Storm Clouds Rolling In

Two years ago this week, I was hooked up to an I.V. to administer the first round of a chemotherapy cocktail. I will never forget the first drip drip drip….. I can still see it clear as day in my mind. As the drugs began to fill my veins, my eyes began to fill with tears. My husband took my hand as I cried. This was not on my life’s list of ‘to do’s’! There was no turning back or getting out of this! And from any of the cancer movies I had seen, when would I start barfing?

This is a blog to encourage those facing similar circumstances and their loved ones. My middle daughter, Rachel Vanoven, kept encouraging me to start blogging. So here I am, writing and so very thankful………..thankful to be alive……….thankful to have survived 2012, the year I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

My husband, Pat, and I had recently purchased our retirement home in southern Indiana where I was holding down the fort while Pat was finishing up his career with CSX transportation in Jacksonville, Florida. He had driven us down to Jax so I could spend some time with him and also visit our daughter who was a nurse living in St. Augustine. After enjoying a meal out at the beach, Pat was back to Jax to work the next morning and I stayed the night in St. Augustine with Lauren, our youngest of 3 daughters. Sometime in the night I started having this awful pain in my right abdomen along with nausea. Was it something I ate? After tossing and turning I tried to run a bath to soak…. but nothing was helping. The pain was not like anything I had felt before. I was thinking appendicitis. Lauren had just gotten back from a camping trip and was exhausted and I hated to bother her. Pat was in Jax and I hated to wake him, so I decided to tough it out by myself. But I was not alone. I sensed God near me. And it was like He was saying, “You’re not alone, I’m with you and this is significant. Don’t brush this one off like you tend to do”. So, I waited it out that long night.

In the morning, my daughter and her fiance Adam, who was finishing up his nursing degree, encouraged me to get to the emergency room where Adam worked. Pat joined me. The doctor was thinking like I was thinking, appendicitis. But after a CAT scan she came in and sat down. It is one of those moments in time that I can still see and smell and feel. “You have a large tumor” she said looking me straight in the eye. “You need to get to an oncologist ASAP”. She didn’t know that the weight of the tumor had caused my ovary to twist and burst causing the pain. I remember looking at Pat. The fear in his eyes mirrored my own.

It was like this big huge ugly dark foreboding cloud had descended over my life. And there was no escaping it. If you or someone you love has had a similar diagnoses, you know the feeling. But please listen to me. No matter what the cloud that descends upon your life there is a God who cares and who comes closer than ever in the cloud. One of the first orders of business for me was to get my Bible and look up every reference to clouds I could find. And you know what I found? God is in the clouds. I will share more about that later, but for now take comfort in one of my favorite “cloud verses”. Before you read it I want you to know that the name, Jeshurun, means “beloved one”. Whether you realize it or not, in God’s eyes, you ARE a beloved one. So dear beloved one, insert your name in this verse when you see ‘Jeshurun.’

There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides across the heavens to help you, and on the CLOUDS in His majesty.The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out the enemies from before you saying, “Destroy them!”            Deuteronomy 33:26-27