These Three Years

October 2019.

They say nothing can prepare you to hear the words, “you’ve got cancer.” It might have been the last thing I expected, but preparations were being made on my behalf.

Late that summer, I found myself dropped from commitments I had been looking forward to, suddenly and without cause.

Calendar cleared.

My direct report at work started two days after I was diagnosed. But planning for his arrival began almost exactly one year before.

Workload covered.

I traveled more in the several months before than I had in a long time. There were unexpected invites and last minute plans with good friends.

Joy stored up.

And the way I found it - when every doctor asked me to show them what I saw that led me to make the call, I couldn’t. Because it was gone. 

Sent as a messenger nudging me to take action, it disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived. 

There are still days, especially in October, I lose myself in the “what if’s” and “why me’s”. There have been countless tears, prayers, triggers, and seemingly missed opportunities.

Times I curse being so different from other women and I wonder what God could possibly be doing.

But God didn’t rush in halfway through the day I was diagnosed, like someone late to an emergency, scurrying around to put out fires.

Throughout countless days that bled into weeks I assumed counted for nothing, He was behind the scenes, aligning the miraculous. All I saw was the mundane.

The God who speaks galaxies into existence and balances the Earth on its axis and prevents it from pummeling into the sun, narrowed in on this girl’s life and with painstaking precision, paved the jagged terrain I would tread.

Who am I?

That you would go before me and lead me all the way to the end is my anchor in this wave-battered world.

I am Yours. I am Loved.

Before these three years and through all that is to come.

Isaiah 45: 2-3

I will go before you
and will level the mountains;
I will break down gates of bronze
and cut through bars of iron.
I will give you hidden treasures,
riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

Psalm 139:5

You hem me in behind and before…