Salty Zebra

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .    When I learned that I had about four and a half months before I started radiation therapy, I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to both do the things that were important to me, like my trip with my son, and prepare for the road ahead. They tell you a little about what to expect, but treatment hits every person a little differently so they can't say much for sure. My primary symptoms associated with my tumor (I have lots associated with other illnesses but we're hoping they won't be affected) are nausea and vertigo. My doctor has warned me that these will likely increase as treatment progresses because radiation causes inflammation to the area of the tumor, effectively...

  Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand. I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.”   Psalm 77:10-11  Sometimes life is hard. Things just don’t add up. You hurt. You’re worn out. You’ve waited and waited, and reprieve doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. The Bible doesn’t shy away from these difficult seasons in our lives. It doesn’t shame us, or tell us we’re wrong to feel sad, scared or lost. Instead, it comes alongside us and says, yes, your brothers and sisters have felt that way too. You are not alone.   In our Psalm today, 77, the psalmist (Asaph) lays out his struggles before God. He starts out in confidence that the LORD will hear and pay attention to him. Things had gotten so bad that he felt like, maybe, God had forgotten him or rejected him. He wondered if God was so angry with him that He had withheld His compassion. That’s a dark place to be. Maybe ...

   God knows. He knows what we need and when we need it. Five days after hearing that I was going to probably need radiation therapy for my brain tumor, this book shows up in my mailbox. I am a regular supporter of the Love God Greatly ministry, so I receive their studies automatically and I didn't know in advance what it would be. Turns out, this one is a repeat (which they do occasionally). Turns out, God put everything together just right so that I would have the study I needed, when I needed it.  Radiation therapy brings a whole host of suffering with it. Exhaustion. Not just tiredness, bone-weary exhaustion. I remember that from after my brain surgeries. My body was so worn out that it literally couldn't stay awake for more than 20 minutes straight. Falling asleep sitting up wasn't just possible, it was the norm. Nausea. My worst enemy. I've said over and over, I'll take pain and migraines over nausea. Well, in this case I may not have to choose, I'll likel...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .    After my annual brain tumor checkup in April we waited, somewhat anxiously, to hear back from my doctor about what the Tumor Board (the "Brain Trust" as we like to call them) decided about my future. I'm pretty sure that doctors don't feel nearly the amount of urgency in getting back to us as we do! On the 28th (my husband's 50th birthday) we finally received the results of my MRI in MyChart, something we would typically get a few hours later instead of 8 days. This told us that information should be coming soon, but the call we received was NOT the one we'd expected. The next morning, I got a call from Audiology. They were calling to schedule my baseline hearing t...

Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt – to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land.  Deuteronomy 34:10-11  Moses truly lived an incredible life, and we can learn so much from it. He was not perfect, not by far, and the Bible doesn’t shy away from that. He was a confessed murderer (Exodus 2:12). He argued with God and tried to get out of the role that God had for him at the burning bush ( Exodus 3 -4). In the wilderness, he let his frustration get the better of him and he disobeyed God’s instructions at Meribah ( Numbers 20:1-13 ). But despite these failings, and others I’m sure, God chose to use Moses to accomplish His will and show His wonders. We may have thought that because of what we have done or who we have been, God cannot use us. I caution you to remember that Moses was 80 – EIGHTY YEARS OLD – when God finally got a hold of him and beg...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  There's lots to do before I start radiation in 35 days, and I have to prioritize. When looking at my list, one of the hardest things was cutting my hair. Three years ago, I had three brain surgeries which resulted in a shaved head at the end. That was a tough decision at first, but when I found that I would have several strange, shaved patches, and I had spent two weeks in the neuro ICU not being able to wash or care for my hair properly, it got a little easier. After surgery, I very much wanted to grow my hair back out. There's something about my body and brain that tell me I need to put my hair in a ponytail. If I can't, I just don't feel right. One year later (exactly one y...

  Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. As for your children that you said would be taken as plunder, I will bring them in to enjoy the land you have rejected.   Numbers 14:30-31  God tells you to do something and you don’t. You’re scared, or intimidated or ashamed. Whatever your reason, you decide not to do what God has told you to. Then comes God’s judgement, the correct response to your disobedience. You don’t want whatever the consequences are even more than whatever had kept you from obeying in the first place, but now it’s too late. Yes, God forgives, but that doesn’t mean He rewinds and makes everything the way it was. Because of your disobedience, you now have a new course, a new path to follow, and to not follow it would be further disobedience. That will not go well.   God had brought the people to the promised land. They were to send delegates to go scope i...

