(I wrote this about a year ago.  It was a really rough time for me)

Patrick Swayze died today.  I cried.  It was the mourning of a fallen comrade, another victim on the battlefield of cancer.  I wept for him and for myself.  It’s a blatant reminder that many don’t survive this illness.

The tears seem to flow quite easily lately.  I just completed my third round of chemo which means I’m halfway through this treatment.  It also means things are getting harder.  Life just keeps speeding up, but my body wants to slow down.  The school year has started and my energy level is not keeping up with the demands of homeschooling.  The world doesn’t seem to want to wait for me to feel better.  It all just keeps coming.  The thought that I’m not going to make it is ever present in my mind.

Fighting depression is new territory for me.  I don’t want to go there, but find myself on the brink of slipping past the point of no easy return.  The deciding factor of where I land is going to be the thoughts I allow to take root in my mind,  the way I “talk to myself” … so to speak.

Positive self-talk is key to survival.  To keep this mind chatter healthy, I know I must consistently do three things:  exercise, sleep and spend time with God- which is all hard to do when not feeling well.  The most important one is time with my Heavenly Father, praying and reading the Bible even when extremely nauseas.

God is the great minister of the mind.  Verse after verse speaks of hope and promise.  You’ve got to read it to believe it.

Romans 5:1-3  “Let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through Him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things He has for us in the future.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys- we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.

My life is in God’s hands.  I trust Him.  As I daily turn my thoughts over to Him this “battlefield of the mind” becomes His fight.  I surrender it all.  God wins… not cancer!