Continued perspective...

It's amazing how our perspective on life can alter our experience of it.
I continue to be awed *and maybe the even more accurate term is, disgusted* at how cluelessly I was skipping through life before all of this.
Getting up, going to work, raising my children, managing our house, playing mom's-taxi, cooking meals........ the list of house-mom, as many of us well know, is endless...
Which means endless time..... which also means endless ENERGY.

My whole life, people around me have always said 'Oh Hayley, you are such a BALL of energy!' ...and it's true, I am. I am comfortable being so because I really do use it.
Although we're only four days into this trek, I can already see that energy (or my sudden lack thereof) is going to be the hardest part of this particular trail. For perhaps the first time in my life, I feel sincerely ZAPPED. Not even right after having my two children have I felt so drained.

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Well. That was a nice nap, ha! Fell asleep (initially, literally, on my keyboard!)
Like I was saying.
DRAINED.
Such a weird feeling for me... like an on-going flu or something~

The past few days have been a challenge... like reaching a hiking trail that started with an immediate steep and slippery climb. As in real life, I went with the bend over, hands to the knees and 'push on' approach, but I'm not fooling anyone (myself, in the least!) that the 'pit stops' or in my case, naps, haven't played a huge role, already. While I know I need them, it is a challenge to allow myself to be so lazy. Sitting around just isn't, nor has it EVER been 'my thing.'

Still, as another 'courage warrior' said to me a few weeks into all of this, 'You will do what you must because it's YOU who's going through it.' And she's right. I am. As difficult as it is at times, I will.

In the early part of my day, today, right as I was facing my hundredth bathroom run in 72-hrs and thinking to myself... I just don't know if I'm cut out for this!...
I came across an email from a friend of a friend, through my mom.
I've said before, and will say at least a thousand times more, I'm sure, that God never ceases to amaze me with His timing. At a moment in my day where I just felt so beat-up by all this, the most perfect message sprayed across my computer screen.
She is another survivor--spreading her healing thoughts my way--but she shared something that God revealed to her in the midst of her hike--something I really needed to hear today. Because I don't want it to lose it's context (...and I'm a half-asleep typer these days), I'm copying and pasting it, here:

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I am a 19 year breast cancer survivor...I know the huge combination of thoughts, feelings, questions, roller-coaster way of getting the news and going through the recovery process.  I shared this briefly with your mother the other day when I dropped by UVAA...and I pass it on to you...[in case it is "the message-of-the-day-from God"]  :)  It was a HUGE stronghold for me those many years ago---and for that matter, has become one of my "life-verses."  

It is Phillipians 4:6-7...which is probably familiar to you---reminding us to be thankful and to take all of our concerns to God in prayer..BUT..the part that leaped out for me (that was what God knew I needed) was the last part of the verse that says:

"AND THE PEACE OF GOD, WHICH PASSES UNDERSTANDING. WILL GUARD YOUR HEART AND MIND THROUGH CHRIST JESUS"  

I think God knew I needed that "guard my heart and mind" because sometimes, left to my own---my heart and mind could go bonkers---way out there with the worst-case-scenarios, the what-ifs....so when some anxious fear/thought would come into my awareness,  my prayer became just that: "guard my heart and mind through Christ Jesus"

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THE PEACE OF GOD, WHICH PASSES ALL UNDERSTANDING,
WILL GUARD YOUR HEART AND MIND.

Yes, Lord.
I pray that for myself, right now.
And I pray that for us ALL!!

Guard our hearts and minds, Lord... and let a Peace, FROM YOU, surpass all my understanding of this and leave me with nothing........
but Your Perfect Peace.