hope in the hurt.

When I was 18 I said good-bye to life in the states and spent my first semester in college living in Singapore. I was confident and excited as to what was ahead. The unknown didn't scare me but rather motivated me to be the person God created me to be.
26 years later, I am still living in a foreign land and want more than anything to live in His will.

As a 44 year old, I'd be lying if I didn't say the question of the future weighs heavy on my heart.
It's no secret that my life has been hard. I carry disappointments around like it's going out of style. I confront suffering like an old friend. And welcome the unanswerable with silence. I've been challenged to trust the hurting. This journey of stage IV cancer is no different.
But these past couple of days I've been struggling to articulate the tension I am feeling. The space between living and dying. I was there before- we all are. We live to die, right? I have to admit, that part is exciting. If everything I believe about heaven is true, I  will be more than fine.
But it's not knowing what God wants from me that is tripping me up. I admit that I wish the cancer didn't metastasize. I'd fight like hell to win the war with breast cancer. But this stupid disease is invading an already beat up body.
So there's the unrest. The disappointment. The suffering. The unanswerable.  The silence. The hurt.

The last round of chemo hit me hard. I'm scared to start the third round on Wednesday. I meet with my oncologist before it to hopefully approach the regimen of treatment differently. I need to live to die a better way.

And I still need to hope in the hurt.