Wednesday evening I said good-bye to the members of the Toastmasters club that I have belonged to for two years. This morning my wife and I said good-bye to the Youth Sunday School class we have taught for the past six months. Today was my wife’s last day of work at the home for seniors where she has worked for almost eight and one half years.

Leaving the Youth class was a routine thing, teachers change every six months. We will still worship together, but I will miss the class times.

The other two events are not routine. My wife has CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) and has been getting more fatigued with every passing month. She has appointments in March for a CT scan and another visit with her oncologist and we expect treatments to begin about a month from now. This should be good news, the oncologist says the treatments will lower her abnormal white cell count and increase her energy level. Good news or not, it is too much for her now to put in an occasional day’s work outside the home.

I feel the evening trips into the city for Toastmaster meetings don’t really fit with the way our spring and summer seems to be shaping up. I have learned much through Toastmaster and made good friends, but this is the end of going to the meetings.

The future is hidden from us. We are told that the chemotherapy that she will receive will not be as hard on her as the drugs she received 35 years ago. She came through that episode remarkably well. But now she is 35 years older. We want to go forward in the faith that is portrayed in the following lines from Minnie Louise Haskins:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than  light and safer than a known way.”

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me toward the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.