Dear Dr E:

It has been 5 years and I have thought about what you said at our last visit many times. You probably don’t remember me, I am just another patient in a long series of patients and just another record in your files.

The look of the exam room – beige walls, veneer cabinets and a reproduction print of a lily that is found in many doctors’ offices, I am sitting on the chair in the room when you enter, as I sit in stunned silence you talk about my future.

I walk out of the office not sure what to do next, I am on auto pilot as I make my way through the halls, down the elevator and out to the parking garage where I get into my car and wonder what to do next.

Six months later in a small church on Main Street, Monroe Wa, God performed a miracle in my life and healed the cancer in my breast. Thank you Lord.

Dr E, I write this to you as I have just received my latest mammogram results and to let you know that for the last 5 years I battled in my mind almost daily as symptoms would come I battled to stay in Gods embrace and to keep the faith in Him. I battled against the words you spoke that day. I battled to prove you wrong.

Dr E, you were right it isn’t a matter of if – I have been clean for 5 years now, but where you were wrong is that it is NOT a matter of when either.

Matthew 15:30

End of a Season

Here it is Labor Day, the time when summer and all the related activities are coming to an end. Kyle just pulled the furnace filters and cleaned them preparing for the winter months. Seasons change and try as we might to hold on to one it will change into the next one. There is no stopping fall, then winter and then spring from happening.

As a farmer knows you spend time in one season so that you can harvest in the next. But after the harvest there comes what seems to be the longest season, the season of rest. It is in these season that the fields are dormant, you have to cut down the plants that were once producing so much fruit, stop the activity in the field and allow the ground to rest. Allow the ground to recover and rebuild the nutrients that the next crop will require.

Sometimes a season in our lives has to end, maybe it is has been a fruitful season and yet you know deep down that season is waning. If you try and prolong that time it would be like running around in shorts when the weather is cold and rainy. It will no longer produce fruit and it will cause much discomfort.

It is hardest to be obedient and stop doing the good things when you don’t know what you are going to be doing next, but if you don’t give up the old, how will there ever be time for the new? It is only after the dormant winter season that spring comes and there will be new growth, new plants and the potential for a new harvest.

ECC 3:6