The Mercy Promise

I have already described how Jesus used John 14 to tell me He is coming for me--both in my JOY post from January 1, 2010 and in the EASTER SUNDAY video.

This post is about the other promise, the one He made me a year ago during my initial several months of learning about living with, being treated for, and dying from, ovarian cancer.

I had been researching how women typically die from ovarian cancer. The most frequent cause of death is a BOWEL OBSTRUCTION and it’s ugly. Ugly is the nicest way to put it because it involves everything from extremely severe pain, and volatile nausea to fecal vomiting. We’ll just leave that at that...

I had been begging God to have mercy on me. At many points, the only thing I knew to pray was, “Lord have mercy on me.” Often I would pray that He would let me die in my sleep that night. Obviously that didn’t happen.

The physical suffering involved in the chemo process, the overwhelming paradigm shifts involved in facing death in a very real and close way, and the emotional aftermath of surgical menopause were insane. (There really is absolutely no way to describe how hellacious that process was on every possible level.)

One day while I was on Facebook (of all places...) I saw a picture my sister posted:

As I looked at it God spoke to me. He said, “Martha, I will take you gently, just like the waves are gently washing away the sand from the edges of the letters.” And at that moment there was peace in the midst of what felt like living hell.

This is the promise that has kept me sane through the last year. This is one of the two promises God has spoken to me that gives me courage in the face of “DEATH.” This is what gives me hope and peace when my mind wanders to bowel obstructions and all things ovarian cancer related and dying from it.