There are weeks when the whole world feels unsteady.

This has been one of them. So much in the wider world feels fragile at the moment — economies shaking, nations on edge, lives overshadowed by conflict and the spillover of war. There is a heaviness in the air, a sense that everything is more uncertain than we would like to admit.

And in my own small corner of the world, I have felt that same unsteadiness in a very personal way.

Living with uncertainty changes a person. It teaches you to hold life differently. It teaches you not to look too far ahead, not because you have lost hope, but because you learn that the future is not something you can grip too tightly. You learn to live more gently with tomorrow.

I live with brain tumours, and that kind of life teaches you very quickly that certainty is a fragile thing. Life becomes measured in scans and waiting rooms, in test results and the quiet spaces in between. Even when life looks ordinary from the outside, there can be a deep undercurrent of uncertainty running beneath it all.

This week, I had another MRI, and it stirred all of that in me once again.

It is never just the test itself, although that too takes a great deal out of me. It is the waiting. The wondering. The quiet carrying of possibilities you do not want to give too much voice to. It is the inner strain of trying to remain steady while fear brushes constantly at the edges of my thoughts.

Sometimes I think I am like one of those ducks gliding across a lake. On the surface, I may appear calm enough, but underneath, everything is moving furiously. There is often far more going on beneath the surface, working hard simply to stay afloat.

And that is where faith meets me.

Not in some grand or dramatic way, but quietly. Tenderly. In the middle of my very human fear. I do believe that my life is in God’s loving hands. I carry that faith with me always. But faith does not make a person immune to fear. It does not stop the trembling. It does not take away the ache of waiting or the exhaustion of carrying what cannot be fixed by sheer strength. It simply means that even in the fear, even in the fragility, there is still something deeper holding me.

This week, I needed that truth more than ever.

Because up until now, my tumours had behaved predictably. They had been growing at the rate expected of them, and had that continued, things would be becoming serious now. That was the shadow sitting quietly behind this week, the unspoken weight beneath the waiting.

But this time, just when it mattered most, something changed.

For the first time since I began having these scans, I was given news that felt like mercy. I was told that both tumours had stopped growing. At least for now, they are stable.

Even now, those words catch in my heart.

Stable.
Stopped growing.
Just when it mattered most.

Sometimes relief arrives so deeply that it feels almost like collapse. As though something inside you that has been bracing for impact can finally let go. As though your lungs can fill properly again. As though your whole soul, stretched thin by fear and waiting, can finally rest.

That is what this felt like.

Not triumph, exactly.
But mercy.

Relief.
Permission to breathe again.
A gift.

The strain of the MRI, the waiting, and all that it stirred in me left me depleted. It all took a real toll on me. But underneath that exhaustion was a relief so profound it is hard to put into words.

And with that relief came gratitude.

Deep gratitude.
Tender gratitude.
The kind of gratitude that rises from knowing you have been given something precious again.

Time.

More ordinary days.

Because this news means I get to wake up to an ordinary Monday tomorrow. And that feels like no small thing to me. It feels like grace.

The quiet rhythm of daily life.
The familiar comfort of simple routines.
The unnoticed beauty of ordinary moments.
All the things that can look so mundane until you are reminded how precious they really are.

And so tonight, after a week of fear, fragility, waiting, and prayer, my heart is resting in relief and gratitude.

Gratitude for mercy at the very moment it was needed.
Gratitude to God, who held me even while I trembled.
Gratitude for ordinary life, which no longer feels ordinary at all.
And gratitude, most of all, for the beautiful and sacred gift of more time.