Chemo Treatment #5 (Taxol 1/12)

I'm a little late on this one. Had my first Taxol treatment yesterday. There were a lot of upsides--Rassam felt my lump again and reported, "there's nothing there". I think he meant "virtually nothing" though. There's still fibrous tissue there that needs to be removed, regardless of the number of cancer cells that might have been hiding in there (I believe 0). More good news was that I feel find today, no side effects at all from the treatment. I did get sick from the pre-drugs yesterday, which turned out to just be Benadryl pumped into y IV. That was miserable but short-lived.

Much more importantly, I'm learning a lot more about prayer and faith through all of this. I guess beforehand I really thought of faith as believing in God and Jesus, that the Bible is true, and that God can do anything. Now I think of real faith as deeper than that. It's the literal trust that certain verses in the Bible are intended for us. Right now. "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation." (2 Cor 6:2b). We can't keep running around praying with question marks at the end..."God, will you please heal me?". NO! We should pray for wisdom (unless our sinless hearts are already lined up perfectly with God's). Then pray with full belief that He will do it. "God, you alone can heal me, please do this for me!".  It sounds so stupid and obvious as I write it, but it reflects a huge change in my thinking and faith.

Early on in this journey I told you about how several members of my church came and prayed and anointed me with oil. They did this because of the passage in James 4:14-15, "Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up." Before they came over I felt like I should request that only those who believed I would be healed would actually do the praying. But I chickened out because I thought it was better to get prayer from people who wanted me healed than no one. Right before they prayed, an elder announced that he did believe I would be healed, and that meant so much to me. I want to be like that. I can't say for sure if he was the only one who believed it, but he was definitely living out the command. It is the prayer offered in faith. Not faith in God. Faith that God would listen and heal me.

James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." I think an example of this in the Bible is also when Peter walked on the water. He was up there and doing alright until he noticed what was going on. Then he seemed to doubt and started sinking. He was literaly being blown and tossed by the wind!

I am going to continue to pray boldly. I've seen tons of answered prayers already this week. My current MO is to pray for wisdom first, and if it seems like something I should pray for, I pray it with the full expectation that God will answer.