Am I All In?

Here I am day #89 cancer survivor and I am all in.  I have walked these days with much soul searching and solitude.  I never could have predicted the particular paths that I have wandered down.  So much of the journey has been in unknown territory.  I have often heard how the cancer I had "was so different, very rare, not typical, and perhaps at best a very early cancer."  I have had multiple scans, both inside and outside of my body, and a total of 3 surgeries.  All of which have brought me back full circle to the fact that I did have a Left Fallopian tube cancer, but that has been surgically removed with my total hysterectomy.  I have been all in with the various plans that have been proposed to me, but today, there were more choices for me to personally make, with the options presented.  But to choose means that I will have to be all in. . . and so I wonder, am I really all in?

The very word of cancer brings with it shock, fear, anxiety and dread.  No one can ever be prepared to hear it fully.  Your very enemy is an unseen foe, yet harbored within your innermost self.  It often is silently doing its damage as you go somewhat naively about your days, until your body's defenses begin to react.  It's a mystery of how the cancer got there, and it is even more of mystery when it seems that "all the cancer is gone."  Cancer answers to no one, has no need to explain itself and offers no guarantees.  It is a difficult foe to embrace, it seems to be the biting serpent . . . 

I could not walk these days without recognizing God the Healer in all of this.  I am constantly reminded with the harshness and suffering in life, comes grace and salvation.  The infant nation of Israel experienced this with just a glance toward God that would rescue them from the fiery serpents that had come upon them because of their complaining and grumbling about God; the very One who had saved them, could save them and would forever save them.  I too have done my share of complaining about particular life situations, but have come to realize all that has done is to create within me an even safer harbor for the evil of cancer to spawn.  Yet, God in His mercy responds to my cries, as He did to Moses' plea of intervention for his people.  My faith too is just a look Upward.  Words lack in expressing my gratitude and thankfulness for His healing mercies, how can help but not be all in?  

I love digging out old books of my Daddio.  I usually look first to see what notes he has scribbled in the margins or what passages he has underlined with his blue fountain ink pen. I have particularly enjoyed the one now by Dr. Joseph Parker, which probably was one of my Dad's initial books for his library, as I see a much clearer signature of "Robert Strubhar" in the front of the book.  I like what Dr. Parker writes,  

"To complain is to be atheistic, to murmur is to throw down the altar, to adopt a reproachful tone regarding the necessary education of life is to challenge divine wisdom. . . Fretfulness always brings its own biting serpent along with it. . . There is always something worse than we have yet experienced. . . There is always some lower depth, always some keener bite, always some more painful sting, always some hotter hell.  Take care how you treat life." (People's Bible, p. 292)   

So am I all in?  How can I not be, realizing that the days ahead are not up to me?  Each day I awaken is one more day of grace and healing, every breath a gift.  Being all in is one more chance to look up and live . . . 

"Then the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard, and it shall come about that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he shall live."

(Numbers 21:8)