When it All Sunk In

By the time I was lying down in the ultra-sound room, I had figured out that it wasn't a swollen lymph node. The biggest indication of this was that the radiologist, who had just read the mammogram, came in himself to supervise the ultra-sound.

After that screening, I went straight to the radiologist's office and he showed me the mammo, the big scary lump, the calcifications. I sat there as it sank in. At the end of the appointment, after he'd ordered both an MRI and biopsy, I asked him, lamely, "So you're ordering these tests as a precaution? You see this kind of thing often and it turns out to be nothing?"

He just stared at me. For a good four seconds. And he wanted to say, "Lady, I'm looking at a textbook example of malignant cancer in the breast." But what he did say was, "We are very concerned."

I cried all the way home. Started thinking of all the things I would have to record on our movie camera for Gemma and Joshua to watch one day. You know. In the event that I died soon.

I sucked it all up when I got home around the kids. Bryan was concerned but not worried, figuring that we didn't know anything until the biopsy came back. But I knew.

That night, after the kids were in bed and I could fall apart again, I asked God what was going on? An immediate calm came over me and I flashed back to a moment in January.

So, flashing back now. . .

By January, it had been 3 months since Bryan had applied for an extension here in the Springs. That is, his tour is officially up in August, and he was hoping to stay in this job for the remaining 9 months before his retirement in May of 2010.

But 9 months is kind of a perfect amount of time to deploy an officer as an individual augmentee. Bryan was prime meat for such an assignment. In the military, requests for extensions get answered in about 2 weeks if the answer is "yes," and much longer if the answer is, "no, we're sending you somewhere else."

With this heavy on my mind and heart one weekend, I went to our church service. During worship, I told God, "Please tell us. If it's deployment, OK, I just want to know what the coming year is going to be for us."

His answer was, "The coming year is going to be very difficult. A very long road. But I'm choosing it for you and I'm protecting you with My peace."

On the way home, I told Bryan, "God said you're going to deploy!" And I felt great about it. Completely OK with the possibility. I told several friends what "God told me."

Imagine my surprise when, a week later, the Navy granted Bryan's extension.

Was this a test of faith or something? Had I heard wrong? Huh! I shrugged it off. Thanked God for extending Bryan here. Went on with life.

And in that moment of flashing back, I realized what God was talking about. "Difficult year." Uh, yeah.

How gracious of God to tell me this long before a diagnosis. To tell me right around the time I had noticed the "swollen lymph node." In that week between the mammogram/ultra-sound and the MRI and biopsy, when we didn't officially know, I knew.

And you know what? I haven't had a moment like that ride home ever since. No dark moments of imagining my death bed, or thinking about who will shop for Gemma's wedding dress with her one day.

There are a lot of moments of grief, to be sure. But not worry and not fear. Jesus is holding His banner over me.