Blessings and Hope

   I had a taste of "normal" today and it tasted good.  I had no health-related appointments today.  I had no chemo-based nausea today.  I had very little "metal-mouth" taste today.  I went to school for the day -- yup, the whole day -- and drove myself.  I emerged at 3:15 and did not feel completely wiped out.  I added in an after-school meeting and then went to my son's track meet, not getting home until 6:30.  I hardly had time to eat.  I proctored a make-up Bible quiz for some students.  I taught my fun-loving math students and my blessed seventh grade Bible scholars.  It was normal.  As I write this at 8:00 pm, I am officially exhausted, but it was great.
   It is a blessing to begin to feel better.  I am now four weeks removed from my final chemotherapy treatment and have not felt this good since early October.  While I know this feel-good-fun-factor will be short-lived (my impending stem-cell treatment includes more chemotherapy), it is encouraging to actually feel good for a while, even though I know it is temporary.  But I consider it a taste of things to come.  I have hope.
   When I was younger, I never felt obligated to explore the thought of pain and suffering, much alone the thought of hope.  None of that was ever real or necessary for me.  It never made sense to think about such things when one is blessed with good health and vitality.  In fact, such thinking is impossible.
   As I have aged, my body has slowed a bit, but I always had good health and (besides a knee surgery) never have been slowed by anything too brutal.  Now that this cancer experience has zapped me, I am learning about myself.  I am learning that I have hope.  I never understood the power of hope in a personal way before, but the realization that I have hope only comes because I have experienced suffering.  The power of hope was untapped in my life for fifty-six years, but in my fifty-seventh year of life, I discovered it.  Hope allowed me to understand that a "normal" day is a blessed day.  Hope provides joy when doing the things that used to be simply "typical."  Even though I am exhausted, hope allows me to recognize and appreciate greatness in all I once considered "mundane." Hope makes no sense -- it is a gift from God.  Thank you, Lord, for the gift of hope.  "For those who hope in the Lord will have their strength renewed (Isaiah 40)."  I understand that more fully now.  I will never again consider hope as something normal.  You have given it to me.  Thank-you.  Amen.