I hate the feeling of being so weak there is nothing left but tears. My body is so tied up it seems and it is hard to not focus on what hurts. But focus it does. As C.S. Lewis commented, “Pain demands attending to. It is God’s megaphone for rousing the world.”

So I want to be roused. I know that God’s grace is sufficient for me because His power is made perfect in my weakness. I feel the power to surrender and do so freely. I feel the power to endure day by day, often moment by moment. But the power to overcome seems evasive. But then, overcoming is not just captured in the excitement of being the first one to cross the finish line, or making the winning goal in a soccer game. Sometimes the overcoming spirit is to plow through the battle confident of God’s victory, to not give in to what Leukemia is doing to my body and mind, but waiting for His resolution of the matter in His timing. I have so much more to learn, to experience the confidence of Stephen while he was stoned, the hope of Paul as he was flogged, the passion of Jesus as He suffered for us.

Every moment, no matter what type of hurt we endure, there is power to overcome, if only because it is our great God who is our overcomer, and whose love never abandons us.

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 8:37-39