Abba Father: Let those who read this understand none of us have tomorrow promised to us.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 has been my favorite scripture passage since I was fifteen/sixteen years old.  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die,…”  So pass the seasons of our lives.  Everything in its appointed time as God sees fit.

The only difference between you and me today is that doctors have told me my season for living is approaching the season of death at a faster pace than “your average bear”.  The prognosis hasn’t been expressed as “six months, or a year…”  Because no one knows.  

Recently, at the ripe old age of 51, I was admitted to Hospice care.   At that time, I was told it was simply to enable me to get the longer term care I needed.  Only within the last couple weeks did that change.  I haven’t been able to make this public knowledge until now because I needed time to wrap my head around it myself.  And I wanted my siblings to know first. Now that the reality is laid out there I’m left with the need to tell the rest of my “world”. My extended family, friends and former co-workers.

So the why? My heart disease, caused by one too many blood clots passing through to my lungs, is predictable.   What isn’t is the Lymphedema.   My Lymphedema is a one-in-a-billion case.  Advancing aggressively and now causing every area of my body to swell, it forces my heart, functioning at 20% in the right ventricle, to work harder.  Lymphedema has no cure and available treatments cause more damage than they help me.

I expect to be here for a good bit of time yet.  As I’ve always told our daughter, I now tell you, as long as it is my choice I will remain here.

So now you know.  I ask your continued prayers for my family and me, the arrest and even remission of the Lymphedema and GOD’S WILL not my own to be accomplished.

I’m not brave, or strong, or an example.   I am one woman, with one faith in one God who understands the question isn’t, “Why me” but “Why NOT me”?  To God be the glory any that comes.

 

In my daily devotional Monday morning I came upon this quote by David C. McCarand on I Peter 5:7.  “Our goal should not be to see how many years we can live but instead to live fully in loving service to the Lord for all the years we are given.”

Let it be.

 

—Donna