood, I am no orphan, I’m not a poor man, the kingdom’s now become my home, with the King I have a home.” I see us falling asleep the night our church hosted a worship night for us, and I literally felt angels hovering near Cade. (If Jesus’ needed the ministry of angels, so do we.) I see that after every new blow of news or results or facts, when I found my portion of faith or strength was zapped, God showed up in the form of a new day. A new mercy. A new hope. Painful moments really are just moments. We breathe again. 

I see a constant choice before our eyes: life or death. Victim or victor. Child or orphan. A choice to be so grateful this happened around the holidays so that for every set of holidays from here on out, we will remember our own soul advent- waiting on Jesus to come. To be grateful that every office and waiting area and in patient room has had Christmas decor up so Cade would be distracted by the snowmen and the lights and the ornaments. Will we be staggered by the amount of kids in the hospital? Or aware of all the children who aren’t? Will I be overwhelmed by three other children at home, or so grateful when I see their healthy faces and robust laughs that Cade has built-in friends, and we have living prophetic pictures of what Cade will be again? 

The choice to not be offended or dismiss certain verses, like “Rejoice always, pray continually, in EVERYTHING GIVE THANKS for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Rejoice at childhood cancer? Give thanks right now? Yes. Always yes. This is a recipe for standing on the heights. 

This is more than just a choice to be optomistic. God is not an eternal optomist. Optomism to me means a deliberate choice to interpret life happily and be upbeat. God’s not just upbeat. He is TRUTH. His view of reality IS reality. The Kingdom is hope, the currency of it is faith, the fact is His kingdom REIGNS. It is victorious. 

I refuse to be a victim of life. Or a victim of cancer. Cade is not a victim of cancer. Maybe some people call it denial, but I will not glorify cancer or fear it. Cade is hidden in the hand of God, as Isaiah 49 says, as a polished arrow, as a son. Cade is being healed, no matter the outcome. He is living, not dying. My children, like Psalm 128 says, are like olive shoots around my table- I did a little research on olive shoots. Olive trees in the Middle East are some of the most indestructible trees, you can burn them or cut them down, and still shoots will grow. They are, according to one source, virtually “indestructible”. And Psalm 52:8 says that “I am like a green olive tree, flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love forever and ever.” 


It is so easy to be in some of the places we’ve been in and feel totally overwhlemed by sickness, and the hopelessness it represents. But we carry the Kingdom of God. We are ministers of His reconciliation, ambassadors for Him on the earth, when we enter these places, we bring the Kingdom. We bring Hope. What if these places need Jesus to walk in? What if we are placed strategically in the darkest places so that as Isaiah 9 says, “those who sit in darkness and the deepest gloom have seen a great light”?





















Comments

  1. Praise God for your heart friend. Praying that the Holy Spirit gently and sweetly reminds you of His goodness when the moments get the best of you. You are a warrior too and we are not only praying for Cade everyday but for you and Chads hearts and for the girls. You guys are being so faithful to the calling God has invested in you. ❤️ Cant wait to rejoice with you once this is all over!

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