I learned from my neurologist yesterday that the disease I've been living with for four years may actually have never been present in my body. Instead, there seems to be an unknown mass pressing on my spinal cord, and it is this mass rather than the disease that has been causing all my difficulties with walking, etc.

huled out many possibilities for what the mass might be, and said it may be inflamed tissue, or it might be cancer, but it doesn't behave or grow like cancer, so he is baffled, and I am being sent to a neurosurgeon for more information.

Four years I have lived with disability, and after all that time had finally wrapped my head around the idea that I would probably be this way for another forty to fifty years. I was ok with that. I'd made my peace, prepared myself for life, and now I'm being told that I may be "normal" again if they can get rid of the mass.

Change. An answer to prayer. I know that God will heal me, either through a doctor, a miracle or through heaven. Change. Hope being offered when hope had been neatly packed away. Change. A growth on my spine to match the growth I'm being asked to embrace.

God is present in all matters, this I know. I am human, and therefore succumb to fear an doubt sometimes. This I also know. Change. Hope. I pray I will be able to use the strength and faith God gives me to stay the course, to run the race, to embrace the change.

Change. God's way of helping us grow. Lord, help me to not stop growing.