On Not Growing Weary

Can you see how my hair has grown?! Probably not. Haha. But that pesky population of gray hairs has grown about 1/8” this week. We’re debating on buzzing it off, so things are neater when my “real” hair starts to grow back.

Now that I’m out of school, I’ve been working full time. Shocker, since I’ve only worked about 12 hours per month most of this year. That’s the minimum to keep my job. It’s been a shocker to everyone there, and to my poor body. After almost a year of chemo, a busy 12hr shift wears me out!

I work as a nursing assistant at the maternity center at our local hospital. I LOVE it, even though it’s pretty much the opposite of oncology, which is where my passion lies. While I’m at work, I cover my bald head with a scrub cap or a bandana. Seems like it would be distracting to be bald, maybe even upsetting to boldly bring cancer into a new baby’s room.

At work this week, I was doing something – vital signs? breastfeeding help? – in a patient room, and Big Brother, who was about 3 or 4 years old, woke up from a sound sleep. After assessing me for a few minutes, he leaned over to his dad and said, “Pirate!” I’m going to start wearing big hoops when I have a bandana on. J This is the second time this has happened to me, and both little boys really bought into the pirate image. It’s the best thing ever! Maybe that will be my picture next week, since there’s no action in the hair arena yet.

Even though things are quiet on top of my head, they are not quiet IN my head. It’s only been a couple weeks since I finished chemotherapy, but I’ve been thinking lots of thoughts about the possibility of recurrence. You’d think I’d have several weeks, maybe even a few months, before I shifted from rejoicing at being done with treatment to grappling with the potential of confronting cancer again, but no.

As my mind starts wrestling with this, one of those pictures-with-words-over-it popped up on my Facebook feed. The quote was from the Bible – Galatians 6:9, which says “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” The context is about where we invest our time – in worldly, reward-me-now things, or in heavenly, lasting endeavors.

The picture was of a mom holding her baby. Probably one of the best examples of not growing weary! I have several friends, and now two sisters, who had at least two babies within a short time frame. They say those first few years are mostly a blur of diapers, feeding, naps, and laundry. Talk about needing encouragement to not grow weary! They are all champions in my book, especially because they also raised their babies to love God in the midst of all the messy high chairs and sleepless nights.

And then, as so often happens, a couple days later I found a similar message when I was reading one of my little devotional books. This time, it was in “Jesus Calling.” It said, “You may encounter obstacles as you move toward your goal, but don’t be discouraged – never give up! With My help, you can overcome any obstacle.”

I think this applies to SO many areas in our lives! Certainly we want to do more good things than we actually do, whether it’s physical, like eating healthier or exercising; or relational, like actually making plans instead of just talking about it; or spiritual, like memorizing scripture or practicing that virtue we struggle with – impatience, anyone? J I’m sure each of us has at least one thing that comes to mind when we read “do not grow weary in doing good.”

For me, I’m going to lean on God’s strength so I can resist growing weary in my fight against cancer. Now that the physical fight is almost over, the mental fight resumes. And I take on a different sort of physical fight – eating and exercising to prevent cancer. I’ll need to find new strategies for this mental phase… more about that as the weeks progress!

Grace and peace to you all.