I've got the Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart....

Hello Dear Friends and Family!

Last night I had the pleasure of attending my first Relay for Life event. It was in Jefferson County. My inlaws, aunts on Randy's side and even my mother in law's employer were there to walk for cancer. The event was very touching.

Everyone there who had ever battled cancer wore special survivor shirts and sat in the center of the Jefferson Co High football stadium. I was struck by how young those people looked. There were several children and I can truly say not as many gray heads as you would have thought. Dozens of school and business teams sat behind us in the bleachers. Our speaker was also a breast cancer survivor. She talked about how many cancer survivors she'd met were people of JOY, not because life had been easy on them but because they saw life with new eyes, with a clarity that comes from the cancer itself. She encouraged us not just to walk around the track but to dance around it. It reminded me of that song we sang as kids "I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. Where? Down in my heart..."

Then it came time for us to walk. They called each survivor's name one by one and stated how long they had battled cancer. One person had battled it for a month. Another was a 42 year survivor. Each person walked past the others to the track and received a Relay for Life medal from the mayor. Once they had called everyone's names, we lined up together on the track and began to walk, wiggle and boogie our way around the track. I saw several women with bald heads like mine, people with canes to support themselves, people with tubes coming out of their bodies. I saw what looked like a 7-8 year old boy with colon cancer. They all walked. They walked around that track with their heads held high....hopeful. I walked with a thyroid cancer survivor named Teresa whose daughter has just been diagnosed with cancer in lymph nodes behind the ribcage. She is currently battling with her insurance company to get a less invasive cancer surgery approved that would allow the surgeons to go in through the throat rather than the chest. The chest surgery would require breaking several ribs and a long recovery time. I cannot imagine having your cancer surgery on hold because of an insurance company.

After the survivor's walk there was a kid's walk. Randy, Laura and Leslie participated with shakers in hand. It was jubilant, loud, wonderful.

As soon as the kid's walk ended, a downpour began. I was not able to sit at my little card table and sell my shirts. (The cardtable would have been gone with the wind if I had tried). I was very disappointed about this, but the truth is within the last few days I had gotten 11 shirt orders. I had only 25 shirts. Half were already spoken for. How cool is that? Perhaps it was my night not to focus on the shirts but to focus on the JOY.

Later on in the evening I saw people dancing in the rain. It was a beautiful sight and an image I will not soon forget. It was the JOY that the speaker talked about...the joy that I see in the laughing faces at the cancer ward. It is hard to wrap your head around it. You don't see it in all the faces obviously. You see alot of sadness also, but when you do see that Joy it becomes contagious. Those are the people who have hope in HIM, hope for a cure, hope for healing. Those are the people you are inspired by because they are survivors in the truest sense of the word, not just in body but in spirit. Psalms 30:11 says, "You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy."
Wishing you all lots of joy.

Kerry