Over the last year and a couple of months, too many people in our church have dealt with cancer. Over the last few weeks, we’ve said good bye to several who’ve gone to heaven. Tonight, we received word of another death from cancer.
But I will also hold on to this afternoon, in hospital room 939. Yesterday, a woman celebrated her 21st birthday. Today, she had the rest of a cancerous tumor removed from a nerve bundle under her collar bone. This is the second surgery in a matter of weeks, because it wasn’t supposed to be cancer-everyone thought it was a run of the mill, benign cyst kind of thing. The doctor got it all, but brought the bad news that he thought she was going to lose more mobility in her hand than expected, probably only being able to use her wrist to raise and lower her hand, with the finger and thumb remaining lifeless.
I watched them wheel this young woman out of recovery into her room. And then I watched her mother’s face explode in a smile, and her grandmother dissolve in tears, as this 21 year and 1 day old woman wiggled each finger and thumb and clenched her fist.
And in room 939, I thanked God with all my heart. I will celebrate the big and the little victories! “I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”