We are on the road today, starting a camping vacation to Colorado and Kansas. As I sat down in the van to pray before we left, tears of gratitude and comfort welled up as I realized the enormity of the miracle of my being able to make this trip. Very few people vacation in Kansas yet for us it has been a usual trek since 1997. Every year we would leave about this time and head for Garfield, Kansas to help our friend bring in his wheat. In 2005, on the return from that trip is when this cancer first reared its ugly head. Since then we have only been able to return once.
As we began to prepare, I was struck with the realization that it took more time to set up my drugs than I need for clothes, bedding, or any other needs. I spent the week lamenting that. I remember, when I was young with a twenty-pound pack filled with two changes of clothes and two day's meals, I would drive to a National Park and stay for weeks. Or the one-hour pack up which included my motorcycle, food, and gear to head for a desert camp and race for a week. How free that time seemed and how tied I now am to routines, doctors and medical requirements.
Now I was in the van, all the preparation done and grateful. Grateful that I could even go, that I am here and that the man holding my hand in prayer loves the same God I love and is sitting beside me. I looked back at the house and thought, “if this is not here when we return, it doesn’t really matter, all I need is with me now.”
As we began to start across the desert on an unusually calm and overcast day, I looked out at familiar places; Harper Road, where during a race, we were stretched to the breaking point to make it to the next stop. The beautiful mountains fifty to seventy miles distant with large billowing clouds covering their peaks. The different kinds of plants that make this desert gorgeous, and yet, stark. I love it so much. Here is a place that matches me perfectly. It is not beautiful, but is very complex. It has a nature of its own and will not be changed by man. It is rugged and yet there is a calming quality because of the sameness that accompanies that ruggedness. I am someone who truly loves the desert.
A friend asked me one time why I loved the desert and I told him, “Because the desert doesn’t lie.” I think I confused him, but I have lived here for 30 years and I have always understood it. Hot is hot and cold is cold. When the wind blows the trees bend, there is no such thing as a breeze. It is also true to itself. Make a road in the desert and leave it for two years and it will be gone. Maintaining our yard is simply fighting back for the land we have taken from this great desert. If my friends were all this clear, this honest, life would be quite simple. If I were this simple and this honest, I would like myself much more.
So today, we spent the whole day crossing the desert. As we did, the plant life changed from Sand bush and Sage to Pinion Pine and Acacia trees. The gravelly desert we live in turned to sand as we went east and then to lava rock and finally became the red rock of the limestone that begins the transition to the Arizona mountains. Oh, the variety and miracle of the world the Lord has given us. I have really missed this drive.
I am so amazed that we are here. The week before, we saw our oncologist and I had a CT scan. There continues to be just as many tumors as before but if you look at them carefully, you note that most are shrinking. Some are quite stubborn and refuse to shrink, but they are not growing either. The very fact that I am here to witness this beautiful country is a miracle. I do not underestimate the marvelous thing that God has done through the skill of my oncologist and surgeons.
Physically being here is important, but what God has done changes the way I see everything. He has given me eternal eyes. I never want to go back. I see things here as temporary and that is good. Each thing is a gift to be enjoyed while I have the chance to use it, see it, or experience it. Like all gifts, I do not know how long it will be mine so I need to cherish it for the time that I have it. That sense of impermanence allows me to relax and just enjoy. I am no longer attached to this world, not in the sense that I dread death.
I know that the only permanent thing is Heaven. I will be there one day and so will my husband and those I really enjoy being around. For the first time in my life, I am looking forward to the Rapture. I don’t mind dying before my friends but I really don’t want to leave my husband alone and I don’t want him to leave me. Therefore, the only solution is the Rapture. How good that will be. To leave this earth, with people of like faith, and rise to meet our Savior in the air, turning in the process, to see my husband with me and my friends rising also, this is my joy.
Oh, how I hope you will be there. I pray for that. I pray that if you are not a believer that you will find this hope that so guides my life. I pray that your eyes will become eternal. You will learn to love the temporariness of this world and seek to know Christ as your Savior. You are such an important link in my life. You have prayed me through so many surgeries and chemotherapies in the last four years. Some of you I do not even know, but I love you. Please continue to pray, as I pray for you. We all need the prayers of others. God is listening and He is answering. Trust Him.
Your friend, Marj
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