Wolves make noise

There is a difference between imagining that a sound outside your house is a wolf, and knowing that the sound outside your house is a wolf. You can talk yourself out of alarm and skittishness. You can look out the window and laugh a little at imaginations most vivid. You can even begin thinking about something else. If the sound outside is not a wolf.

But if it is a wolf, and prowls back and forth and growls with hunger and determination, and the wolf hunter is no where to be seen. Then the difference is enormous. You might find yourself looking out the window for the help that is not yet there. You might find that other occupations are difficult to embrace. You really want to talk about the wolf more than is considered comfortable to anyone who is within hearing range. And perhaps you bite your tongue to keep from wondering about the sharpness of its teeth and how heavy the danged thing is.

If it is definitely a wolf, you pray, but for what? That it would cease to be a wolf (as if wolves can be transformed into something...lovable?) or that its teeth would sort of chew only just a little (and that it wouldn't hurt, just this time?) or that you would be brave as a marine and whistle loudly as you wait for that unseen, unarrived wolf hunter?

And cancer is that wolf. It prowls at the door and outside the windows. I am not imagining the growls and pacing. My regular prayer is that it stays out there until the wolf hunter arrives.