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Cancer has taken a lot from me, but it has left me with one thing I desperately need: the unshakeable certainty that I need Jesus.  I thought I already knew that, but cancer is a teacher like no other. Now, after a two year cancer fight, this truth yells from the structure of my core that without Him, I will fold in on myself like a beach chair without joints.

I need Jesus to grip my hand as I trudge through the side effects of preventative drugs.  I need him to wrap me in His embrace during dark, sleepless nights when the worry that cancer will return entangles me like strands of barbed wire cutting into the flesh of a warhorse on a battlefield. I need Him to wipe away the tears when disappointments and discouragements of just living life seep into my brain like poison into a wasps nest.   I need His energy when I have none.  I need Him to cover me in hope when all I feel is sadness.  I need to be bound to Him, so He can hold me up when I step into the future, and sometimes, even just to step into the next moment of time.

I need Him like the cracked ground begs for rain, like growing things need light, like the universe needs gravity, like the ocean needs the sunrise.

I need Him so I can patiently love my teenagers and work on a marriage that has thankfully lived through the survival mode brought on by illness, tragedy and family changes.

I need Him so I can look beyond the remnants and see the fabric of a future.

It’s a hard fought lesson.  It’s a hard fought choice.  Even the choosing, I cannot do on my own.

But, in His power, I will choose. 

I will be empty, so He can fill me up.

I will be without purpose, so I can live for His purposes.

I will walk without the compass of my choosing, so that He can be my true North.

I will be a blank page, so that He can write the story He wants.

Philippians 4:19

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus.”