Answered Prayers

Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? 
2 Samuel 7:18

This verse was recently introduced to me by a very dear friend.  I admire this lady so much and respect her willingness to listen and obey God's Word.  After our day at St. Jude yesterday I can't help but to say this verse over and over and over in my mind and heart.  I don't know if there has ever rung more true and appropriate verse that this.  King David goes on to praise God, admitting "you know God what I am really like."  

Does this verse speak to you the way it speaks to me?  There is nothing that I can do, will do or could do that would deserve God's favor.  Nothing.  Do you hear me?  NOTHING.  Yet..yet.  His mercies are new everyday.  Lucy's clean scans yesterday were a blessing that none of us deserved, yet He granted us his favor one more day.  

As Dr. W called us back to the room to discuss the results of the scans she told me that her nurse said we were sitting in the waiting room with looks of terror on our face.  I told her that might be the biggest understatement of the year.  Terror might have been on our faces but we could hardly breathe as we sat there.  Lucy was asleep, still out from sedation.  Erik and I couldn't talk to each other, we couldn't even swallow.  I felt as if my heart was in my throat and it took everything I had not to throw up what little lunch I had been able to swallow.

And the crazy thing is is that we didn't even expect bad news.  We had no reason to believe that anything but good news would come from the scans.  There is just so very much at stake.  Lucy has fought so hard to regain her life and she now actually has a good life worth fighting for.  Not that before she didn't, it's just now the stakes are so high.  She has come so far.

I relate it to the man who leaves every morning to go to work.  He walks out of the house anticipating nothing.  Go to work and come home.  That's all.  Now, he may be involved in an accident or suffer a major heart attack that could change his life forever, but he wasn't anticipating it.  We, on the other hand, leave our house on the morning of scans and have reason to wonder if we will return.  Everything we know, live and pray for can change in one second.  In the 5 syllables that it would take to say "cancer has returned" our lives would go back into the downward spiral that consumed our family for 2 years.  That place would be hard to return.  I never, ever want to go back there again.

So, yes, we walk in faith.  We trust God to continue looking upon Lucy and our family with favor but we can never forget.  Those were long, hard days filled with despair.  Unfortunately they aren't far enough away from our memories.  Everything is still too fresh; too raw.  So for a while each scan will be loaded with anxiety and worry while being bathed in unending prayer.