Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Abiding in His Love 8/27-9/3/26 (08/27/26)
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TITLE: In His Love | Previous Challenge Entry
By GiGi Mezzio
09/03/26 -
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Bella is anxiously waiting for the phone call from her doctor —for the diagnosis of her recent MRI scan. She taps her fingers on the face of her iPhone, willing it to ring. Soon, the dreaded phone call confirms what she has been fear—-aggressive small cell lung cancer. Instantly, her secure lifestyle falls into a fractured blur of medical terminology, treatments, and overwhelming worry.
Since losing her mother to lung cancer, five years earlier, she had adamantly proclaimed that she would never allow herself to succumb to the ravages of chemotherapy; but that was before she was blessed with grandchildren she hoped to see grow up. She wanted them to cherish memories with her as she treasured so many with her own Nanny. ‘How could this even happen?’ She cries out to God, asking how He could allow this to happen to her when she has plans for a long, secure future. She had only recently retired after working for thirty years as a United States postal carrier.
“Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
She is met with a heavy silence and tearfully finds herself spiraling into a dark place of anger and resentment. After running from snarling dogs and escaping disappointed welfare recipients who blamed her when their check was late, retirement was supposed to be all about fun and travel, not doom and gloom.
Under the weight of relentless nausea, hair loss, while hiding under a Dolly Parton look alike wig or the tell tale turban, extreme lethargy, and near death from radiation poisoning, she realizes that she has spent her life trying to survive on her own strength. God has not forsaken her but she has drifted away from Him and that little red brick church of her youth.
‘How did I get here? What do you want me to do? Bella pleaded, tears streaming despairingly down her face.
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.” (John15:4 KJV)
Bella experiences a quiet shift in her perspective—she feels a soft transformation and sees that abiding in God’s love does not mean being spared from the storm, but being anchored in it. He is her lifeline.
Over the following weeks and months of grueling treatment, Bella’s life shrinks to the walls of the oncology clinic. Facing her own mortality, she is attacked daily with advanced weakness and weight loss, dust mite infection, and incontinence; however she will not succumb to the ravages of the disease but prays without ceasing. (1 Thessalonians 5:17 NIV)
No longer able to walk and chained to a hospital bed, she is overwhelmed by a suffocating fear of suffering and death. She wonders if God has truly abandoned her. She is trying to keep up a good attitude and has gained a reputation for encouraging others at the hospital , which has now become her home. Wearing the shield of faith, Bella is wheeled down the hallway toward the operating room. Her future remains completely uncertain and she feels the tremors of nervousness. Underneath is a peaceful stillness. She closes her eyes to the bright lights and is told to count backwards from 100; but begins praying the Lord’s prayer instead. She is fully aware that whether she wakes up in the recovery room or passes into eternity, she is entirely sustained and held by a love that is secure in the midst of the storm and that cannot be taken away.
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