I know I have been absent of late, and you who are following are so good to ask about us. Since I last posted, we've been learning to deal with palmer-planter erythrodysesthesia (hand-foot syndrome. A common skin reaction to certain chemotherapy drugs, hand-foot syndrome manifests as red, swollen, itchy or painful palms and soles of the feet. I am also experiencing what I will call "butterfly stomach." Not really nausea, this began on the last cycle, and itseems riband gotten a bit more intense since last week, but it is beginning to diminish now, as is the hand-foot syndrome. Fatigue is always present in varying degrees, but none so far debilitating.
It is interesting now to see that these experiences mark not only the effects or non-effects of treatment but time, the days that we live through. We somehow equate time passing as progress, especially when the latter period is measured against the former. After all, we all want progress, a moving forward, a climbing up. Many factors act on our progress: environment, conditions, others, ourselves. The effect we have on our progress is not only actual, as in promoting or hindering, but perceptual, also.
We take inward stock of our progress, often measured not against our goal, but as compared to another. The Cain-Abel problem. Even in our myopia, we fail to see the real issue is not our position along some imaginary line toward a distant tomorrow, but our heart of hearts and its place along the way our Creator has planned for us, especially in the way the Father is using the myriad elements of our life to work his will in and through us. The trouble is, we want what we want and we want to have ultimate control.
Is there any more certain evidence that we are not in control than time? I think of this just now, as we aproach the end of March when it still seems that the months are flying past and we continue to move toward more uncertain days here. I am learning more completely that some things are not meant for me to know here. I am confident that whether those things be wonderful or terrible, I would not, weak as I am, be able to withstand much less comprehend them. I am thankful that even in the perception of control over really small things, it is God who truly has all control.
I will close with this passage from the Psalms, but before I do, please join with me in continuing to pray for the many I have listed before, and please add prayer for strength for Bobbie and Keith as they adjust to a period of limited activity, and for patience for Crystal's mother as she endures cancer treatment. I thank you and I thank God for all the prayers and encouragement over the last several months. You all make visible the invisible kingdom that we are progressing toward.
Psalm 8: 1-9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
This, then, is true progress.
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