Leveraging Faith

Sixteen hours in a car driving to and from Indiana for a wedding last weekend afforded me a good bit of time to reflect on the first six months of 2011. In the moments when my family dozed, one thought emerged almost as often as overpasses appeared on the horizon:

I had not “paused” as often as I hoped to this year.

My first inclination was to go through a long list of excuses why, and those familiar with my story might consider most to be legitimate. Regardless of the excuses, though, one question lingered.

Is there a correlation between pausing and being grateful?

When you live your life at a pace life dictates, you miss what opportunities are present to go deeper, past those surface level observations. At the surface everything is a blur, much like when you lie in bed at night and the day just plays through your head like a movie preview trailer. But if you truly desire to see the real story being written by your life, you need to make an effort to look past the obvious and find the picture God is painting.

•At the surface I find myself battling cancer a third time in two years and in the middle of treatments I hoped that would never be a part of my world. Yet gratitude rises from the fact that God’s plan was for Shari and to come back into each other’s lives and despite our plans to marry in the fall, he put on her heart that waiting to get married until we knew the outcome of treatments demonstrated a lack of trust and faith. So now in the midst of this trial I find myself blessed by the blending of our two families, our friends, and co-workers who have given us so much support and encouragement both in our cancer journey and our new marriage.

•At the surface I find myself trying to maintain a balance a normalcy between work obligations and my cancer treatment protocol. But I find myself grateful for the new normal which gives me the privilege and honor to have a role in the lives of my two teenage stepsons. The new normal has also blessed me with new relationships within the cancer community, both in person and online, as we share a bond in our similar journeys and offer support to each other.

Once I got past the obvious, what was obscure became clear…God is leveraging my faith journey and my cancer journey together to paint a picture that is evolving before my eyes. And it’s at this very intersection I find a purpose and a platform, to share what God is doing in my life with the hope the picture He is painting become clear for all to see, including me!

God if it is your will, I pray that someone will come to know my story for which I feel compelled to boldly share. May they come to know you, as I have, as their Heavenly Father and seek a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and His promise of an eternal life.

So this morning after making time to pause as I finish my fifth cycle of chemotherapy treatments, I thank God for how these two journeys have come together as a part of his plan for my life. And I hope you too will pause more often and go deeper, past the surface view and see the picture God is painting in your life as well!!

~Tom

trusting God period!

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