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.  Exodus 40:34-35  During special seasons in the history of the world, God’s presence was visible among His people. The people of Israel were accompanied by God’s glory in the form of a pillar of cloud and of fire that traveled with them through the wilderness. Many centuries later, they were given the gift of God, Himself, walking among them in the person of Jesus Christ. But is this a gift relegated only to the past?  When God brought His people out of Egypt, He led them with His own presence and glory in the form of a cloud. This cloud is pictured as a pillar that moved to guide them from one place to the next and settled amongst them when they were to remain in one place. It went behind them at the Red Sea to separate them from their enemies, the E...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor,  check out these posts . So... Crazy week. I wrote my first post in this series last week under the impression that I had four and a half months until I would be starting radiation and I had a lot of things I wanted to do to get ready. I already have ten other posts in this series started in my drafts folder - so much to do. So much I want to take care of. And this week, well that timeline shrunk significantly. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened.  Last weekend I had an amazing time with my family. We talked a lot about radiation, and I thought more and more about it. To say I started questioning myself would be an understatement. You see, the determination to begin treatment was made based...

  and everyone who was willing and whose heart moved them came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments. Exodus 35:21  I’ve written about it before , but fiber arts are kind of my thing. I actually spent last weekend with dozens of my fiber arts people. Shepherds and spinners and dyers and weavers. It was at an event called the Shepherd’s Extravaganza. I got to help out with the fleece sale where shepherds brought in this year’s fleece, the wool freshly cut from their sheep (don’t worry, it’s like a hair cut – doesn’t hurt at all). A judge came and looked them all over, noting different qualities and deficiencies in them. She chose the best to receive fancy ribbons, and one among them received the judge’s choice award. In another area, craftspeople had brought things they had made with wool (and other fiber) to be displayed and judged. My Mom won the judge’s choice in that area, she’s super tale...

  And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Exodus 34:6-7  Who is God? What is He like? There are thousands of different references in the Bible and we could compound them and break them down, but how much more accurate, more exact would it be to look at who God, Himself, says He is?   God starts out by introducing Himself as “The Lord, the Lord.” In other versions, this is represented as “Yahweh, Yahweh God.” He gives His Name, that by which He is to be known to all mankind for all generations. This is the name God gave to Moses at the burning bush when he asked for it. It literally means, “the existing one” ( Strong’s ). God is the...

Over the next few months, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation in the fall. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .    Last weekend, my family came together to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday. The timing of this was pretty special as I'd just received confirmation from my medical team that my brain tumor had officially entered progression (at least 20% growth) just a couple of days before, which I explained in my post last week . One of the hardest parts of this process has been having to communicate, at each step, what's going on to my family, especially my children. Don't get me wrong, they've been amazing about it! But I hate seeing the burden of knowledge weighing heavily on them.  Each of my kids have reacted differently to news of my tumor at different stages in thi...

 Have you ever asked God for a sign? How about a really specific sign? How about a flashing neon sign? Yep. That was me. I did that. You see, two years ago the radiologists' measurements on my MRIs showed that my tumor had grown, significantly. Between the MRI that we'd settled on as our baseline, taken about four months after my resection surgery, and the one taken in June of 2024, there was about a 76% increase in volume. Considering you only need to see 20% increase to be considered in "progression" and moving on to the next stage of treatment, this was a lot, even though the tumor itself was still pretty tiny, only about 1 sq cm, so the growth was pretty tiny as well. At that point, my surgeon referred me over to the Tumor Center and said that I'd likely need radiation treatment, though he wasn't an expert and deferred to their wisdom.   After my first, not great, appointment, we were assigned to the head of Neuro Radiology Oncology who was an amazing ble...

  Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.   Exodus 33:10-11  Have you ever heard the phrase, “Familiarity breeds contempt” or its counterpart, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone”? Sometimes we become so used to a really special, wonderful thing, that we no longer see its special wonderfulness. It’s just regular, the way it is supposed to be. This morning, I’m considering this when it comes to prayer.   Moses had the privilege of speaking to God face to face as a man does with a friend. This was such a wonderful and amazing thing that, when Moses went to the tent of meeting to do this, all the people would come and stand at the entrance to their tents and worship God. Imagine if th...

“They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”  Exodus 32:23-24  In case you aren’t familiar with the story, let me catch you up. God used Moses to lead the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt and through the Red Sea, bringing the sea back down upon their enemies and destroying them completely. Then, knowing that the people were not yet ready to be tested in battle, He led them into the wilderness where they were to learn from Him and grow to trust Him. And there was a lot of growing to do! At every turn, at every hiccup, they whined and complained about ever having left Egypt, where they were horribly treated and enslaved. Never did they come to God and humbly say, “We have a need and we trust that You will provide for us...