Transformations

"His voice shook the earth, but now He has given a promise: Yet once more I will shake and make tremble not only the earth but also the starry heavens. Now this expression, Yet once more, indicates the final removal and transformation of all that can be shaken--that is, of that which has been created--in order that what cannot be shaken may remain and continue. Let us therefore, receiving a kingdom that is firm and stable and cannot be shaken, offer to God pleasing service and acceptable worship, with modesty and pious care and godly fear and awe." ~ Hebrews 12:26-28 Amplified

I have just two pills left of my new prescription for the hormone that replaces what my thyroid used to make. I was looking in the bottle at those two tiny purple orbs this morning in wonder at what has transpired over the past two months of my life. We live in a world where most transitions are expected, most changes are under our control. It seems we choose whether or not to get married, have children, look back at our detailed familial health histories and can even predict, to some extent, what will cause our decline and death in our old age. Just fifty years ago, most of those large transitions came as surprises to the vast majority of people. Our current level of disseminated knowledge makes unexpected changes, like cancer at 29, even more jarring. We are rattled out of that little cocoon of supposed safety we have wrapped our bodies and our minds in.

I have my first of many doctors appointments tomorrow to check the progress of those cancer cells still in my body and to recalibrate my replacement hormone level. I will be having about 20 different blood levels checked, a physical, review of my post-surgical healing, and a new prescription. Mundane and common-place, just a check-up with my regular doctor, not even a Mayo specialist. How unimaginable, though, this mundane check-up would have seemed just two months ago. A day spent in surgery and a bottle of purple pills later and I am transformed into someone surviving cancer instead of just plain old me.

This transformation is visible to everyone - a scar on my neck. There are many more subtle signs of the physical transformation noticeable only to my husband, my mother, my closest friends. What about the internal transformations that have happened in the same time? I hope I can make them as visible - a change of heart is so much harder to see, yet so much more important.

As each of you has received a gift (a particular spiritual talent, a gracious divine endowment), employ it for one another as befits good trustees of God's many-sided grace - faithful stewards of the extremely diverse powers and gifts granted to Christians by unmerited favor. Whoever speaks, let him do it as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, let him do it as with the strength which God furnishes abundantly, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ (the Messiah). To Him be the glory and dominion forever and ever, through endless ages. Amen (so be it). ~ I Peter 4:10-11