Healing

I think a lot about healing these days.  Is the chemo working?  Is it shrinking the cancer and removing it?  My mantra and "shrink and let go".  Is that how it works.

A friend gave me a book Positioned: To Receive and Maintain Your miracle by Chris Gore. When I received it, I feared it was some form of "prosperity gospel" theology but the big surprise is that as I read it, it is not.  It is, for me a reminder of God's healing presence.  The author is very specific about this:

God does not heal us because we are "good."  "You don't behave yourself into a miracle."

God does not heal us to be a witness to others

God does not heal us to give us some sort of lesson.

The healing that God offers is God's nature.  It reminds me of God grace and power and love for each - including Margot - and for all.  The nature of God is to heal and there are miracles.  

What I get in touch with as I slowly read and savor this book is my resistance to hope.  Hope is real and possible and always makes me feel vulnerable.  I went to a "support group" for people with gynecological cancer and heard a variety of stories of healing followed by cancer that returned or healing with the reality of side affects from chemo that continue.  I felt myself trying to live in "reality" - this is a long journey and who knows where it will lead?  At the same time, I read this book and remember that God is here with me and I can "rest" in God's love.

 I guess what I am writing - confessing - is that I remember that I can pray for healing.  I have - like all of us - had a life full of miracles.  Life reflection is always a gift when we can remember all the times and places and ways in which God really did show the way to life and bring healing and strength in the darkest time.  I pray for healing - that this cancer will shrink and go away and am grateful for those who are praying with me.

Here is a prayer by Ted Loder that speaks to me today

O God, complete the work you have begun in me.
Release through me
A flow of mercy and gentleness that will bring
water where there is desert,
healing where there is hurt,
peace where there is violence,
beauty where there is ugliness,
justice where there is brokenness,
beginning where there are dead-ends.
Waken in me
gratitude for my life;
love for every living think,
joy in what is human and holy,
praise for you.
Renew my faith that you are God
beyond my grasp but within my reach;
past my knowing but within my searching,
disturber of the assured, assurer of the disturbed;
destroyer of illusions, creator of dreams;
source of silence and music, sex and solitude, light and darkness, death and life.
O keeper of Promises, composer of grace,
Grant me glee in my blood, prayer in my heart, trust at my core, songs for my journey, and sense of your kingdom.