There are people who crumble with a paper cut experiencing tears for days and
needing band-aid changes to dress the wound.
needing band-aid changes to dress the wound.
People who collapse with emotional pressure or fearing the worst case scenario, paralyzing them from ever experiencing life.
Then you have those that rise above the bad news and become shining stars.
That's my sister...
Traci Lynn Van Dyken.
Traci has experienced far worse then paper cuts under going multiple surgeries to cut the disease out of her body. Scars that show the journey she's been triumphing on over the course of almost ten years. With every blood draw she receives the pressure of results showing success or defeat. Continual chemotherapy treatments to maintain the progress or to treat aggressively what has taken over her body. Recently, giving up three weeks to full brain radiation to treat the progression of the disease in her eye and brain. The unfortunate part of treating this one area is that the other areas were left untouched. Since then, the tumor markers have traveled over a total of five hundred points higher and an obvious shortness of breath slows My Hero's steps. Scans confirm that the cancer has grown in her liver and lungs.
With all these changes, struggles and setbacks, there is one variable that has never applied pressure:
Faith.
A faith that is indestructible.
A faith that pulls us out of the spiral of despair and fear from the unknowns.
My Hero proved once again that her faith in our God that moves mountains, splits the seas, heals the blind and raises from the dead CAN conquer anything with
Jesus as the one breathing life into her lungs.
Jesus as the one breathing life into her lungs.
It's just a mask, but to Traci it's so much more.
The mask that protected her during radiation was a tangible way to remind herself, to show her nieces and nephews, and to tell cancer...
screw you.
My God is bigger then the damage you can cause my body.
Jesus can fill the voids all my cancer has stolen like He fills the oceans with water and the day with light.
I find the irony of the radiation mask not shattering much like Traci's faith.
A 102 foot drop from the fire bucket, being crushed under 70,000 pounds of steel then ran over back and forth and finally placed between the jaws of life,
STILL DID NOT SHATTER,
the radiation mask.
The intense pressure Traci has encountered should break anyone after a few months.
Not our Rock Star.
She continues to rock this journey with fashion, style and a tremendous respect from everyone watching her faith carrying her through this journey.
Traci's story is not over yet and as a sister I ask one thing...
Don't stop praying.
Pray that we as a family continue to find joy in the pressure of this disease and that we can bind together to fight when Traci becomes to weak to do this on her own.
Nothing is impossible.
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Matthew 19:26
No comments