Blue

The truth is, that's how I've been feeling. Even through our trip, I've been a little down. Nothing that's kept me from enjoying life but enough sidetrack my thinking.

When you have a friend dying, it definitely weighs heavy on your heart. I have learned the situation is a bit more dire than I previously thought. We had always been told her prognosis was ten years. So we've all expected to have our friend around for quite some time. In ten years, a lot can happen including new treatments.

I learned yesterday that the cancer has spread to her stomach and lungs. She has six months of chemo left and the. There is nothing else they can do. The chemo is, at best, only preventing a massive spread of the cancer. With her recent stroke, we know there are other complications. Realistically, our friend has months, not years.

Knowing this has put a burden on my heart to pray her prayer. Her prayer from the beginning is her husband's salvation. Her worst fear even before she knew this cancer was her death sentence, was that her husband would never know the Lord. My goodness, I'm glad I don't live with that fear. It's time to pray and expect big things because our God is bigger than we can fathom.

I want to see her, but I'm not sure that will happen since we aren't scheduled to go back until December.

This has given me the opportunity to communicate with friends back home. It makes me miss them more. It's also given me the birthday blues even more.

Like I've said, I'm not upset about turning 40. I'm upset about not being surrounded by people who love me when I turn 40. I'm not saying there aren't people here who love me. There are. They are few in number, but they love well.

But those people don't know me well enough yet. They don't know how much celebrating my birthday means to me and how much it has been part of my healing. In fact, I don't think anyone knows it's one of those monumental birthdays. So of course I'm a bit down and hoping time passes quickly.