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
Your words could become a page in someone else’s survival guide.’ I LOVE that quote from Morgan Harper Nichols. In my low moments I don’t remember many conversations but I do remember the encouraging notes, those who sit and pray with me, and the many hugs with no words…LOVE. Can we think on our own and not defer to a Christian-ese phrase as a response to someone’s pain? ‘No one leads people to Jesus; He leads people to Himself. All the pressure’s off; just go love everybody without agenda.’~Bob Goff
good bye again and leave for college. Raising kids is basically a life long series of good-byes, oh my heart but a blog for another day. Back to the quote at the top. I don’t think there is any other event in life that opens your eyes to the realization of life passing then facing your mortality. I have been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have been diagnosed with the ‘c’ word 4 times over the past 10 years so it has been a constant reminder that life is passing by and to live intentionally. I love the last line of the quote which says, ‘life is long if you know how to use it.’ My interpretation of that is instead of saying ‘life is short, do what you want,’ he means if you spend more time doing things you love with people you love, serving others, living with intention, your state of content and well-being will add richness to your life~making whatever time you have on earth worthwhile or in short, a long life well lived.
Thought 2. I have heard many many times that I don’t look sick. It’s true. My cancer’s stable so in the meantime I work, go out with friends, go to the kids’ sporting activities and events, ‘normal’ life, and I look no different with Stage 4 cancer now than I did July 6, 2017 (the day before I found out my cancer was back). I don’t ever take offense to the comment, I’m truly grateful because who wants to look sick? Part of my thought process though is that none of us look sick but most of us are. The Facebook and Instagram pictures are great but don’t show sadness, depression, arguments, adversity, bullying, cruelty, or any of the things normal people struggle with every single day. REAL. LIFE. All of us are living, breathing novels with incredible stories and beautiful covers but we don’t see each others’ ripped and tear-stained pages, highlights, the worn out corners, etc…none of us really look sick.
while loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~Lao Tzu Courage and strength, all of us need both. I read this quote from an unknown author and I really loved it, ‘Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you think you’ve been buried; but actually you’ve been planted.’ HOW AWESOME IS THAT? Planted for rebirth, planted for new, planted for breakthrough. I love it.
she had amazing goals but there was currently no room for space or curve. I told her it was great to have a vision of what her life was supposed to look like in the future but she should absolutely leave room for the unplanned things. The things that make life move and bend, that force you to make decisions, to make hard turns and to maybe change the course you had originally planned but make you who you are truly created to be.
asthma I would lie awake in his room on the floor listening to him struggle to breathe and set my alarm every 4 hours for his breathing treatment. He will probably never know that when he would get hit as a quarterback in 7th and 8th grade I would physically feel sick to my stomach, or the time he cried because he couldn’t understand math and wanted to give up that I cried too. He won’t know that when he didn’t make the varsity basketball team and he sat in his room and cried that I was sitting in my room crying harder because when your child’s dream dies a part of you dies with it. He may never know that when my cancer diagnosis was bad I would lie awake in my hospital bed crying thinking about him and his siblings and willing myself to fight just for them.
Anna's Lipstick Journey 