This from my journal of 9.2.05:

It is hard not to get discouraged. Last night my tongue felt swollen and sore. Fears swept over me. Will I be able to speak again, eat again, drink again? I seem trapped in the last third of this process with no ultimate relief in sight. I remain shut in by the Lord dependent upon His mercy to heal.

Discouragement is such a formidable foe! Calculating God’s sovereignty in the season sustained me but not without huge lows long the way.

If you missed Sunday’s congregational meeting, here is a summation of Chuck Mitchell’s framing of the building committee presentation.

It outlines the rationale among the elders for their unanimous consensus for building a facility on our property as opposed to some other destination location such as a shopping center, closed auto dealership, etc.

• We have explored numerous alternative options in the past by God’s leading and He has closed the door every time and feel it is important to delay a definitive direction no longer.
• We greatly value the prospect of being located in the center of a highly residential area as opposed to a commercial one for the purpose of enabling outreach to our community.
• Our property lies at the center of what has been the target area for our church from its outset.
• A facility will give us a visible, permanent, strategic base of operations making us more viable as a church entity to households in the community as well as facilitating a breadth of ministry options now problematic to impossible to entertain for lack of a facility.
• The numerical growth, Lord willing, that a facility will help generate, will enhance our capacity, increasing resources over time to continue our impact in the area of global missions.

May the Lord continue to give us wisdom as we proceed with the process of building a facility for the glory of God as He enables us to do so.

Chapter Seven of A Call to Spiritual Reformation deals with “Excuses for Not Praying.” The first is I am too busy to pray. D. A Carson offers this hard-hitting advice:

It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming for impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety-hour work weeks: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out (p. 114).

Amen and amen.

If you missed this on August 23 when our team reported on their trip to Kenya, here’s a chance to see some fantastic work by a gifted young lady in our church. Check it out! Note: Double click on the video and it will take you to the full size version – a must.

Several days have passed since blog posts. How pastors who do it every day keep up with it, I’ll never know.

The gist of my journal entries from the last week of August ’05 sound very much alike. The last chemo blast took a huge toll. The worst of it came with my bloated, bloody, scab covered lower lip. I looked so terrible that we didn’t allow our three grandchildren to come back to the bedroom to see me while they visited for the youngest’s birthday party.

This from 9.1.05:

I doubt few things will ever rival this healing process for its seemingly endless nature. Another long night. Scabs all over my swollen lower lip. None seem to want to loosen without bleeding. I think I still have radiation sores in my mouth. If anything should teach me patience, this process should. [And it did.] I watched “The Passion” for the second time. A reminder that my suffering is minimal compared to what my Savior endured for me. I continue to take comfort in the fact that each calendar day that passes puts me one step closer to return to a normal life – assuming cancer is gone. What a huge question that is! Only God has the answer. My times are in His hands.

What gives you joy? What gives you joy to the utmost?

The apostle John revealed his answer in 3 John 4.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

It gave me great joy to receive this email from someone in our church earlier this week:

Hi, Tuesday prayer list folks…

1Corinthians 16:13
That _________ would be on the alert today, standing firm in the faith, acting like godly men (or women) and being strong.

I was among the Tuesday prayer folks in our Seven Day Prayer Directory at OGC. I was SO ENCOURAGED to know that I had been prayed for in such a substantive, biblical way.

And it gave me GREAT JOY that one of His children sought to walk in the truth of praying for one another and communicated that as I have continually sought to exhort us over these last several weeks.

Church, have you prayed for the Thursday prayer folks yet today?

I was reminded in my journal from 8.24.05 of a source of comfort during the worst week in my treatment process.

I continue to get numerous cards. My mother has taken it upon herself to recruit friends and family to bombard me. Many encouraging emails too. Praise God for that. I do so long for the day when my life is returned to me. Having it held captive by cancer treatment is terrible. Lord, grant me strength to persevere. Again, I pray, send relief from these discomforts.

Never underestimate the power of a written note to encourage someone who suffers. Is there someone you could bless with comfort Hallmark style today?

D. A. Carson keeps heaping more thermonuclear fuel on my desire to pray through the flock.

There is no prayer we can pray for others more fundamental than this: that God might strengthen their hearts so that they will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father on the last day (A Call to Spiritual Reformation, p. 94).

See 1 Thess. 3:13, dear ones, and PRAY FOR ONE ANOTHER!

I am remembering arguably the hardest time in my journey through cancer valley.

From my journal of 8.23.05:

The misery shows no signs of abating. Lord, have mercy. My tongue, mouth and lips are raw. I’m nauseous most of the day. The mucous is relentless. How long before the side effects give way and I find relief? O, Lord, grant me endurance. Grant me strength. I almost wept over the pain this afternoon. The taste in my mouth is metallic and bitter. To swallow a pain pill is necessary but always an effort for fear of gagging and throwing up. This may prove one of the longest weeks yet in the trial. Please don’t give me more than I can bear, Father. I’ve never felt affliction like this. How do people who live with it all the time survive. I at least have hope of relief. It can’t come soon enough. Guard my lips, O God, in this affliction.

I say, Bless you cancer, for multiple reasons. One is because 2 Cor. 1:4 is true. God comforts us in our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

I now possess pastoral compassion for those who battle chronic pain in a way I never would have known before. God uses suffering to make us better comforters of others in their affliction. The comfort that thought brings is not colossal during one’s trial but it grows in its significance over time as you see the Lord redeem it in the lives of others.

This from D. A. Carson in today’s romance:

Christian love, mature, deep, and unqualified, is a rare commodity. When it is displayed, it speaks volumes to a society that gorges itself in self-interest, lust, mutual-admiration pacts, even while it knows very little of love. Show me a church where the choir is known as the War Department, where people divide over evangelistic strategies or over the color of the carpet, and I’ll show you a church that has not been praying along these lines for some time [that the love of Christ would abound in its midst]. Conversely, we will see profound spiritual renovation if by God’s grace we make it our commitment not to put anyone down–except on our prayer list (A Call to Spiritual Reformation, emphasis mine, pp. 92-93).

Brethren and Sistren, love well by praying hard and only putting one another down on your Seven Day Prayer Directories and personal lists.