I
didn’t really want to write about this, but my words won’t mean a thing if I’m
not honest, so here goes.
To
avoid afflicting you with too much information, let’s just say that for several
reasons, I’ve been forced to make a decision concerning the aging
reconstruction I received when I had breast cancer twelve years ago: whether to
redo it or let it go. Either one would require a surgery.
I
made what I thought was a rational decision based on the facts. Given that I’m
a certain age, and the aggravation of it all, I decided to let it go. It just
didn’t matter anymore, so I made an appointment, saw the doctor and scheduled
the surgery. Almost immediately I sensed an unsettledness in my spirit, and I
had no idea why.
Then
I woke up one morning with tears streaming down.
What’s
this?
Tears
kept coming, and coming. One afternoon, I cried for two hours.
After
prayer, discussion with my husband, my sister, and a friend, and then more prayer, I realized a couple of things.
The
first is, more than ever over the past three years, I’ve tried not to allow feelings
to guide me. It’s because of a heavy concern I don’t share to guard another’s
privacy. But in order to get out of bed in the morning and keep marching, I’ve
often had to push past the emotions that would drag me down.
So
out of habit, when I made my seemingly prudent decision regarding the reconstruction, I did not
consult my feelings.
My
feelings rebelled. Breast reconstruction is an emotional issue. Whether one has
it or doesn’t have it is going to touch the deepest part of a woman. This may
sound shallow to some. I once had a health care provider act as if it was no
big deal to lose a breast. “At least you’re alive,” she said. Of course, she
still had all her body parts.
Secondly,
that heavy concern, though I give it to Jesus everyday (and sometimes take it
back in the evening), has made me weary. And the reason redoing the
reconstruction didn’t matter is I was beginning to give up. Oh, not on a conscious
level, but subconsciously I was saying, “What’s the point?”
I
didn’t even know what I’d done it until the tears started.
Now,
I do.
So,
I called the doctor, and I changed my plans. I’m having the whole business
redone if for no other reason than to say, and let me write this clearly, “I AM
NOT GIVING UP.”
“Return
to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore
twice as much to you” (Zechariah 9:12).
I
declare myself a prisoner of hope. Caged in to what Mr. Webster calls the “wish
for something with expectation of its fulfillment.” The original
Hebrew word translated hope in Zechariah means literally a cord and only appears a few
more times in the Old Testament, most often in Job. And only once in the
Psalms, “For you have been my hope, O Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my
youth (Psalm 71:5).
Here
from The Message: “You keep me going when times are tough—my bedrock, God,
since my childhood.”
Our
hope is tethered in God, and sustains us through the decades of life.
On
this Holy Week Wednesday, I gladly bind myself in hope and to the one who suffered
and died for me.
I
am a prisoner of hope, and I am not giving up.
Surgery
in a few days.