A Little Honesty is Good for the Soul

I've been playing some pity games with myself these last few weeks. I feel much weaker now than I did weeks ago. I seem to have more numbness in my feet and legs and I also feel like I've got some numbness in my face and forehead. I’ve lamented over the pain in my back and how much more I feel it now. All in all I’ve had a fairly poor attitude. Maybe that is why I’ve not been given to sitting down and writing a blog entry two times a week. My last good news from the doctor’s office was about my paraprotein 1 level dropping from a 1.6 to a 0.2 from October to December. That is an awesome number and I’m thrilled that God has blessed me. But the chronic numbness and pain really get to me.

Tonight at our Brother’s keepers meeting, our BK leader Jeff read from a daily thought published by my old friend Max Lucado. (I was in Abilene Christian University when Max was our church’s missionary in Sao Palo, Brazil. When he and Dena Lynn would come to the States for R&R, some of my buddies and I would take him to breakfast and pick his brain. He was in the mission field and that is where we all wanted to be, he was awesome and we…well, we weren’t.) Anyway, we all know how Max’s writing has made him more famous than Louie Lamore, Zane Gray, John Grisham combined…and he now publishes a “daily thought”. Go figure.

So Jeff read this passage that was about how we tend to humanize God. We wonder how he can be everywhere all the time; maybe God is not in a single body like we are. We don’t know how God can hear all of our prayers at the same time; maybe his ears are different than ours. We can’t understand how he can be Father, Son and Holy Spirit; maybe heaven has a different makeup than we have here. We want to live before we die; he wants us to die to live. And the list went on and on….

As I sat there and listened, I was convicted in my “pity-ness”. I have a great prognosis for my cancer. For years I have suffered pain in my back, who knows… maybe it was to get me ready for the pain I have now. I tend to weep over issues that I can’t control; I’ve prayed the serenity prayer hundreds of times in these last 3 years; maybe that should help me not weep over those things that I should be finding serenity over. My chronic depression gets the best of me; maybe that is the big thing I have held on to that I need to give to God.

Before I end my blog today, I must share with you something I just received. One of the ladies from our Bible class just sent me a Hallmark e-card. It was very pretty and had a beautiful soft piano music back ground, but the message was awesome. It said, “sometimes it takes a lot of rain to produce a rainbow; don’t give up, yours is coming.” I had never thought of that but it is very true. Maybe what I’m going through right now is a lot of rain, and my rainbow is just not quite here yet.

I am blessed. My wife (and my family) supports and loves me and sticks with me in the good days and the bad days. Pray that I continue to hang on to the good in all of this.

Grace & Peace
-Bob