Resurrection Sunday

Now that those of you who read my blog and also are on my mailing list have likely received my April newsletter, I guess it's safe to post it here. I've hinted a bit in previous blog entries about difficult things happening. This explains further.

A blessed Easter to all! —alm
----------------------------

When I attended Ash Wednesday services a few weeks ago, I was reeling from the news that my mother had just been diagnosed with cancer. A “shadow” detected on her pancreas in early February turned out, in fact, to be a cancerous tumor.

As I write this letter, Mom is beginning her second week of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, and her prognosis is much better than we first feared. She will undergo surgery sometime this summer, after this round of treatment shrinks the tumor. But her doctors report that the cancer has not spread beyond her pancreas. They caught it early. Praise God!

This reminder of my (and my mother’s) mortality has rested heavily over me during this Lenten season, even as I have continued to go about my daily work and life. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. I remember. It’s been hard to forget.

Even so, life has indeed continued. I’ve spent the first months of 2006 writing, editing, worshiping, eating, reading, watching TV, drinking coffee, attending my 20-somethingth Jubilee conference, spending time with friends and family, and cheering Pitt’s basketball team to victory (and defeat).

I’ve traveled to the Washington, DC area twice in as many months, to interview the two new CCO staff people who are reaching out to college students at Howard University and George Mason University (whose basketball team fared much better than my beloved Pitt Panthers in the NCAA Tournament, by the way!). Their stories will appear in upcoming issues of the CCO’s On Campus magazine.

I combined the GMU trip with a visit with my friend Jeff and his family in the DC area last week (after more than a decade of promising to do so “someday”), and I went bowling for the first time in many years with Ann and Terri a couple weeks back—and even managed a couple spares and a strike between gutter balls! I have gathered with good friends to pray for my mom’s complete healing.

I look forward to celebrating the Resurrection once again this year, rejoicing and resting in the promise of eternal life assured by my faith in Jesus Christ. God is good—all the time. Thank you for the many ways you continue to demonstrate this reality for me.

Happy Easter!