It was in the midsummer last year when my best friend discovered a lump on her breast. She must have had this bump there for years as she recalled it from breastfeeding my godson who is now a teenager. It is funny how something the size of a pea could create so much fear and chaos in one’s life.
My beautiful friend has the most heartfelt laughter you could imagine, it is impossible to know Lucille without that laugh and those pearl white teeth. She has a distinctive sense of humor to find jokes on everything. Yet underneath it all, to the untrained eye, life has been complicated, heartbroken, and often lonely.
You see I have watched my dear friend go through a struggling marriage and messy divorce, followed by the accidental death of her older brother, and then the loss of her mother through the same horrible disease. And now, here she was, inflicted with yet another misery and I felt helpless.
I wept for two weeks following her diagnosis. I fell at the Lord feet, begged for mercy while my Lucille struggled and worried. But the Lord answered me with the simplest answer, while my friend went from one surgery after another,followed by a mastectomy, and undergone the horror of radiation and chemotherapy, God asked me to simply be a friend.
I became that listening ear she could pour all her worries and fears to. I gave her the pass to vent all her frustration and though I assured her that I would not have the answers to most of her problems, I would listen, then I would take it to God. I prayed for God to quicken her spirit, I prayed to heel the sickness in her body, I prayed to awaken what is dead in her, to heal the broken to bring new life.
It has not been an easy road but through it all both of us are thankful for our wonderful connection. The bond that we share has grown deeply, and we are both grateful for the sanctuary of grace that God has provide for us to dwell as we face the issue of life.
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