Prayer

Today, I opened my mail to find a lovely card inside. When I opened the card, there were beautiful messages from many women, none whose names I recognized. I finally noticed who the card was from – the United Methodist Bible Study Group of Nevada, MO. After looking through the names more carefully, I realized that one of the women was the mother of a colleague and dear friend of mine from Southern California. She had told me awhile back that her mother’s prayer group had been praying for me, but it had completely slipped my mind (I’m going to blame the residual effects of chemo brain).

The notes from these women were filled with love, hope, faith and determination. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and quickly began to tear up. These women were praying for me – this little Jewish girl from Davis. They were spending their energy and time to ask God to help me.

But – this is not the first time that people of faith from throughout the world have asked for God’s help for me. Throughout the years, prayer sisters have popped up in the African American community, friends of friends in Israel have prayed for me at the Western Wall and during their marriage ceremonies, friends have lit candles in churches throughout Europe during their travels, I have received water from Lourdes…quite honestly, it has stunned me how many prayers to God have been said throughout the world to help me as I go through my cancer journey.

Recently, I was reminded by one of these prayer warriors that while I thank a lot of folks in my blog – my doctors, my family, my friends – I rarely mention how grateful that I am to God. I was reflecting on that. I know that I ask for prayers on a regular basis from all of you – so it’s not like I’m hiding the fact that I think that God plays a significant role in my healing. I often talk to God – asking for strength – asking for courage – asking to restore my health. I also personally thank God on a regular basis for the many miracles that I have witnessed over the past 7 years that have enabled me to be alive and thriving today.

I do believe in the power of prayer. So – for those of you who are concerned that I haven’t publicly acknowledged God’s role in my healing – I’d like to be clear that I am very grateful to God for bringing me to this day. I don’t know what he/she has in store for me in the future. I hope that it will be a long life. Furthermore, I am so very very grateful for all of your prayers asking God to aid me throughout my journey.

I just realized that I did not tell you about my latest cancer challenge – I had my stent in my ureter changed on Monday. The surgery went without incident – it was only 30 minutes and I was back at home by noon. On Tuesday, I will be returning to Stanford for my next infusion of PDL-1. I’m expecting this to be without incident.  I’ll be back working in Sacramento by mid-afternoon and home to help the girls with homework by that evening.

Thank you, God.