“Oh what a beautiful morning!”

February 22, 2012, oh what a beautiful morning!  It’s the day after the completion of my treatments and when I stepped outside my front door I was overwhelmed by the beauty and the warmth (for February) of the day.  It felt so good that I had to walk down to the corner of the block and back which is something I haven’t felt like doing in a long time.  I don’t want to be too subjective but it was hard not to feel like this was a special gift from God to me.  And I’m very thankful.

I’m sorry I haven’t been too active with my blog or tweets or facebook posts lately.  The last few weeks of treatment have been hard and my prayer has just been, “Lord, give me the strength to make it through the day.”  Please don’t think I’ve forgotten about you.  I haven’t even had much contact with my family and closest friends.  I can’t talk for very long so that eliminates the phone and I just haven’t had the energy to get online.  But I woke up today ready to move forward.  Now, I don’t know exactly what that will look like because God is in charge of the healing, I just know that I’m ready.  My Dr.’s have told me that the next significant thing to happen is a second PET scan to determine the result of the treatments.  My ENT Dr. told me that this could not be scheduled until my mouth, tongue and throat have healed so there can be a clear “canvas” so to speak for the scan.  No two people heal the same so this can take anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks.  The Dr.’s also told me that it would probably take a few weeks before I start to really feel better.  So here’s my request for all of you, please pray with me that the healing process would begin and would go as quickly as possible.  I’m not going to try and rush things, I just want to feel better and get on with my life.  

As always our prayer needs to be that the combination of chemotherapy and radiation has completely destroyed and eradicated the cancer from my neck and my throat.  My Dr.’s tell me they are very pleased with what they see but the PET scan will be the test that give us the results.  Please continue to pray for me and my family that our spirits and attitudes will stay as upbeat and positive as possible.  Our enemy the devil likes to creep in and sow negative fearful thoughts and sometimes it’s hard not to listen.  So I need my church family to surround my family with a hedge of prayer and protection.  

I want you to know how much I love and miss you all.  Not being able to be in church, see your faces, sing God’s praise, and preach His Word has been so difficult.  But I’m thankful for the faithfulness that you have demonstrated during my absence.  And I’m very grateful to Andrew, my brother Kenneth and now our interim preacher, John Russell for filling in for me.  And I can’t tell you how proud I am of our entire staff led by our Executive Pastor, Alan Baumlein, as they have continued to lead the ministry of the church.  And I want to thank our Elders for their love and support of me and my family.  I hope that we all recognize just how special Mount Pleasant is and how much God has blessed us.  I love this church!

Jesus cares,

Pastor Chris