Surrounded By Hope - 50 Days of Hope
Surrounded By Hope Not many seventy-seven-year-old women are upset about having cancer because they won’t be able to tap-dance, but my friend Linda sure was. The lively great-grandmother was diagnosed with primary peritoneal cancer (a rare female cancer usually treated similarly to ovarian cancer) in October 2010 and faced major abdominal surgery and chemotherapy. She knew those treatments were going to cramp her active lifestyle. “I was a bit disappointed I was not going to be able to attend my once-a-year visit to my daughter’s first-grade classroom and help her students make applesauce and tap-dance for them,” explains Linda. She started tap dancing when she was about eight and in her mid-sixties still performed with a local group of senior ladies—ages fiftysomething to eightysomething—called “The Glitter Bugs.” But even worse than not being able to dance was Linda’s worry that she wouldn’t be well enough to take care of her ninety-two-year-old husband, who was in hospice care. “My husband always thought of me as a ‘spring chicken’ who would be there to care for him, and when all this happened, he realized I might need some care too,” Linda recalls. So from the start of her cancer journey, Linda realized how much she was going to need her faith, her family, and her friends. Fortunately, she was surrounded by hope—literally. That’s because several years ago she started collecting items with the word hope on them. She has books, plaques, candleholders, Christmas decorations, flowerpots, and garden stones all proclaiming hope. In fact, everywhere she turns in her house or her yard, she sees hope! Four freestanding, silver letters—H-O-P-E—about five inches tall are her favorite decoration because she says she can easily move them to any area where she wants a visual reminder not to give up. “I can’t remember exactly when I started collecting, but I know there came a time when I realized our hope in God is what allows us to believe in something we do not see,” Linda says. And Linda doesn’t just collect hope; she studies it too (and capitalizes it when she writes about it!). “I had a ladies’ Bible study on hope,” she recalls. “Before the ladies came, I asked them to write down a list of things they hope for. We shared some of our hopes and kept others to ourselves. Inevitably somewhere on each list was the hope of Heaven.” At the end of the study, Linda gave each participant a handmade bookmark with her acrostic on HOPE: “If we believe that, fear is diminished and even wiped out!” she says. “What peace we find in that hope!” I agree completely with Linda that the promised hope of Heaven for all believers is what gives lasting peace. I love how The Message describes this hope in Hebrews 6:18: We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us. That is the hope in which Linda continues to walk on her journey with cancer. As I write this, it’s only been seven months since her diagnosis, but follow-up tests continue to show her to be cancer-free. She knows the odds are not in her favor, but thanks God “for my remission time, however long it may be.” I think Zephaniah 3:17 is a beautiful description of my beautiful, silver-haired friend Linda: With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs. Perhaps you might want to embrace Linda’s hobby and start “collecting” hope—look for it and listen for it each day. You’ll probably be amazed at how often it pops into your life. And I hope, like Linda, that you have grabbed on to the promised hope of Heaven with both hands and that you never let go. Then you will be able to pray today as the apostle Peter did in Acts 2:25-26 (quoting King David): The LORD is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and my tongue shouts his praises! My body rests in hope. Amen. P.S. I’m happy to tell you that at our last support group meeting Linda reported she plans to tap-dance this fall and make applesauce with her daughter’s new first-graders.
