As I type this, the band-aid on my back is sliding off, the Vaseline from the dermatology office a slick, clear ooze spread below my shoulder blades.

I had to get a mole removed, and the daily care the resulting wound requires is both minimal and difficult: I’m having a hard time reaching my arms up and behind me, washing the small red disk of skin, wiping the Vaseline over what hurts to touch.

And I’m also having a hard time not letting fear strike me to the floor.

Cancer runs in my family. Both my grandmothers died of cancer (stomach and lung), and my Grandma Backous also survived breast cancer. My uncle Mike died from cancer; my father has had cancerous spots removed from his own body.

And my younger sister had a precancerous mole removed a few months ago. She will be twenty-four this year.

Twenty-four.

Jessica seemed unphased by the whole ordeal. “It was just looking weird, and I needed to take care of it,” she says jauntily, her college nursing courses (and her own grit) giving her an added edge of confidence, a “doctor’s voice” to speak over whatever fears brought her to the dermatologist in the first place.

I don’t have much confidence; I’m fearful of a bad diagnosis, the need for invasive treatment a year before my wedding. I’m fearful of my pale skin, my family’s medical history, the cost and the dread.

And I’m especially fearful because, since the weeks I booked the appointment, my mind has floated vaguely over the whole situation, unable to read what may or may not come.

I’m usually able to trust my intuition: I can sense if an opportunity will be fruitful, if a person will be trustworthy or difficult. I’ve often thought that my intuition was a gift of the Spirit, something that helped me discern situations and what they might invite, offer, demand.

This has panned out most accurately in terms of job interviews, essay acceptances and rejections, and dates. When I applied for my first teaching job, I knew the moment I stepped into the school office that I would work inside that building, with its turquoise walls and wide staircases.

And when I first met Jeremy, my first instinct was Oh crap. He’s the one.

At the same time, this “intuition” has not always been a gift. It has led me astray, fed false ideas and assumptions, and worked in tandem with my quick temper.

I can’t count how many emails I wish I could take back, or what anxieties have mushroomed in my mind over what I thought was a clear read of a conflict.

So it should be a comfort that, when it comes to this mole, I cannot read what will happen. It should place me in some blessed limbo, a place where my lack of foreknowledge could simply comfort me. Remind me of my finitude. Lead me to trust that all things will work for the upholding of my life.

As my father would say, in his Stoic way, “You can’t control what happens, Red, so there is no use worrying about it.”

But I am worrying about it. I’m wondering how I would balance interferon treatments with the five courses I’m teaching in the fall; I’m recalling the many stories I have heard this summer from my church and friends about cancer announcing itself in the lives of those who never could have expected it, whose plans for college, for grandchildren, were just stopped.

I’m wondering what to do now that my intuition has simply run away from me, unable to feel out any prediction or hunch.

And because I do not know what to do, or what news will reach me by the time you read this, I’m asking you to pray.

Pray for me, my health, for those you know (and don’t know) who carry the fear I’m carrying, the inability to see ahead.

Pray for my peace of mind, for my comfort, for the peace and comfort of the people I love who don’t know what to do either, brave as they try to be.

Pray for Holly Miller, a young woman I know whose spine exploded with a tumor earlier this spring, whose family needs more than I can say.

That is what I am trying to do, as I readjust the band-aid’s plastic strip, and write, and work. As I try to stand against fear, I find myself praying at odd times: in front of the mirror, over the sink, bent over my tomato plant, hose in hand.

And I would like a reminder of how great our cloud of witness is: I’d like you to pray for me, for the way to be light ahead.

And I’ll pray for you, for what you carry.

For trust to replace prediction, for stillness to quiet fear.