Still

Still

November 21, 2017

Yesterday, as I wrote in my journal, I was feeling guilty and discouraged.  I have learned since being diagnosed with cancer that there are several things you can do that decrease your risk of getting it.  One is being at a healthy weight.  God has convicted me of my eating habits and obsession with food for years.  It is a battle I have fought for over 30 years.  Even when my weight has been in a healthy range, food was something I thought about all the time.  

Another thing that decreases your risk for cancer is having healthy vitamin D levels. 3½  years ago, I found out my vitamin D level was pretty low and haphazardly took supplements to correct it.  At the beginning of this year, God again convicted me of the need to be a good steward of my body and I regularly began taking the supplements that had been recommended to me. My vitamin D level is now on the low side of normal. I have doubled the amount of vitamin D I am taking in hopes of getting my level to the high side of normal.

So, in my journal, I was writing about how I was reaping what I had sown.  That bad stewardship of my body had increased my risk for cancer and now I had cancer because I had not obeyed God’s promptings. I had not realized that obeying God would decrease my risk for cancer and other diseases. I just thought it was some vain thing about my body image that I had to overcome.  Because there WAS vanity involved in wanting to look better.  So, weight loss was always a struggle because deep down I knew that the main reason I wanted to lose weight was because I felt better about myself when I was thinner and because I cared what other people thought of me.  No matter how hard I tried to make it about being healthy, I just couldn’t make that shift.  When on a diet, I was eating and exercising to lose weight, so I could feel better about myself, so others would think better of me.

I don’t know why I couldn’t just obey God’s promptings to steward my body well.  In hind sight, I see that He may have been trying to protect me from disease.  And because of that, I just want to kick myself (for lack of better terminology) over and over again.  And I guess I had been beating myself up because here I was lamenting again about why I couldn’t have just taken better care of myself as God has prompted for all these years.  I guess, there was some question as to whether it was God prompting me or if it was just my own selfish desires prompting.  Then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have to be going through this cancer.

I prayed, “Help me, Father, for the rest of the life I have left, to sow good habits so I can reap good things in my body.  Help me to steward my body well from here on out.”  I wrote, “getting old and reaping what I’ve invested in my physical body is very discouraging and could be depressing.” 

But God prompted a friend to share something she had read with me.  And it was exactly what I needed to be reminded of.  It was about God’s precious gifts of mercy and forgiveness.http://www.rhema.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2686:all-things-really-are-possible&catid=268&Itemid=868  (I do not agree with all the theology of this website)

This is how it starts (Well it's how the picture of the article she sent to me started.  It's really halfway through the article.  I don't even think this was the part she was trying to share with me, but it was exactly what I needed to read): “Sometimes we get in trouble because of the decisions we’ve made.  We can feel that we deserve what we’re going through, because we put ourselves there.”  Though I hadn’t worded it that way, that is exactly what I have been feeling since I began reading about the risk factors of the particular type of cancer I have.  It is described as a lifestyle and environment cancer. Not all breast cancer is that type.

The article continues, “Our Heavenly Father loves us. To God it’s not about what we deserve.  It’s about providing mercy and forgiveness.  It doesn’t matter how many wrong decisions we’ve made.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God.  It doesn’t matter what a situation looks like, God can turn it around.  The word nothing means “no thing.” No thing is impossible to God if you believe.”

I repented again for not stewarding the gift of my body well.  I asked God for His mercy and forgiveness and then I said, “I receive Your mercy and forgiveness.  Thank You, Father, that You offer mercy and forgiveness when I don’t deserve it…and I never deserve it.  Thank You that You won’t hold my sin against me.  You won’t say, “I told you so. If you’d only listened to Me.  You made your bed and now you’re going to have to lie in it.”  No, instead, You say, “I forgive you.  I’m sorry you have to learn the hard way. I’ll be right with you and take care of you through this. I still love you.” And y’all, this just undoes me.  Every time I read it, I am brought to tears.  That He loves me that much!

I am not trying to infer that sickness or cancer is directly related to some personal sin or even that my own is related to my own personal sin.  (I already discussed in a previous article that all things that lead to death are a result of sin. “For the wages of sin IS death.”  Romans 6:23) Maybe, even if I had obeyed God’s promptings as far as staying at a healthy weight and also kept the vitamins, minerals, and all other levels in my blood at the target numbers, and reduced every toxin I possibly could, maybe I still would have ended up with cancer.  I can’t determine that now.  But this is something that has been bothering me since I’ve learned the risk factors of the particular cancer that I have …that maybe, just maybe there was a chance that I could have prevented it.  I couldn’t get past that.  Whether it was real guilt or false guilt, the words from that article are just what I needed to read.  That even IF the cancer is due to my own neglect (sin), THEN God STILL offers His mercy, forgiveness and love. Even IF I brought this cancer on myself, THEN He is STILL with me! I praise You, Father!!!

Addendum

Romans 8:37-39

No, in all things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I consider our sin (if we are already forgiven by the blood of Jesus and have become one of His followers) to be part of the “nor anything else in all creation.”  I have written in the margin of my Bible by these verses, “nor my own sin” to remind me of this fact that has just penetrated my heart in a new way. Nothing, not even our sin, keeps God from loving us, if we are in Christ Jesus.  It reminds me of Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  I have “still sinning” written in the margin to remind me that because God is timeless, and exists in all time, Christ died while I was still sinning against Him.  I was sinning at the very moment He was dying for me. How can I resist a love like that?  Why would I want to resist a love like that?