As you know if you have been following this blog a while, or if you know me in "real life," our precious Sarah had cancer, and she does not have it anymore. (Praise the Lord!) Well, you may or may not know that the type of cancer Sarah had is a genetic type that has a chance of returning while she is still a child up to age 5...and then if it does not, there is a chance that it will return as another form of cancer when she is an adult. There is also a good chance that it will not return at all, but the doctor told me that we should help her to make wise decisions about her health. For example, the doctor said, Tell her that she shouldn't smoke.
REALLY? Smoking causes cancer? Oh yeah...I knew that.
Well, here is my burden. I honestly try to live without carrying many burdens. Truly, Christ has made it so very clear that we do not need to. He has much stronger shoulders than we do, and He has offered to carry those burdens for us. Normally I find I can give Him whatever is weighing me down (although I won't lie, sometimes it takes a while for me to finally let Him pry it out of my tightly clenched fingers,) but eventually I get to that place where I can let go and stop worrying about whatever it is. And it is such a fantastic feeling. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus! It's so good to rest in Him.
However, my problem is, smoking is not the only thing that causes cancer these days.
There are pesticides on our fruits and vegetables,
growth hormones and whatever else in our meat,
pollution in our air,
hormones in our milk,
artificial junk in our food,
plastic chemicals leaching into our water,
chemicals in our lotions and soaps and shampoos...
and pretty much, if you search long and hard enough, you can find a study to prove that pretty much EVERYTHING causes cancer in some way, shape or form. I did a search using the words eggs and cancer because Sarah loves them. Guess what? Someone did a study and found that even they are linked to cancer.
I try to prepare healthy meals and snacks for my family. But we are not one of these families who only eats organic/vegan/etc. Maybe someone who reads this will tell me we really should be, and I often think we probably should, but I honestly don't know if I could do all that preparation. And more importantly, we simply don't have the budget to buy all organic and free range.
And so, this is my burden. As much as I try to give this area of our lives over to God, it is really difficult-- because I feel like my daughter's future health in part depends on me, and I have to act within the boundaries of this physical world. For example, I can say, Oh, it doesn't matter what I feed her because God will take care of her...but then again, I couldn't jump off a tall building and say, Oh, it doesn't matter if I do this because God will take care of me. Understand what I'm trying to say? Pretty much everything I give her to eat, I wonder for a minute if it's going to be bad for her. I wonder if I will ever be able to stop worrying about it.
I know that God ultimately is in control. But I also know that He will allow us to experience the consequences of our actions. I just pray that my actions in taking care of my Sarah will be good enough to spare her from cancer again--if it even depends on that at all.
And I will also never stop praying that God will continue to have mercy on our precious girl.
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