Hope will Endure

My friend Rachel posted on Facebook a few months ago, "I know many of you are seeing the cryptic messages being posted so we might as well tell you the news. I have breast cancer."

She went on to share the course of treatment and how it would look and what she anticipated and how her friends and husband were there for her. She said they were beginning treatment immediately and it would last until late Fall.

She is my age with two children, a boy and girl and her husband is on Young Life staff. Not to project too much but it has looked like looking into a mirror. And this mirror reflects the reality that if this were to happen to us, we couldn't afford a whole lot of fun in our lives.

And our lives are built on the reality that Jesus came to bring life and give it to the FULL. Should a cancer diagnosis change that? For us or for our children? The answer is NO! But how?

Thankfully--there is an organization like Inheritance of Hope to help solve that question.

I have started fundraising again for the Fall. I am running the Marine Corps Marathon on October 25th. And I am doing a running streak (AGAIN) from Memorial Day to the 4th of July.

But I have been humbled through this process of running and running for Inheritance of Hope and I don't want to let the running streak be about me. A part of the #rwrunningstreak with Runners World is that you are supposed to post a picture to Instagram daily with info about your run.

Last years Run Streak was completed on a run with my sister. 

I would like to use the opportunity to tell the stories of donors to Inheritance of Hope. Almost everyone I know has been impacted by cancer. Additionally, one of the reasons why I am running in the Marine Corps Marathon is that my father is retired Colonel from the Army. My heart is strong in the Armed Forces. If any donors would rather talk about how their family has been impacted by military services and/or loss, I would love that.

This platform is for YOU. To share and share how grief through cancer, fighting, serving and persevering has actually created HOPE. Because God doesn't want us to sit still in our grief, he helps us to endure until we have hope.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says this, "There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time, it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connects to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God is no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve, even in pain, the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the rememberences, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as thorn, but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain." 

So starting Monday, I will share the stories of pain and triumph. Rememberances of love and treasures. It will be a Sharing Streak! As long as I have donations, I will share. $50 donation to Inheritance and your story will be told. And our stories have to be told. The loves of our lives need to be remembered and cherished. And hope will endure.

Donate to Inheritance of Hope