Welcome back! Here’s hoping your Christmas and New Year’s celebrations brought joy and comfort as you spent time with family and friends. It goes by too fast doesn’t it?
Canada Post took one final kick at 2016 with a single envelope in my post office box on Friday, perhaps a holiday bill or Christmas Card straggler? No, it was from the Alberta Breast Screening Program informing me I needed further tests along with a pamphlet telling me “DON”T PANIC”. The bold words imply there might be a reason to panic, however; I should avoid the impulse to do so in order to save my energy for the actual crisis. Easier said than done.
Good to know only ten percent of all those who go for further testing have breast cancer and often abnormal results are simply benign cysts or calcium deposits. And so, I enter the waiting game of additional appointments and further results - like many of you have. If only we could see into the future.
2016 taught me a lot, more than I cared to learn, actually. Life is full of mediocre days followed by sorrowful lows, and incredible highs that crash headlong into serious trouble. The only constant remaining through the joy, and the distress, is the Lord and His presence.
I love the comfort brought by the lyrics to the Natalie Grant song – Held:
Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We're asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It's unfair.
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be
Held.