My husband will shake a thousand hands today. He is a school superintendent. It is high school graduation day for two of the larger schools he oversees. After graduation day his hand literally hurts for two days. He says it is one of those good kinds of hurts. I see it as one thousand stories just about to begin.
Today on my Instagram memories a picture popped up from two years ago of our youngest son working at Sonic just after his high school graduation. Today he sent a picture of himself sightseeing in Kyrgyzstan where he is studying Russian for 10 weeks. His recent story has taken him quickly from Sonic America’s Drive In to halfway across the world. New life.
Saturday my husband and I get to attend two parties. One is for a baby’s first birthday and the other for a high school graduate. I’m calling it our New Life day.
Richard Rohr writes that new life is God’s specialty. Resurrection is what God is still and forever doing with the universe and all humanity. Science strongly confirms this….more than ever before but with different metaphors and symbols, like condensation, evaporation, hibernation, sublimation, the four seasons, the life cycles of everything from salmon to galaxies, and even the constant death and birth of stars from the exact same stardust. God appears to be resurrecting everything all the time. It Is nothing to “believe in” as much as it is something to observe and be taught by. Immortal Diamond
Today I had my yearly screening for breast cancer. Once you’ve had breast cancer you get your results right then. Thank goodness because I’m usually a mess right after the mammogram, just sure that they will find what they are looking for. They call me back to a dark room where the only light is what is shining through the images. My same beautiful doctor is always standing there. In the dark, she quickly and blissfully tells me. “Everything looks good. Absolutely no change from last year. See you in a year.” I’m always glad it is dark so she can’t see the grateful tears running down my face although I know she would understand them.
After a cancer journey or any of the strange hard places life takes us new life and healing seem strangely sweet, like grace, like a bonus, like icing on the cake. “Oh my goodness” I think, “I get to leave here from this dark room, and go out into the golden sunshine and enjoy another day of health and life?” Thank you doctor. Thank you God. Thank you mammogram images shining through the darkness.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes, …new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark. Learning to Walk in the Dark
I don’t know if you are standing in the light or in the dark today or somewhere in between. The truth is wherever you stand, God is working right now on your next chapter, your healing, your new life. God is resurrecting everything all the time.
Thanks be to God.
Dr. Cindy Ryan is a pastor, wife, mother of three, Mimosa/Mocha to Keller and Pace and grateful breast cancer survivor.
Dr. Cindy Ryan 
Oh yes! Thanks be to God! We who love you wait in that darkness with you each time you go for screening. Then when you report all is good, we walk with you into the sunshine with grateful hearts. You are so dear to me. 💕
New life-resurrection life-so grateful for your life and another year with good news.
I remember having a hard time believing the doctor who told me I didn’t need to come back for any more checkups after my aneurysm had been stabilized – they checked for 3 years. The last one I was awake for, and I could see out of the corner of my eye what he was looking at – see for myself it hadn’t changed. When he told me me I wouldn’t need to come back any more, I think I just stared at him, and he joked, “Do you want me to get someone with grey hair to say it?” It wasn’t that I thought he was too young to be believed; it just never occurred to me that the saga could one day simply be over. It was definitely a resurrection experience of a kind.
So very, very happy to hear your wonderful news! Praise God!
Amen!