Hello friends and family,
It's been a minute since I shared. My journey started over 2 years ago in August 2023. I did enjoy an 8-month respite after my stem cell transplant. However, I confess that I am weary of the daily pain management related to my GI tract, damaged from the chemo. My immune system numbers are still low but climbing ever so slowly. My WBC count is 2.1. It was 1.3 3 weeks ago. 4.0 is the bottom of the normal range. My GI tract healed after my stem cell transplant when my WBC count got to 3.5-4. I know others have struggled with pain; some for 5, 10 even 20 years. Pray for your friends with pain battles. We need your prayers. Let us all who struggle draw near to Him. Our struggle is not without purpose. Still, it is a struggle.
2 Corinthians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
In addition, I've been diagnosed with bullous pemhigoid, a skin auto-immune disease. My case has been relatively minor with itching and blisters on my arm and leg extremities, and a small bother in comparison to the leukemia battle, but still a bother.
This is the level of faith I aspire to - like that of the young Hebrew followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Daniel 3:8.
But if God does not save us from your hand, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”
This world is broken, our bodies are broken, our relationships broken, but His love for us is unbroken.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Grace and Mercy be yours today from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
