I was out with some friends today, taking a lovely stroll around Estes Park, and one of them said something. 

[*Side bar – I don’t plan ahead for what I’m going to write about…instead, I go through my day and almost always, something occurs that turns itself into words on that day’s page…]

She was telling a story of her mom, an artist, who would paint and then display the paintings on her walls. As it happened, they lived really close to train tracks and every time a train would blow by, it would rattle their house just enough to skew her paintings on the walls. The artist grew tired of the constant straighten-train-skew-straighten-train-skew so… she painted a crooked painting. Instead of the canvas being straight when she went to paint its picture, she accounted for the impending train’s rattle, turned the canvas, and painted, “The Crooked Lady.” 

I love this as a metaphor. In my own life, I see it as such a picture of what my story is—Others, at first glance, may see a straight picture and not notice the crooked frame, but for the one in the picture, I am forever skewed and permanently rearranged to account for the brutal blow-by rattlings of train after dreadful train and the inevitable trains to come. And it is there, in the crooked, that I survive until the relief of heaven.

*Post 912

Radical Acceptance? :: 10/3/17 :: Post 36

So much laughter filled our home this morning during the chaos of the morning get-out-of-the-house routine. It’s so hard to describe just how funny my husband is….but his ability to make the women of his household laugh even when we want the world to end because of our hormones and emotions are out.of.control. is remarkable. We laughed this morning about almond and cashew milk…and how even does a nut get milked??…and we talked about cashew nipples…and my 15 and 13-year olds cowered in the awkwardness and the hilarity that was ensuing…and my 9-year-old thought it was the funniest thing on the planet. We, as a family, have said the word “nipples” more in the last 8 weeks than most families would… and under the circumstances, it totally sucks as to why we have. But today, we found it to be hilarious. 

So today we laughed. A lot. And I found myself to be in a lighter place as I headed into work. I had a new quiet of my soul…. 

I am grateful for my husband…that in this he is being true to himself, he is holding so much and doing so much and carrying so much, and yet, he is authentic, too. He creates joy and light. And I am thankful that I can laugh even when I hurt from the inside out. That he has “conditioned” me to find things about myself funny, that I have learned to laugh at myself, that he has taught me the value in lightheartedness. That even in cancer….an evil destroyer of joy…he helps me find it again.

There is a strange contradiction, though……..we are laughing at something that is so dreadful. We are laughing amid such horrendous loss. We are laughing at circumstances that are traumatizing and stormy and unpredictable and scary and unwanted. We certainly are not laughing to minimize the devastation…to be inappropriate and disrespectful, rather we are laughing because sometimes there is only that to do to make it survivable. 

That’s been the very interesting thing about this chapter….every day is so different. Literally. (and I’m using that word correctly). Moments throughout the day change, yes, but I can say that mostly, each day has had its “theme” or its God-designed piece in the puzzle of this eventual big picture. Yesterday was its own day, and the day before and the week before and the month before and each day of then to now. I think it’s why I feel led to write every day…because it is just never the same. Even if I do the same stuff every day. 

Fascinating….

What I am finding as a consistent and stable part of this daily experience within the “theme” of each day, is that I continue to be tripped up by acceptance. I know I’ve thought about this and written about it before, but it really is such a place that is so challenging to describe, to quantify or qualify. What really IS acceptance? 

Is it awareness? I have literal (again, using the word correctly) constant awareness that I am fighting cancer for my life. I feel pain in every breath. I feel pain in doing most movements. It is not escapable that I have gone through so much and it just keeps going. Especially because I am choosing to walk this out and feel all of the feelings…tears or laughter (or both in the same moment). I now have “daily medications” as a part of my life for the next 5-10 years where I have alarms set in my phone to remind me to take them. Today, I sneezed three times. And it hurt. Bad. And tonight, I had hiccups for almost a full 45 minutes. And they hurt. Bad. And I am tired after doing things that never made me tired before. So I am aware….I know I have cancer.

Is it acknowledgement? I can talk about it when people ask me. I can tell them what 5 drugs I will be treated with for chemotherapy. I can tell them about my cancer and I can repeat facts that my doctors have told me. I can have logical conversations about the long road of treatment ahead and strategize around it. I can talk about how they will reconstruct my body to look as normal as possible after losing a major part of it. I can say things about my cancer in such every-day-conversation-kinds-of-ways without crying (sometimes). And I’ve found I’ve even made some jokes myself about it….like today, my boss was carrying around a zucchini from another co-worker’s garden that was so large and so heavy that I would have hurt myself to hold it…so we laughed. And then I talked about how I had an appointment today to “fill me up” and that I’d leave work as an A+ and come back a B(ish)….and we laughed. So I acknowledge….I know I have cancer.

But acceptance? I’m at work and doing the old normal and finding my old groove and yet woven into all of that is constant awareness and consistent acknowledgement of my constant and consistent battle??? What a weird place to be… And then I was driving home (exhausted from a second day of work and it was busy and challenging for a whole different reason) and I had this momentary thought of, “Really, me? Cancer awareness month includes me, now? I had a double mastectomy? I have a port installed in my upper right chest wall so they can inject toxins into my jugular to kill every rapidly-dividing cell in my body…and that starts in 6 days? I will be scarred for the rest of my life? Really?”

Bizarre. 

So then, what is acceptance?????? 

assenting and believing
taking something offered; receiving 
agreeing or consenting to
responding affirmatively to
undertaking the responsibilities of 
accommodating and reconciling with 
regarding as truth
Whoa. The dictionary has really messed me up now….Assenting, complying, yielding??? Believing?? Receiving and taking this willingly?? Agreeing….consenting?? Responding AFFIRMATIVELY?? Taking responsibility? Reconciling and obliging??? 

Knowing its truth….

Yikes. If all of this is acceptance, every one of those things are hard. Those things feel impossible and so out of reach. That list feels beyond my capacity. …A friend of mine shared a portion of her story with me and used the words, “radical acceptance”… Hmmmm. I’m guessing this is some of what she meant. Or maybe it is all of this. And maybe it even includes laughter.

Weird :: 10/3/18 :: Post 385

Weird day. 
Weird week. 
And some very complex emotions. 

October 3 of 31 :: 10/3/19 :: Post 748

Ugh. I have felt awful today. Lightheaded. Foggy. Pensive. Irritable. Nauseous. Emotional. There is no rhyme or reason…

Breast Cancer Awareness Month…

…Day three – Crying and feeling hopeless is okay. The battle still rages.