Even in the beginnings of death there are miracles.
Our Father is the most prolific Artist with well executed brush strokes and every color in existence on his palate. He is constantly shaping, molding, creating, and using that which we have even cast aside as broken, as worthless, as hopeless. However with Him, nothing is missing, nothing is broken, nothing is worthless, and there is always hope.
It may be a word of reassurance, it may be a stranger's smile, it might be a gift unexpected, or a life prolonged even when modern medicine said there is no way for life to be sustained.
Many of you know the state of my mother's health and how she has had stage 4 breast cancer, diagnosed in 2003, which metastasized to her bone marrow. Her doctor estimated (though he did not tell her this until this past year) she would only live maybe eight months from her complete mastectomy, removing her left breast and lymph nodes.
On August 28th, her doctor, a wonderful hematologist/oncologist, told her he estimated with the rate of cell growth the cancer had made and the rate at which she has had to have units of blood because her body is no longer producing them, that she has about four to six weeks left medically speaking. One week has already passed since that day, so now it would be five to three weeks, but God is not limited by time.
After the doctor's diagnosis, which was not a complete shock, my parents decided for one last trip to the beach with us kids and grandkids before Mother became too ill to go to her favorite place on this earth. So two days later we came to the beach, where we are now spending our last night before returning home.
I would love to tell every little thing that God has done for us on this trip but there is so, so much that I don't think all of it would fit into one post that wouldn't keep my reader up for hours upon hours.
The first step was being able to come at all, but then getting a condo over Labor day weekend that fit my parents, my family of four, my grandfather, and my uncle. Then my sister and brother-in-law rented a condo in the same building for them and their two children as well as his mother and his father, who has been out on hospice and also been told he only has a short time to live. My children rode down with my parents, and Tim and I came down in our own vehicle. By the time we arrived Wednesday evening, I'd been told my aunt, her boyfriend, and my two cousins with their wives and children would be staying at another condo and going to the beach with us.
All of the sudden what was a spur of the moment thing ended up surrounding my Mother with almost all of her family for this very special week. What better place to make memories, have fun together in the pool and on the sand, to reminisce about trips past, and talk of what is to come.
There is a revival going on in Mobile, which my parents have gone to now three times. A lady there had gone through cancer herself and she gave my mother this verse that God had given her and it speaks so well of what state my mother is in now, "We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. ⁹Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us," 2Corinthians 1:9-10