Picking Up the Threads

Cycle two, Day 8 of the third treatment protocol attempting to keep the plasma in my body from duplicating and behaving erratically. This day will once again involve a "healthy" dose of steroids and an IV needle delivering a chemo drug known as a proteasome inhibitor. We had hoped that by this time that needle would also carry a second drug using a different mechanism to attack the cancer. That is still pending.

To be honest, this chemo treatment has been more challenging. I haven't written much. Interesting, intelligent sentences are harder to find in this chemo fog. The steroids alter my moods, and while the anti nausea meds have done their job to hold sickness mostly at bay, the cumulative affect is three or four days each week where life is lived in black and white rather than full colour. 

A while back I heard a podcaster talk about a conversation she had with Amanda Held-Opelt about life after the death of her sister and well known author Rachel Held-Evans. Held-Opelt reportedly spoke of life as a weaving that had become almost completely unravelled, threads, fibres and fabrics lying on the floor. She spoke about days when she couldn't see past the disorder and chaos that this unravelled weaving had become. All the threads seemed tangled and void of colour. But she also said that by grace she came to the place where she started to reach out to pick up the threads and begin weaving again.

I am not trying to compare grief or suffering here. I'm definitely not trying to minimize it. The point is, we all have tattered and unravelled parts in the fabric that is our life. For some, right now, the ragged section is small and peripheral.  For others it lies in the centre of the woven fabric and still for others, the weaving seems to be in complete scattered-chaos on the floor. The tatters and chaos are real. We can't ignore them. We don't need the voices that say, "Just move on. Leave the chaos behind." 

All we can do is listen for a different voice. A still small voice that says, "I love you. I am with you. Pick up the threads. Weave. Live." 

Today, I commit in the centre of this cancer chaos, to be intentional about picking up some threads and weaving a very small part in God's beautiful tapestry.