A wake-up call before going to sleep

                            
I have written in the past about how cancer can be a blessing, I know that sounds crazy, but I know the way it changed my relationship with my brother and I saw it again this week.

I have a very close friend who's father was diagnosed back in the summer with colon cancer. My friend "Annie", is a very strong and stoic person. She, and her dad, handled this ordinarily earth shattering news, like everything else. They put on their game face and tackled it with the force of  a category 4 hurricane. Many times over the years, Annie has talked about how she got her "stubbornness" from her dad.                                              

When she text me the day before Thanksgiving very early in the morning and said he was bleeding on his brain, was on a ventilator and they would be removing him, I was stunned. Going through those moments with her, I saw such raw emotions. She was a broken person that I didn't know.

Days go by and the funeral passes. When I think she may be ready to talk, I call her. I could tell within the first few minutes of that call that my sweet friend Annie was changed. I saw her most genuine soul and heard love from her voice that I had never experienced from her before.

Annie is the girl who always has it together, the perfect family, 1 boy and 1 girl, white picket fence, yada yada yada. But she was different. I could tell that she would never be the same. Her appreciation and value of life instead of things would be altered forever.

                           

She told me about the service and the preacher who spoke about her dad. I could hear the smile on her face. She admitted that her dad had never been what we southerners call a religious person, but this preacher told about being with her father on their back deck when he asked Jesus into his heart.  I think until that moment, they were not certain about this destiny. What a gift, far more valuable that diamonds or gold, that he gave them by sharing this.

In hearing her tell me about how she had seen a twinkle in her dad's eye in the last few weeks was just heart warming. She said she thought the cancer and chemo was making him a softer person but she now knows it was Jesus filling his heart that brought on this tenderness in her otherwise large, loud and stoic father.

                                               

That's when it hit me again, that cancer had been a blessing. In the time he had left it somehow brought about his salvation and these sweet memories that Annie will carry with her now like a warm fuzzy blanket. Cancer was a wake-up call for him before his earthly body went to sleep, but it also has brought out a tender side to Annie that I do not see going away.

God is in control of everything that happens, even situations involving cancer. Open your heart to His love, open your eyes to see His blessing and know that He is the I AM! 

I love you Annie and pray for peace for your entire family in the coming years of "first" you will go through.

Until next time- Safe Picking
Tammy

I love this poem that was written for my family when my first sister passed away;

I know not what the future holds
It may bring joy or sorrow
But the The One who kept me yesterday
Will hold my hand tomorrow.