Filling Our Minds

It is now one week until I begin treatment which I hope will again tame the monster named Myeloma. Last week I spent two days getting virtually every part of my body imaged and scanned. Fluids have been collected and analyzed. Consent forms have been signed.

Each day that we get closer to this leg in the journey I find that I am ceding more of the real estate in my brain to what will happen next. Every day more minutes are given to thinking about:

• whether the drugs will work; 
• what happens if they don't? 
• how will I feel? 
• will the accompanying steroids alter my personality? 
• will Kathy have the stamina to be a caregiver again?
• what if...

In part, that is good. Like an athlete getting ready for a game, I am psyching myself up. Steeling myself for the battle ahead.  But it very soon can become noise and disharmony translating into anxiety.  Worst of all it becomes unhealthy as I surrender too much space to those thoughts. Unhealthy because it crowds out what I really need.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse... Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.  Phil 4:8,9 MSG

What I really need is to remember that God's love and providence is true and noble. In Christ we see love's authenticity.  It's a compelling and relentless love  and it comes to me, to all of us, in grace. Pray that each of us can make room for that life-giving love.