Learning How to Move Forward



I know I haven't really finished telling my story about how the last months played out battling the big "C."  And I do have much to tell....it gets a little sad, a little up with a little down, outright gross as well as outright funny, and comes around the corner with a bang!  But more on that later.  Last we sat and discussed the whole messy ordeal, I talked about grieving, and I've been well passed that...the grieving part.  Yet, whenever I would try to sit and write about what happened with a profound, conclusive thought, I would watch the blank cursor on the computer screen with hopes it would somehow come to me, and I would be able to tell you about everything that happened with this big "This Is What It All Means" season finale.  But. It hasn't come yet.  There is an amazing testimony at the end of my little story, yet I've had difficulty knowing exactly how to move forward.

Now, according to the doctors, my little "C-Journey" is far from over, (and I'm starting to doubt if they'll ever consider me "cured" or "C-free") but they've told me I've consequentially slid into the "Survivorship" stage of the process.  As my doctor put it, patients often feel that state of mind can be its own little challenge with learning to adjust to the "business as usual," having the lingering question of a reoccurrence in the future, and how not to cave to the post-traumatic stress of the aches and pains meaning more than they really do.  I don't fully understand why they give it the name they do, and attribute a type of fearful mentality about the future.  As far as I'm concerned, that ship can set sail without me, because I don't want to move forward with this big shadow of the lurking "C" over my life.  I believe when God promised in Jeremiah 29:11 to give me "a hope and a future" He meant it!  I don't need to fear those things because I know a greater truth, and I've seen it at work in my life, and I know who I can put my confidence in!  Don't get me wrong...I struggle with thoughts just like the next person, and I have to be disciplined to keep my mind in check because I absolutely refuse to live my life stepping forward in fear.

Yet, part of me is having difficulty adjusting to the "business as usual" of life, because nothing is as it once was, and to be honest, it is as nice as it is different.  Before I was diagnosed, I was always going three different directions at the same time with ministry, job, family, and the many to-do's of life with a somewhat hazy view of what I was supposed to be working toward as my ultimate goal for the future.  You know, like when you have a dream on the inside of you that you just know you were born to do, but not all your ducks are in a row to make it happen, so if you go through life striving to work hard enough and long enough the conditions will fall into place as they should.  Kind of like chasing the dangling carrot scenario.  So, you wind up living with the "if I could just" mentality while you're living by the "I should just" rulebook made up by God only knows who!  And then something catastrophic happens, like I don't know the death of a loved one, or CANCER, and it all goes out the window anyway. 

You're left with the reality that your life is an opportunity and how it pans out is all a sum of your own choices.  You begin to understand how precious the people in your life really are, and (though it sounds like the theme of some folky love song) in the end, all that really matters is love!  To receive love and to love (and yes, you do have to know how to genuinely receive it in order to genuinely give it.)  Now people have all types of different misconceptions about love: what it is, what it means, what it looks like, and how to get it, how to give it, how to prove it, how to keep it.  But I'm talking genuine 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love:

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up. Love never comes to an end.

I think most people believe that verse is some type of unattainable, over-clichéd ideal, and they miss the fact that the verse is actually describing who God is, and what His love looks like--it's agape love.  If you don't believe me, go look up 1 John 4:8, because it says "God is love." And 1 John 4:7 says that God put His love IN US!  (Read the whole chapter while you're at it, because it says a whole bunch of other good stuff about love as well.)  The 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love is an eternal love, the kind you get to take with you when everything else fades away...the "stuff," the degrees and awards, the success and accomplishments, the failures and mistakes...it all gets left behind, and though people may remember you by them, though it may leave the brief shadow of a legacy behind you, it no longer belongs to you anyway. The 1 Corinthians 13 love is a verb, not a fleeting emotion subjected to circumstance, but rather it acts in every circumstances.  It is love in action.  It acts patiently.  It acts in kind.  It lets go of the past without resentment.  It believes; it hopes; it endures.  It always moves forward in hope and in faith with unfailing joy.  I've come to understand how that kind of love is worth living for as well as worth dying for.  That kind of love died for me.  That kind of love set me free in every possible measure.  It envelopes me.  It believes the best of me.  It waits for me.  It's the kind of love that is designed to move outward in my life.  It's love 360!

Solomon sums it up in Ecclesiastes 5:18-19, "At last I have seen what is good and beautiful: It is to eat and drink and to enjoy the good in all our hard work under the sun during the brief lives God gives us. That is our lot in life.  It is a gift from God when God gives some people wealth and possessions, the power to enjoy them, the ability to accept their lot in life, and the ability to rejoice in their own hard work."  When you spend your life doing what you love to do, you live with a greater fulfillment.  The world would tell you that if you work harder and you have this or the latest version of that, and if you look like this, and you wear that, then you will have a shot at being happy...that is until the next season of this and that comes along and you need an upgrade.  But when you let all that go, and you decide within yourself what really matters and what it is that you love to do, and when you do it motivated by love for both God and people rather than the simple exchange for money or accumulating stuff, then you'll find that your life serves a greater purpose.  Because chances are what you love to do is what you were born to do, and what God designed you to do.  And I don't mean those things the social pressures tell you is fun or cool or will make you "happy," and I definitely don't mean "do to acquire more stuff," or even the "do so you'll be successful."  But do because it's the way you were designed to love.  Love is the deciding factor for anything you do...

I may speak in the languages of humans and of angels. But if I don’t have love, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal. I may have the gift to speak what God has revealed, and I may understand all mysteries and have all knowledge. I may even have enough faith to move mountains. But if I don’t have love, I am nothing.  I may even give away all that I have and give up my body to be burned. But if I don’t have love, none of these things will help me. There is the gift of speaking what God has revealed, but it will no longer be used. There is the gift of speaking in other languages, but it will stop by itself. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will no longer be used. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 8

Let love be the motivating factor behind what you do with your life, with your time, and your resources.

Over the last 9 months my life has gone through a tremendous amount of change, and now I'm left with a fresh perspective, and an opportunity to live forward with more purpose than I ever had before.  I've decided not to go back to chasing the dangling carrot, or slip into the auto-pilot mentality of doing life, but to apply myself to do what God designed me to do, to consciously take each step forward in faith walking in love along the way.