My mother called me this morning to say, "I'm calling to ruin your day. It's cancer."

Funny how one phrase can change your life.

It's cancer.

It's hard to say out loud, "My mom has lung cancer." Lung cancer happens to people who smoke 3 packs a day, not to 65-year-old otherwise healthy grandmothers. Sure, she has had problems with pneumonia over the last several years, but pneumonia doesn't cause cancer.

So what's next? I don't know. But I do know that my mom and my family aren't alone in this. Last week my kids had a Steven Curtis Chapman CD playing, and the song "Miracle of the Moment" really blessed me in the waiting:

There's only One who knows

What's really out there waiting

And all the moments yet to be.

And all we need to know

Is He's out there waiting

To Him, the future is history.

And He has given us a treasure called "right now."

This is the only moment we can do anything about.

Even though we don't know what's next, Jesus does. My mother's future and my choices about what may need to change in my life as a result are all in His hands. It gives me so much peace to know that the One who is in control of all this is not just any God but a loving God who sacrificed His life for us. And that He knows the pain we are going through.

For now, we pray for healing, we experience peace, and we trust in the God we know is good.

One moment at a time.