Stable, Year 7

A couple of weeks ago I had my scans to check on the multiple cancer nodules housed in my lungs. It has been almost exactly 7 years since I was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic cancer and I’ve had scans every 3-6 months for SEVEN YEARS. STABLE. I usually greet the news with overwhelming relief and crazy joy but this time was different; still relief but with maybe more contemplation? I’m still processing the news and why the ‘celebration’ felt different. I’m thinking about what it has meant to be stable all these years and how it’s changed me and my perspective, how I’m living, and maybe how I want to live going forward. I cry thinking about how the word cancer first changed MY LIFE 16 years ago and how the words ‘Stage 4’ changed ME 7 years ago after wrestling with cancer two other times in between. 

We talk about gratitude a lot and I want to say I’m more grateful, but am I? I don’t want to have to think about cancer anymore. I don’t want to wonder if my next scan will still be stable or if I feel ‘off’ one day that my cancer is spreading, or if it’s humid and the air is heavy and I have a harder time breathing if it’s more or growing nodules in my lungs. I don’t want to wonder if I will make it to a child’s wedding or meet my first grandchild. I also don’t want to grieve what might be and miss what is. I know none of this is in my control and that there may be other factors that take me out, but cancer is what’s in front of me or should I say inside of me. I’m tired of the cancer dance. I’m tired. But yes, I’m still beyond grateful because without the weight of it, I would maybe miss the magic around me or waste even more time and air stressing about stupid stuff. I’m still tired.

The concept of impermanence is hard but living in duality may be even harder; making decisions can feel heavy, caught between I don’t care and I care too much. Talking and saving for retirement and but can’t focus on anything but today, planning for the future but wondering about the scan results six months from now, etc…it stinks. ‘I don’t care’ is my brain saying ‘I can’t process that right now’ or ‘does not compute’.

I’ve changed. Quality time has always been my top love language, but now it’s exaggerated. If I have a chance and the funds to see my kids, I will go. I want to surround myself with people whose joy is contagious. I crave community because the richest person in my book is one that’s filled with love, laughter, and time with family and friends. I will continue sharing my story and being vulnerable in hopes that it allows whoever else to be vulnerable with theirs. We learn from each others’ stories and vulnerability makes us more human. The perfection we see on Facebook and IG is mostly fake, fills us with fake longing, sometimes shame, envy and sadness that we don’t have what the picture shows us when truly the picture is just a picture. It’s flat and missing the three-dimensional parts of peoples lives. I’m softer, my heart feels like mush and I cry sometimes over the simplest of things. I’m also harder, I’ve learned to say no a little more without the guilt behind it. I don’t want to struggle or people please anymore to get attention or be included because time is too valuable and how exhausting is that?

The world feels like it’s on fire; people are more short tempered, judgmental, angry, self centered, and just ‘harder’ or hard hearted in general, unwilling or afraid to cross the lines or even share the lines of what they think how things ‘should be.’ Well, we all suck and I’m no better, but I don’t want to be one of those grouchy people, it’s such a waste of precious air.

I’m learning to embrace the impermanence of life even though it was by force (or I should say by diagnosis). No one gets to live forever. In a book I recently finished it said “That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.” -The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, by VE Schwab. There’s no best time, no one’s ever ready. 

Hope. Hope to me shows up when an adult child texts me that they love or miss me (without my prompting), when someone shows kindness, when my dog looks at me and tilts his head like he’s paying attention and understands everything I say, etc. Hope is tangible, it’s simple and it’s always in your face when your heart is broken enough to let the light in. My heart is broken. It’s not a bad thing, it just means it’s tender and has lots of space for love, joy, hope, and empathy. Yes, grateful for that too.

Life is short. God loves me, Jesus carries me, that’s my solid. I’m reminded of His love and goodness constantly. My cancer is stable. 6 months from now it may not be, or maybe it will be for the next 20 years, who knows? Today I will breathe in life and take this word stable and add it to my bank of hope for however long it carries me.

‘Life is brutally hard & still holds holy beautiful holy moments & we are all standing on the edge of more joy, more wonder, more awe in God, who carries us through all the waves of heartache and heartawe, and into the expansive love of His heart.’~ Ann Voskamp

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