It's all about the leaven maybe........

I have to say, I have never felt so ambivalent in my whole life. 

Due to my poor blood work last week and therefore missing last week's chemo treatment, yesterday was my 11th day out from my last chemically induced body slam - and it felt good.  I developed appetite again, and ate appreciatively for the first time in what seems like a long time.  My stomach and gut haven't hurt for a couple of days.  I haven't had to take my medication for 2 days.  My "chemo-brain-fog" is somewhat lifted. 

I went from not being able to finish a half mile walk last Friday, and breaking out in an odd rash the two  times I stepped outside even with a mask on, to doing a mile today, and not feeling smashed.   Nicely tired, but not smashed.

I had forgotten how good "somewhat-normal" is. 

All that feeling better and I want very badly to go back for more "hurt" tomorrow.  I am in "ambivalence-land".  I want to get this chemo over with, but the last couple of days of "chemo-vacation" of sorts, has been wonderful.  I can climb the steps again and not wait to catch my breath.  I can read again and comprehend some of it.  I can stand in the kitchen for at least 3 minutes while Scott is cooking.

As much as I hated missing my treatment last week - this has been a good rest and I think my body and blood and bone and marrow just kind of caught up yesterday, and it felt good to get out of bed.  

I am praying for good blood work showings tomorrow. 

*******

I feel like right now, the race is on.  I am halfway through the preoperative (or correctly noted 'neoadjuvant') chemotherapy.

I need to find out how marathoners at mile marker 13 keep going.  My body seems to believe that it is now just a flat out race to see which wins - the body and blood wearing down each week trying to outrace the chemo drugs being dumped into a tube that ends in my body and wreaking havoc.  I'm not sure at this point which one is going to hold onto mile marker 26 -- holding on until the end, barely getting across the finish line.

The first half of chemo is all about the surviving the "blast" - the big doses, the shock to your system, suppressing your body's reaction.  It looks like the second half is more of the same but also just hoping your blood counts and digestive system and brain cells outrun the pack of hounds on their heels.

And oddly - they both want the same thing - to rid and heal your body of the real enemy, the stealthy Darth Vader invader.

That cancer was really sneaky - I didn't see it coming.  And it is so easy after rough chemo treatments to see chemo as the enemy when it is not.  It's the cure.  My body reads the chemo as the enemy, and if I didn't have some good doctors with better minds to figure this out for me, I wouldn't touch the stuff.  Ever.  

I am listening to a Christian who went through rabbinical school teach on Passover.  He has kind of become my "better mind doctor" - teaching me things that are purging my system, that I normally wouldn't touch otherwise.  I am listening to him and learning from him. 

Passover this past year has suddenly become fascinating to me instead of a mild curiosity.  You can argue it's a Jewish holiday, I don't get into those discussions - what has become fascinating to me is what a perfect word picture it is for all of us. 

With Passover starts the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  The leaven represents not only the rush to get out of Egypt and grabbing your bread dough that hasn't had time to rise because you are moving fast as escaping slaves, it also represents sin. 

Leave it to God to give us such a holiday with so many meanings. 

I started looking into all of this out of curiosity for a lot of things that just did not make sense in my Bible and I didn't understand or know - like um, we follow a Hebrew Rabbi and I have never been taught how they - thus maybe He - lived, thought and taught on this earth. 

I have learned a lot, but I have barely scratched the surface.  It is fascinating how much we lose by not knowing His culture.  It is fascinating how much we have lost by not understanding the simple Rabbinical setup during His lifetime.  It is fascinating to learn what a Rabbi with 'authority' really means. 

But all that aside, the holidays God commanded in the Bible are rather fascinating as well.  They are word pictures of what He wants us to do at least once a year so we never forget what He wants us to know more than anything. 

The whole time "they" have been showing me this cancer, talking to me about this cancer, giving me treatments to get rid of this cancer - I have been thinking one thing - "leaven". 

Just like it is impossible to get leaven out of bread once it has been mixed, so is it difficult to get the sin out of your life.  Or your cancer.  Or maybe they are the same thing. 

I asked my doctor about the "recurring" part of this cancer.  He said because it's in my lymph node system, it could "recur" anywhere.........  I am hoping they are absolutely right - that these chemo blasts will destroy any "extra" cancer cells lurking about that we don't know about - now or later.

They are sneaky devils.  They can hide out while you don't even know they are there - rise up again and wreak all kinds of havoc - just like leaven.  

So before Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, you are instructed to "clean it out of your house" - get rid of all of the leaven in your home, and eat unleavened bread.  Because once a year, it's important to remember what leaven does, how much it permeates everything in your life, how prevalent it is and you don't even realize it, how it can sneak into cracks and crevices and you don't even know it is lurking there until you lift up that couch cushion and find that bit of peanut butter sandwich someone dropped a while ago and couldn't find and forgot about it. 

It makes you check your ingredients lists on boxes of things like crackers, pretzels, even ice cream with added cookies and you wonder just how far this leaven can go.  It's not a legalistic thing - it's more of a training thing - if it is that difficult to round up all your leaven and if it is that difficult to get rid of it -- how is the sin in your life?  My life.  I struggle with loving my neighbor as myself. 

Ugh. 

One rabbi I listen to says the most important thing we can do each day is to truly treat our fellow man as if he is truly made in the image of God.  One of the best things we can do, is make life better for someone else.  Reflect God.  Not only in righteousness - which we are to do as well - but also in treating others how God Himself would treat them. 

Oh my, oh my.  The words "tender" show up, the word "shade" and "guard" show up.   I kind of have the "righteousness" part down.  I kind of have the "standing against sin" part down.  I am learning a whole lot these last couple of months about how God wants us to guard each other and shade each other and be tender. 

I've got a lot of leaven inside me. 

God can paint a pretty good word picture.  He can setup a pretty good training exercise to help us realize the width and depth of our depravity and how we can seek it out and get rid of it. 

And that's the best news about this "training" - the fact that God wants you to seek it out so you can get rid of it, and you can live a better life with Him and with your fellow human beings.  Your community, maybe........

So when I first saw the picture of the cancer within me, and then understood that it could be other places hiding out as well, and how we had to take some pretty extreme measures to get rid of it - I named it. 

I called it "leaven".