Beauty From Ashes

Well, on August 22, 2023, I was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian/endometrial cancer which had spread to the bone, lymph nodes, and lung. I recently finished my first cycle of chemo (six treatments) and had another PET scan. On Thursday, March 7, the doctor told me that the cancer in the bone, lymph nodes, and lung was completely gone. The cancer around the uterus and ovaries was significantly smaller and inactive. I am done with chemo for this time and I will be on immuno-therapy, every three weeks, for two years. Praise the Lord! I am very grateful to him for his faithful people who have been praying for me through the whole thing and for his healing which he has bestowed upon a very unworthy child through the doctors and nurses. I am still very weak, tired, and sick, but I can look forward to getting better as the chemo works it way out of my system, instead of sinking down more with another treatment. Plus, it is SPRING! The sun is shining. The flowers are bursting out. Yay! Yippee! The roses that my beloved planted in the fall are bursting forth into leaves. The pansies who are keeping company with the roses are blooming to beat the band. I have been sitting out on the back porch with my crocheting and absorbing that sunshine. It feels good.

These are a couple of pictures that I made a little while back. I feel like it is appropriate to show them now. I call them Beauty from Ashes. The cancer and the treatments are the fire and ashes. The healing is the beauty. I hope you like them.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. — Isaiah 61:1-3 (NIV)