This is a picture of our daughter, Serenity, Day One, Week Three in the chemo pod. Doesn’t she look lovely? Her husband Michael bought this beautiful wrap for her on Valentine’s Day. See how the color lights up her pale face? And brings a sparkle to her eyes where the lashes are too few to hold makeup anymore? Pure loveliness.

The wrap also hides the tubes snaking into her arm and delivering the poison that will both cure her and carry her to the edge of death every day. Michael and I have learned the scenario by now. She starts every morning like this. Smiling, brave, chatting with us about life and love. We watch the decline as each of the nine bags of fluid flow through her veins.

We know pretty much when the nausea will hit. And the restlessness that makes her want to crawl out of her skin. We can anticipate the hour when fatigue will take over. We need a better word than “fatigue.” Something that says life-sucking, bone-sapping, death-might-be-a-relief weariness beyond words.

We don’t take pictures in the afternoons.

She will fight off the effects in the night. A little less successfully every day. But, in the morning, she will appear at my hotel room door smiling (sometimes with her eyes closed) and ready to go. (though she has to sit on the elevator floor for the ride some days.)

Michael and I are watching the cycle of life unfold every single day. From birth to death and back again.

This is our last week for such torture. And the prognosis is excellent. Yet, we can’t leave the chemo pod without being fully aware that someone else’s wife or daughter is just entering the fray. Someone else’s son or husband is just getting the devastating news.

And that is why I’m eagerly watching for Jesus to return. Not because I simply want to escape the trouble of this earth. But because I know God never meant for us to live this way. No matter how young and vibrant I might feel today, (I don’t) my eventual tomorrow will be weakness, infirmity, and possibly disease. With death at the end.

But there is a Day coming when all that will fade away. We will live in a new earth like the one God originally created. We can only speculate what it will be, of course. But we know it will be filled with love, because that is God’s nature. And discovery, because He let Adam name every animal. And relationship, because He created Eve.

I catch a glimpse of it sometimes. When I drive down a peaceful country road, marveling at the beauty, and I wonder how much I will love nature in its perfection. Or when I walk a city street at Christmastime, soaking in the lights and sparkle,  and I wonder what it will be like to live constantly surrounded by music, glory, peace, and joy.

I love my life, and I’m really not in a hurry to leave. I look forward to growing old with the man I love and to watching our great-grandchildren take their places in this world. But, I’m also looking forward to that other world where there will be no more weary afternoons. No more death and separation. No more war. No more tears.

Just Life. Lots and lots and lots of Life.