I have nothing.
There is nothing to write about except the depths of despair. I woke up Monday morning to nothing but quiet, dead quiet. I could hear the people on our street driving to work, I could hear someone walking a dog, but I was aware it took a good amount of energy just to pull my blankets back from my face.
On my bedside are bottles of drugs, bottles of water that I cannot open now without a pair of pliers, a pack of cinnamon gum because I cannot stand the taste of anything else, and my phone.
The clock means nothing to me now.
In my mind Monday morning, I had stepped off another cliff and was just falling, falling not knowing where I might land in a few days time. My blood counts are low, and I feel my body ebbing and weak and not wanting to eat doesn't help to replenish them much.
I used to think there was a bit of spunk in me, no matter what may come, but after some thorough investigation, I can find none of that in any corner of my being this past week.
We showed up bright and early Friday morning for my treatment, and I told my nurse that even though I was smiling and seemed just fine, my body had been *revulsing* a whole day before. She said it's normal and has a name "anticipatory-nausea". It means your body is reading the signs that it's going to be poisoned again, and sends up all kinds of flairs and warnings - aka, nausea and gagging - trying to get you to do something else, anything else rather than do that again.
My body is reacting like a two year old - wanting to warn me of obvious danger but with no idea on causes or effects or how to avoid it. It holds my hand and pleads with me to go somewhere with it away from all this - anywhere - just walk away.
It didn't quite work that way.
***
I switched back to steroids for three days after this chemo round and it did seem to help some. At least I didn't lose three whole days to mindless nothing. Instead, I got the pleasure of mindless *being*.
They tell me the side effects of chemo are of course "cumulative", as they continue to say treatment after treatment, and the accumulation is almost doing me in.
In a word - I am depressed. And weak to the point of not doing anything. Anything.
For this week. And probably next. Then I feel better for a few days, then the "anticipatory-nausea" starts up again; then I will go back to the center-of-disease-saving-souls, get my arm banded, lay out in a bed with a port attached to an IV and a few brightly colored drugs for what will hopefully be my last treatment ever.
I pray it so.
I so shouldn't talk to people or write when I am depressed. In fact, I can't talk without crying these last few days. I feel so weak, my fingers barely press hard enough on the keys at times.
That is so not me, but there is no arguing with a body that cannot cope.
So, I lay in bed and wonder, where does one go that claims to be a child of God in such circumstances? I would much rather have the garden path of life strewn with freshly raked stones and blooming flowers and crisp linens on the lawn furniture.
Where does one's soul go when it is all battered up?
I go back to where it is I know He has led me and meets me time and time again - the desert.
The desert is where He started me, the desert is where I am now.
If I had one wish, it is that all who want to understand pain in life would listen to this one message - it has hollowed the ground I have walked many times. It's the message that God took His children to the Promised Land that is 70% desert.
The message I started with back in December is the same one I listened to the other night. We are too blessed here in America to understand maybe that most of life is not easy. We think it should be, we think it's our right, but step outside our safe borders and you learn a different truth - life is at best difficult at times, and how you travel that difficulty is of supreme importance.
The pictures of a Shepherd leading me in a desolate desert - guiding me to my daily food - guiding my footfalls so I do not stumble into the pit of no return - guiding me on life's most difficult travels. That is the picture He leaves me with this week.
It's not your grazing field of sweet clover - it's ugly and hard. When moving one hand to get a drink uses up your cell reserves for an hour, we are not camping out in sweet clover here folks.
As Ray says in this message, sometimes there is the gravelly stone that drives you nuts on the road and you feel your feet get bruised and injured from walking it; sometimes it's the bigger stones that are treacherous and loose and could be your undoing if you do not move carefully over them.
And sometimes, you come to a big fallen boulder in the road, and it appears there is no way around it.
In that desert you are totally reliant on your shepherd. It's hard, it's hot, it's beset with dangers and serpents - but that is where you meet God on the most intimate terms. It's where you learn to rely on Him in the most intimate ways. Each bite. Each drink. Each step.
I urge you to download this message and listen to it when you walk or jog or drive or have time to hear it. (sorry, no pictures folks) Then listen again. It's a message we don't hear all that often, and yet the Bible - from what I read of it anyways - is completely full of it.
Travelling that desert is not a lack of faith, not a lack of hope, not a lack of believing God can do miraculous things - all that is true and more. But if you want to walk with God and if you want to not let your soul get surly and angry and stay in the depths of the pit of despair - it's a matter of learning the hardest things and believing you just found gold when all is desolate around you.
http://followtherabbi.com/uploads/assets/audio/discipleship3_908.mp3
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