A little more about prayer

                I wanted to say one more thing about prayer.  I want to say that I can completely feel the energy people are sending me through prayer, or through “holding me in the Light,” or any of the other things my friends choose to call this activity. I am being prayed for by people of many faiths, and all over the world, and it is a humbling thing.

                Trying to describe it to my Sunday school class, I said it feels like I am sort of crowd-surfing on a wave of energy and support.

                I can ascribe two very real results to this prayer, so far.  The first is that I have not been crippled by fear.  When I was diagnosed, on Ash Wednesday, I was pretty much a blithering mess all day.  I went to our church’s Ash Wednesday service that night.  I had only told a couple of people, mostly family, what I’d learned that morning.  During the service, we were invited to write something we wanted to let go of on a scrap of paper.  These were collected on the altar and burned in a big portable campfire pit.  The thing I wrote on my scrap of paper wasn’t “cancer,” which maybe it should have been!  I wrote “fear.”  And since then, I have been remarkably at peace and “in the moment.”

                I mean, normally, I am a worrier.  I am a person who likes to figure out what is the worst-case scenario and work backwards from there.  With an iffy cancer diagnosis, this would generally lead to constant worrying about, “Has it spread?”  “Has it come back?”  But I can honestly say I have been free of that kind of thinking, for the most part.  I can only attribute this to prayer.  It means I have been able to function, without being a basket case, and use my energy for things like actively getting better.  I have no other explanation for it. This is not my usual modus operandi.

                The other thing that I can only attribute to everyone’s prayers is how generally well I have been feeling.  I have had almost no nausea at all.  This is crazy.  I have had generally very good blood counts, and in between chemo sessions, been well enough to go dancing, eat like a hog, and travel a little. This is not at all what I pictured chemo would be like. I certainly know chemo is not this easy for everyone.  I don’t know why it has gone so well for me, but a combination of lucky genes and prayer seems likely to me.

                Everyone tells me I have a great attitude.  It’s partially true, I do have a pretty good attitude and I’m actively paying attention to that.  But it’s also easier to have a good attitude when you aren’t puking your guts out or otherwise sick as a dog.  I want to thank all of you who are praying for me, because I can tell it is helping me a huge amount.