For Geoffrey and Joe

Over the last week or so I have been hit with two very important prayer requests, and I would like to pass them along to anyone out there that will join me in prayer. The first is for Geoffrey Glaub. He is the 9 year old son of a former co-worker, and he was put into the hospital last week. He had been running a fever for about a month, and was finally sent to see an Infectious Diseases specialist at Children's Hospital. A CT scan showed a mass on his liver, so they took an open biopsy for a pathology test. The test came back today and he has been diagnosed with Hepatocellular Carcinoma. He is still in the hospital trying to recover from his recent surgery. He will probably be starting the chemotherapy treatments next week. Please keep little Geoffrey, his family and his doctor's in your prayers. It's not often that we hear about a child being diagnosed with cancer. His family has set up a Caring Bridge site, and I encourage you all to please visit the site. Geoffrey is apparently loving all of the messages that people are sending him, and I know that he would love to hear from people who are praying for him. His website is http://caringbridge.org/visit/geoffreyglaub.

The second request is for a family friend named Joe Elkins. He went to high school with my mom, her sisters and her brother-in-law. My aunt and uncle have stayed best friends with him and his wife since high school, and they are currently down in Tallahassee to be with both of them. He was just diagnosed with lung cancer and congestive heart failure. Him and his wife, Paula, were in Florida for a vacation when he started hemorrhaging from his lungs and had to be rushed to the hospital. He was stable enough for the doctors to do surgery, but had to stop abruptly due to the amount of blood he was hemorrhaging. Please keep Joe, Paula and his doctors in your prayers as well.

It's so unfortunate to have so many friends and loved ones diagnosed with cancer. It seems the disease is everywhere we turn these days. You constantly hear on the news about studies that are showing all of the crazy things out there that can potentially cause cancer. I don't necessarily believe that there are certain foods or beverages out there that can cause cancer. I have known plenty of healthy people who have been diagnosed and it truly has nothing to do with what we consume - if that was the case, we would all starve to death because of all the things out there that they "claim" to cause cancer!! I don't think there is any rhyme or reason to this cancer thing, and I think that is one of the reasons why it is so hard to understand. All I know is that I am going to continue living my life the way I always have. If I get diagnosed with cancer somewhere along the line, then so be it. All this tells me is that for some reason, God planned for this to happen to me. And we can't spend our time questioning why...it absolutely gets us nowhere. All we can do is pray.