Peace/Encouragement, Lumps, Pain Meds....

These are the verses that God has given me recently, for obvious reasons. He never ceases to amaze me with how clearly He shows verses like these to me:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.... As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
James 5: 7-8, 11

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans :35-39

.... I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.

....I will turn their mourning into joy;
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.

Thus says the LORD: "Keep your voice from weeping,
and your eyes from tears,
for there is a reward for your work,
declares the LORD...
Jeremiah 31:3, 13, 16

I’m pretty excited about tomorrow... I’m going to see a surgeon about getting the most annoying, aching, itchy one of these lumps removed-it’s growing fast and it needs to get gone. Hopefully it will be removable and hopefully he’ll be able to do the surgery soon. I’m not worried about the surgery: been there, done that. It will be inconvenient and there is a little bit of recovery but it’s a heck of a lot better than having this thing growing and growing to God only know what size during however long He's planning for me to be here. I have been trying to ignore it but it has past the ignorable level.... Removing it is a comfort measure.

Other than that, I’m going to try a new pain med because the one I have was terrible. I had some substantial pain in the last couple weeks in several places, so I tested out taking the pain med that I have... The first time it was fine and I was amazed by how cleared my body was of anything uncomfortable, but the following four or five times I had worse and worse problems with it.... Let’s just say that the first few times it kept me awake, then I had one night of waking up dripping with freezing cold sweat four or five times, and then I had another night full of cold sweats and two terrible nightmares—the first of which I couldn’t wake up from, and knew I couldn’t wake up from, until I finally did wake up after the thing had gone on and on and on.

So, hopefully the new pain med will be better. I’m usually just taking ibuprofen and it is usually fine, but sometimes I need something more... I'm not in bad pain all the time, there is usually only relatively low level stuff that needs to be taken care of, and occasionally, some worse pain.

I’m trying to get some pictures together to post... I’ve been doing some fun stuff and some creative stuff and it’s been good.

In His Grip, Martha