something changed

On the second morning in the hospital, I was awakened to the already familiar sound of the vital sign machine coming into my room at 4:00 AM. I was wide awake by the time the very kind nurse left my room (I did have AMAZING nurses day and night, I KNOW some of you were praying for that specifically...thank you so much!!).

As I looked out the window of my private room (another answer to prayer!) the dawn began to break over the mountain. Admittedly, I have not seen a lot of sunrises in my life and so I watched carefully, knowing God was wanting to speak to me. Dawn breaks so slowly, the darkness finally receding after a long, dark night. At times it seems that no progress is being made at all, though the sun is relentlessly rising all that same. The sun doesn't just POP! up over the horizon, it takes a long time but by the time the sun does rise up fully, the darkness has vanished. Dawn is a gentle wakening, like a mother waking her child slowly and lovingly, not by harshly flipping on the lights. I pondered these aspects and more as I watched the transformation the sun brings to dark and cold places.

As I watched, I began to realize that since having the cancer removed two days before, I felt totally different inside. Over these past nine months, I have been running a fever and feeling really sick. I have known deep inside that there was something really wrong with me. I realized that morning that the deep sense of well-being that I normally feel had returned. Though I still am hurting from the surgery, am tired and have a long way to go, down deep inside, I feel so much better. I feel "well." I truly believe that all of my symptoms were my bodies way of fighting the cancer and trying to warn me that something was very wrong and needed attention. My fever is already going away, not everyday, but most days I am fever free and my heart is healing too. My cardiologist already dropped the dosage of my beta blockers by half because of the improvement.

My family and I have experienced many instant and amazingly miraculous healings over the years. Sometimes God moves instantaneously and other times through a process. That morning I began to sense the "dawn" of God's healing slowly breaking over my body, pushing back the darkness that has hung over me for months. Dawn breaks slowly but when the Son rises fully, the darkness must vanish.