As I fight this battle with cancer, I am connecting with other women, younger and older, who comprise this unique breast cancer sisterhood. Marion, Amanda, Debbi, Nancy, Wendy, Jenny, and Rebecca – thank you for sharing your journeys with me.

I love our conversations.  There is freedom to say certain things with these friends because they get it. Having to face and fight the thief themselves, their empathy is deep, wide, and tangible.  The specific comfort God has given them flows to me in the course of our conversations, and my heart drinks their words.

In fact, I’ve realized that sharing our hearts through any hardship is often ripe with help and hope.  It’s a refreshing drink of savory lemonade on a warm summer day.

The Psalms have long been my soul’s lemonade, and even more so these days.  Sweet with hope, refreshing in honesty, rejuvenating with truth, the Psalms give me words to express my raw fears.  They sing of God’s sovereign care and mighty strength.  They fill in the blanks and surprise me along the way with word pictures that express far more than any technical description of suffering.  And they reorient my wayward heart from its dark, hopeless wanderings to the stalwart hope of Christ, anchoring me to Him, not my shifting circumstances.

My circumstances are not offering much refreshment these days.  While there are certainly joys and even belly laughs every day, (I am married to Van, after all), this is a tiring, long road.

Weary.  I’ve used that word a lot more the past two weeks.  It’s different than hopeless.  Weariness is the tattered sails of a soul that inevitably come after long-lasting, intense storms.  Deep sigh.  It’s only been 13 weeks.  Fodder for you as you pray for me.

My drink of lemonade this morning was Psalm 63…

“My soul thirsts for you…as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

There is no reprimand in this Psalm for feeling weary.  There is no correction for having a tired soul.  There is, instead, an invitation to be refreshed in God’s love.

“Because your steadfast love is better than life…My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.”  

Lemonade AND bacon! (Van would stick an “amen!” right here)  God’s love, the yummiest of fare, better than life itself.

Psalm 63 is the song Jesus sang with His life, perfectly embodying and fulfilling its every word.  He knows weary.  He even knows what it is to be weary and have the refreshment He alone deserved intentionally withheld by his Heavenly Father.  Why?  So that I – undeserving of comfort and rest because of my sin – can be freely refreshed by the love of God.  Jesus Himself knows the specifics of my suffering.  He can read between the lines of my heart as I cry out to him, reviving me with his comfort and peace, his strength and help.  Jesus is divine lemonade.

Round 5 begins next Tuesday.  Pray I will be refreshed and satisfied in God’s love as the rockiest parts of this treatment road approach.  I’m beginning to see the finish line of ninja warfare in the distance.  I will feast and dance across that line!