Lifelong Learning

Another chemo cycle has ended. Seven days of no medicine ahead.  Six more cycles to go.  Like most chemo treatments, the medical team is trying to walk that thin line between harming the cancer and not harming the good cells. They are good at what they do. Cycle two has been a step forward. We are very hopeful for some days of wellness ahead. We are #thankful for the days now that foreshadow that wellness.

As a school teacher and leader I was often quite cliché in referring to us all as lifelong learners, but I continue to experience learning in a way that is anything but trite. I continue to stubbornly and slowly comprehend that God walks every step of this journey with me. The thing is, I am most prone to forget that in the times I most need to know it.  The difficult times.  The painful times.  The discouraging times. The grieving times.  The broken times.

There is a song by Randy Stonehill called Broken Places (Spirit Walk, 2014).  Its chorus:

I'll meet you in the broken places,

 in the shadows of your pain.

In a sea of strangers' faces,

I will find you, stand beside you, 

Any time you call my name.

It is in those broken places, places where easy comfort and easy prayer cannot be found that I simply need to call God's name. Nothing else. Just God's name.  It will remind me of the lesson that is having such a hard time sticking in my heart : God is there right beside me. 

Don't we all need to know that to keep the faith?