I have just found out in the last couple of days that my dad has been diagnosed with CLL - Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. I am a cancer nurse in my "previous" life (before entering full-time ordained ministry) but I knew NOTHING about Leukemia. I had spent my 24 years dealing mainly with breast cancer, colon cancer, melanoma and the like. When dad told me he had been diagnosed with Leukemia, I lost it.

I had actually called to wish them a Happy Valentine's Day as I was headed out to see a gentleman in the nursing home who is very ill. I was driving down the road as he told me and I couldn't figure out where I was going...I was literally "lost" in a town of 752 people... I was on the wrong road, but I couldn't figure out how to get back to the right road.

I was terrified. My contact with Leukemia had basically been when I first started working and was on a pediatric unit (this was in 1979) and we lost two young children within 4 hours to Leukemia. I knew that diagnosis, treatment and survival had much improved over the years, but right at that moment, none of that mattered.

My dad said, "You don't need to be worried, you know people who have done well with this..." and my response was, "Yes...but they weren't MY DAD!" It is somehow so different when it is your own family, but of course, I knew that when I was nursing. It was much easier to tell someone it was going to be OK when it wasn't you who was involved personally in facing whatever they were facing.

I have settled down some. I am no longer consumed by terror... that is not to say that I am not worried. I am worried, but I am confident that what the case is will be as it has been presented. CLL is a Leukemia that is not as aggressive as some of the other Leukemias, and treatment has progressed even farther.

I am trusting God... sometimes that is really hard. My sermon this week is on Mountaintops, Valleys and Plains. How we tend to feel really close to God on the mountaintops, but somehow in the valleys we question God's presence, and in the plains, we almost forget - things are good, no problems, all is well, and God is put on the back burner.

I am climbing up out of that valley right now.