Wednesday Word 7.07.2021

 

Thoughts on Last Sunday’s Text…

Proverbs 17:22. New International Version

22.  A cheerful heart is good medicine,

     but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Breast cancer was the cause of my mother’s death. In her eulogy, I insisted that cancer did not take her life.  She held on to everything that made her life her own until the very end. For example, she worked up until three weeks before her death. She refused all pain medication, and I mean all, because she said it would only make her sleep. That would not do for my mother. It was her life and she would not willingly miss a minute of it, in spite of the metastasis that made pain a constant. When she could no longer speak, she communicated with a hint of a smile. Before long, her only task was to draw one more breath. While I was telling a fun story about her to the visiting nurse, the last breath came and went.

She told people that cancer was just a “bump in the road.” My father, her partner of more than fifty years, took her wherever she needed to be. He functioned as her office assistant so that she could remain seated. She declared him “about this close to being perfect” as she held up her thumb and forefinger pressed together. When you spoke to her on the phone, she wanted to know all about you and would only say she was fine when you asked. She never complained. If she felt sorry for herself, she never voiced it. The poetry she left us expressed the joy she found in living every day with eyes and heart wide open, seeking the Lord.

I cannot testify that her attitude added days to her life, but I can tell you with complete certainty that her outlook added life to her days. And it was medicine for those who loved her. Never letting go of the joy that God gives…something to pray about.

Don't forget to look for the lord today.  Vicki H.