It’s Cycle 3, Day 4…. and the storm is a brewing. 

My stomach’s flipping,  food doesn’t want to stay down so much, and staying awake for prayers is getting trickier and trickier.  However,  when I look over at the patients next to me in the chairs that go on and on down the infusion suite, I can stay awake, and I can pray.  Funny how that works?

That’s when it came to me.  I’ve been hemming and hawing over this ever since my diagnosis, so here it goes.

I need your help.

I don’t refer to myself when I post this quote from the Blessed Mother Theresa.  I’m thinking outside the box here.  The world is so big, so vast, and the need for prayer is so far beyond what we see in our little world right here.  I’m touched beyond words by all the prayers people have offered up for us, the selfless acts, the meals, the notes, the hugs, and the love.  It is awe-inspiring.  And for someone like me to go speechless, that’s a once in a life time chance, baby! (Enjoy the silence of me not talking for a moment……. aaaaand… here I go again! Haha!)  So, it got me thinking.  I need a way to focus my prayers, and focus all the little side effects of the chemo and sufferings of the day to day issues that go along with having breast cancer and fighting for my life, really.

People have timidly started emailing me, texting me, sending messages on Facebook, unsure if it was ok to give me their intentions to offer up.  “Is that ok?” , they ask.

“Is that ok? Is that ok?  THAT’S FANTASTIC!!!!!”, I reply enthusiastically!

Giving me your intentions, gives me a way to focus my day, and channel everything toward a greater cause.  I’m a mama.  I want to take care of people, I like to nurture.  If any of you have ever been on bed rest (which I was for nearly 20 weeks with my son), it was far more of an emotional torture than anything!  I felt it was taking away my ability to be a mom.  So, to be able to have a “job” to take care of all of you people and pray for you, and help YOU through the grace of suffering would be AWESOME!!!

Oh, It’s on like DONKEY KONG!

However, I want us to stick with what I’ve been learning and what I’ve been trying mercilessly to teach my children to do.  Let’s focus on the desire for GOD’s WILL in our lives.  It’s a hard one.  We all want to pray to be healed.  Our knee jerk reaction is to tell God just what to do.  But, I’ve regularly been laughed at when I tell the Big Guy my plans. So I suggest we don’t do that so much.  Deal?  You can even just pray for a “special intention”, God knows the details.  We don’t need to go into the nitty gritties for the world to see if you don’t want them to!  God is omnipotent, He knows way more than us.  Thank God, right??

However, I can take some details, too. But let’s have some rules, why don’t we?  Let’s use the ol’ K.I.S.S. Rule here  (Keep It Simple Stupid Sweetie):  In other words let’s not get too lengthy.  If you feel called to elaborate, feel free to email me by clicking on the link on my blog page.  I’ll take a look at it and pray for your in depth intention privately. I figure it would look, overall like this.

 WHEN YOU MAKE A COMMENT ON MY BLOG POST:

1. Your name, the person,  or situation your praying for (only if you feel comfortable doing so

2) The general need for prayer (simple sentence)

3)Try to follow up with a little thanksgiving of something good that God is doing in your life (simple sentence)

In all things, no matter how ugly, how messy, how scary, how unclear, we must have faith that God has got our backs and is also still doing good in our lives, even during all the bad that seems to surround us.  If we can’t have hope, and we can’t find gratitude in something…. ANYTHING… than what’s the point?  I see more smiling faces over there in that Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center every day.  They are thankful for a second chance.  We are thankful for a chance to fight.  So let us fight for you, too, while you do the same with your prayers for us.  You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Deal?

My mother’s dear friend, Jane Vorbeck,  passed away a few years back after struggling with a debilitating textbook case of rheumatoid arthritis.  Her body seemed crippled and in a type of pain that no one could understand.  However, her mind, her wit, and her spirit was like no hero I had ever known.  She is definitely, definitely one of my inspirations as a writer.  She had a deliciously twisted sense of humor that we shared and loved one another for!  A beautiful writer, mother, and a tough-cookie fighter!  She’d call my mom whenever she knew I had a test coming up and say, “Alright, she has a chemistry exam, right?  What does she want? A rib or an ankle bone? Both are crunchin’ on me, but I’m offerin’ ’em up for her. Good for nothing for me!” And then she’d just laugh.  Now, that was a lesson learned on offering up one’s suffering.  Mrs.Jane, I do this in memory of you. Thank you for your gracious example.

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See ALSO:

2nd prayer wall blog post…

PRAYER WALL 2: DON’T BE SHY NOW, SEND EM’