Sanctuary For My Soul – The Devotion I Wrote to Myself

January 6th was my deadline for my contribution to the TCW devotional book, Sanctuary For My Soul.

January 9th I found a lump in my breast.

January 20th I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

My devotion quickly forgotten, (along with pretty much every other non-essential part of my life), I was shoved into a daily struggle to trust in God’s plan for me. I didn’t doubt God’s goodness or love for me on January 9 or January 20. But I didn’t like where he was taking me. (That’s an understatement by the way.)

Over the past few months I have felt sorry for myself on more than one occasion. And in those weeks when I didn’t know if the cancer had spread, I feared death. I didn’t fear where I would go in death. I am certain that my eternal destiny is with Jesus. I feared going now. The thought of leaving my family kept me awake at night. (Who will scratch the boys’ backs at bedtime? Will Corey be able to get the kids to all the places they need to go? What about cooking? Can he be mom and dad? How will Corey do life without me? How will I do heaven without him? Will I be here to see my kids graduate? Will Lewis even remember me?…)

I am still in the throws of this cancer thing; healing from major surgery (quite nicely I might add), looking to a second surgery sometime this summer and awaiting some test results and a comprehensive plan from my oncologist to take steps to lower the risk of the uninvited guest returning to my body. But I have made it through some very dark places, and I see a light up ahead.

Which brings me back to the devotion I wrote just before cancer.

I was assigned a chapter of scripture where David cries out to God in his distress and finds hope – (a pretty common theme for David 🙂 ) I wrote about what I considered to be the most difficult trial of my adult life. A miscarriage that occurred about a decade ago.

It was meant to help women find the hope in despairing circumstances. But as I read through the finished product that came in my inbox this week, I realized that God had me write those words for me.

This is how my devotion ends.

Each of us will go through seasons of great struggle and discouragement. It’s when we
find a way to hope in God and continue to praise him through our hardships that we experience a sweet communion with our Creator who “pours his unfailing love” upon us. 

And I can say from within a season of great struggle that it is most assuredly, a sweet, sweet communion.

Psalm 42:11 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Whys so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

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