A Wedding and a Phone Call

The weather has been amazing since last Friday night.  Adam, me, and the dogs sat out on our balcony as the winds shifted and the cool front blew in.  It really gets you in the mood for football, Fall, and boots!  Of course, with living in Texas, it could be 100 degrees by the end of the week, but for now I am really taking it all in.  

Saturday I had the opportunity to assist in photographing a beautiful wedding.  The weather changed at just the perfect time and it was all absolutely breathtaking.  I definitely teared up during different parts of the day and I didn't even know these people.  I just felt honored to be able to take part in such a special day.  They were all so genuinely happy and it reminded me of what I have been studying lately about love and the verse when Jesus was asked, 

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" he responded by saying, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:36-40).  

During the day, as they got ready, as the ceremony took place, and during the reception I thought about this verse and how God gives us such a large capacity and calling to love others.  As they exchanged vows I was reminded of the commitment two make to one another on their wedding day.  It is such an honor that your spouse chose you to serve and love for the rest of their life.  I think we often forget that we are called to love our spouse as we do ourself.  Everything starts getting muddled as we think, "Well, if they did this for me, then I would feel more motivated to do things that they want to do as well."  Where does the servant attitude go?  We have put ourselves in the center of the equation.  It was a reminder to me that I need to first and foremost serve and love God.  I have found that when I am doing this, on a consistent basis, my love and respect towards Adam strengthens and grows.  However, when I bump God out of the center and stick myself in the center of things, my thoughts become about me and my relationship with Adam suffers because of it.  Through serving our spouse we are ultimately serving God because that is what He has called us to do.

On another note, as I watched the pride on the face of the father as he walked his little girl down the aisle and saw the pure joy as everyone danced later in the night I  was reminded of such a sweet blessing.  How amazing is it that God has allowed us to experience such a range of emotion.  Yes, sometimes pain and tears of sorrow happen, but how beautiful is the sound of laughter?  As a human being, God has blessed us with having the ability to experience joy and to think, it is just a glimpse of what we will experience with Him in heaven for eternity.

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So, some of you may know that I had a biopsy done on a small spot under my eye on August 30.  I honestly went in to the dermatologist thinking, "Okay, he will tell me a specific cream to help treat whatever this is and I will be out the door."  I had no thoughts of it being cancerous, at all.  So, immediately when he says, "Amber, I am concerned about this one spot and I would like to do a biopsy on it.  I have had a patient that decided he didn't want his spot biopsied by his eye and he recently visited me after two years, it was cancer, and he lost his eye."  All comforting words.  However, overall, in this moment I was more sick about having a needle a millimeter from my eyeball.  The spot was literally where I would apply my eyeliner.  Not the best spot.  He said that if it was cancer I would be doing a different procedure/surgery due to the location since the skin tissue is so delicate.  It was not too bad, but it definitely was not what I expected when I walked into his office that day.

However, when I got into my car I felt a strange peace.  I say it was strange because even though I hate to admit it I would usually get in my car and would have already started making plans to have the cancer removed.  I just felt a peace about it.  Like even if it was cancerous God would be glorified through it.  I felt like if it was cancerous then God would be wanting to take me to a different place in my relationship with Him and how great that would be.  My focus suddenly felt shifted off of myself and onto God and his divine purpose.  Days passed and I definitely felt tinges of nervousness as I waited on the results.  For those of you who have had to wait on a phone call from the doctor to obtain "results" it really is not the most fun thing.  However, God kept reminding me of his word in James where it says, 

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Consider it PURE JOY...wow, really...pure joy to be waiting and wondering if I have another spot of skin cancer (I had an area removed four years ago).  Pure joy in the midst of suffering, no matter the situation?  Really?  Is that what we are called to do?

I feel that God continually emphasized and spoke those two words to me in the moments when I would start questioning.  It completely goes against our human nature, but puts us right inline with His.  If our ultimate goal in this life is to love and serve Him then our attitude should be that of "pure joy", despite anything we encounter.  This, of course, takes continual practice, because like Paul says in Romans 7:15, 

"For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate."

Whenever I would start feeling moments of anxiety I would turn my anxiety into prayer.  I would write in my prayer journal.  I would sit outside and pray.  Each time I took myself out of the center and put my focus on God everything shifted, including my perspective.  Last Thursday, I woke up a little nervous, knowing I should get a phone call soon.  I sat outside, prayed, and felt so much better.  I came inside, picked up Berkley, and I felt such a peace.  I knew that whatever God had in store for me, even if it was a few surgeries and follow-up appointments, that he had a plan for me and it was to bring me closer to Him.  He was faithful and has shown me time and time again that His plan is greater than mine.  Literally seconds after I received this overwhelming peace my phone rang, fifteen minutes before the doctor's office even opened.  They informed me that the spot was only a cyst and not cancer.  

I walked into the kitchen, shaking, as I told Adam.  I had tears in my eyes, not necessarily because of the results, but out of joy that God had given me peace before finding out anything.  I feel that sometimes God wants you to be at a peace with Him beforehand  and because of HIM, instead of just feeling peace because a circumstance goes the way you believe it should.