Picking Up Bread Crumbs

At my last visit to MD Anderson, we learned that my CT scan showed a suspicious spot on my right lung that is indicative of a new tumor. The doctors are unsure at this point if it is cancer but felt that the best approach would be to have a PET scan at my next appointment to determine if it is indeed cancer again. If the spot is determined to be cancer, that will mean that the cancer has found a way around the inhibitor drug that I have been taking for the past twenty-two months.

We were told from the beginning that there were no assurances of how long the medicine would work. But I have done my best to push those thoughts out of my mind. Beating lung cancer once is hard enough; beating it twice would just be harder. When you are fighting cancer, you just think about today and not what you may have to face tomorrow. However, now I have to begin thinking about what may lie ahead: Is there another bend in the road in this journey to beat cancer?

In trying to look ahead, I have been looking more backward than forward. I keep replaying these past two and a half years over in my mind. They have been nothing short of an incredible miracle. I have taken the medicine for twice as long as the average patient in any of the trials. I have done things that have the doctors shaking their heads and saying things like, "you are not typical."

As good as all of that is, there is part of me that feels like I have missed something. I am beginning to feel like the disciples must have felt in John chapter 6. Jesus had just performed an incredible miracle by feeding over 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two small fish. Once everyone was fed and satisfied, Jesus told the disciples to go pick up the leftovers. He told them to let nothing go to waste. I don't think Jesus was only talking about the food. I think Jesus wanted them to see with just how much abundance He had met their needs. He wanted them to believe that they could depend on Him for their very basic needs.

So, as I have been going back through these past two and a half years picking up the bread crumbs, there is one thing that I am seeing consistently. Jesus has been far ahead of us the whole time. He has known from the beginning what was to come and laid the stones that we would walk on. He already knows what the results of the PET scan will be and is already preparing the path we will take.